Michael Craig's Journal

I have reaped many rewards as the author of The Professor, the Banker, and the Suicide King. The greatest - and I am completely serious about this - are the things that people I respect tell me about the book.

James Woods asked for my autograph.

Jennifer Tilly told me she was dying to meet me.

Al Alvarez lavished praise on me, as a pen pal and in the New York Review of Books.

It became a springboard for my friendship with Anthony Holden.

Craig Singer told me how it reunited him with a man who was a father-figure and mentor to him after his own father passed away. 

Right now, it is reuniting Ted Forrest with a childhood friend.

I’ve read dozens of glowing reviews and had over a hundred people tell me how much they enjoyed it. A man seated next to me at a bat mitzvah reception, a stranger, liked it so much that he pulled me around from table to table, telling his other friends in attendance, “I can’t believe it. I’m sitting next to the guy who wrote the best book I ever read!”

All those people have to get in line behind what I heard last week. Early Friday morning, Joanne Ludynec, who writes for Card Squad as well as her own blog (which I’m looking for), paid me the highest compliment I have ever received. It was late and I wasn’t taking notes. She said I could share it, thank goodness.

Joanne got divorced within the last year. The situation was complicated, and she and her husband spent some time committed to the divorce while living under the same roof. They spent evenings discussing disposition of property and their feelings toward each other, their past and their future. The talks were often stressful and contentious, but they were trying to end their marriage with some feeling of respect and with as little ill-will as possible.

At the end of one night’s talks/arguments, Joanne settled in to read a book. My book. She chuckled or commented about a passage and her husband, still in the room, asked what she was reading.

“He’s not a reader,” Joanne told me. (I remember this part exactly.) “He would ask me to read him things, so he asked me to read it to him. I read him the chapter I was on and we went our separate ways to bed.”

The next night, after reasoning/dickering through another evening, her husband said, “Read me another chapter.”

Every night, they would spent the evening ploughing through their marraige and divorce, but end it by reading another chapter.

Joanne completed the story by telling me that her marriage ended amicably, and she was able to get on with her life with a minimum amount of bitterness and baggage, because of Suicide King.

It was the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me about my writing. I almost started crying when she finished, and it gives me goose bumps even telling the story now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 11:37 pm and is filed under My favourites:.