Here’s a little excerpt from Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? explaining where the title came from, plus one of those little revenge-fantasies we all have:

“Can’t you get along with anyone?” is the body of the email I received from my Hollywood movie-writing agent (as opposed to my book agent) in response to the email I sent her firing her. While I was sweating over the title of this book I stumbled across the email, which I had forgotten about, via a ridiculous chain of coincidences. So don’t give me too much credit for the title, assuming you hang in and end up liking it. I’m only peripherally involved.

But the point being: As soon as I saw the email I more or less said to myself, “Whoopee!”

There’s another reason for my liking the title, which has to do with my former movie-writing agent. Imagine that this book becomes a howling success, as already I do, not often but occasionally, mainly when my bad chemicals are particularly active and I need to feel better about myself, or at least my writing. Imagine my former movie-writing agent going to a bookstore and seeing her words – the body of the email she sent me, which I believe is laden with negative subtext – all over the place, in displays in the front window, stacked up in towering pyramids on the floor, covering tables; dozens of people holding the book (with the title facing out) while waiting in the cashier line. Everywhere she looks there they are, her words: Can’t You Get Along With Anyone?

Hold on. A good question: What’s someone in the movie business doing in a bookstore?

Here’s what would happen in real life Hollywood as opposed to my fantasy. Rather than go to a book store to buy this book, my former movie-writing agent would order “coverage” from one of the readers at the mega-talent agency where she works, where she pimps out writers, their talent – or lack thereof, if you get my bad-movie drift – to thieves and idiots. Coverage is sort of the Hollywood version of Cliff Notes. Prevents people in the movie business from having to read books – or to be in bookstores. She’d probably say to the reader down in the coverage department, “Never mind the usual crapola, just sum up what the asshole says about me.”

But back to my fantasy. My former movie-writing agent would see the title of this book all over the place and realize that she is the public butt of my clever irony and likely get aggravated.

By the way, did you catch the little redundancy in the subtitle, the A Writer’s Memoir part of it? See, a memoir is always a writer’s memoir: whoever wrote it is by definition a writer since only a writer could have done that, i.e., written the fucking thing.

I didn’t sweat much over this problem, though. I figured Who’s going to notice?

Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? A Writer’s Memoir, and a Tale of a Lost Surfer’s Paradise will be in print in August of 2007. Subscribe to The Bandito Browser for notification.