RIP William Diehl

One of my writing inspirations died Friday -- William Diehl. He wrote Sharkey's Machine and Primal Fear and was made very wealthy by his work. He inspired me because he was real and because he was smart and because -- truth be told -- he said I was a damn fine writer.

It was a set-up; he had no choice. My thesis director put him on the spot in front of an entire classroom full of people. He had no gracious way out.

I still hold him to it, though, took it right to heart, then immediately called him up and asked to come to his palatial home on St. Simons and bother him for an afternoon. Amazingly, he said yes. Sometimes my own audacity astounds me.

I interviewed him then (a little snippet of which appeared in Writer's Digest a looong time ago). I still have the cassette tape of our conversation. In the background you hear what sounds like someone hacking up a lung. It was one of his parrots, the one that could mimic a smoker's cough with uncanny parroty precision. The other parrot said nothing for almost the entire time I was there. On my way out, however, the telephone rang. And then it said, "Goddamn it!"

William Diehl taught me something I will never forget. "You won't lose your story," he said, "if you can always find its spine. Everything must attach to that backbone. It's how the story moves. Find the spine."

Death sux. But only for the ones of us still alive. A profound and vulgar friend once said that if there is a heaven, it is this -- to finally know it all, everything, and to understand it all, forever and fucking ever amen.

From what I knew of William Diehl, he would agree with this whole-heartedly, add his own vulgar hear-hear to it. His office overflowed, like he was trying to cram it all in -- live it, breathe it, suck the marrow from it (to paraphrase someone more eloquent than I). I believe he is there now, at last sinking into it with a big "ah!" Putting his feet up. Taking a drag.

What a mensch.

Fucking amen.