He Werks Hard For the Money
by: Elyssa Goodman
“WERK!!!”
Moans and bass pulse on the stereo and suddenly Raymond Ejiofor’s long, lean leg flies upward. He is so close to kicking himself in the face but stops, with perfect control, merely an inch from his nose. His lithe body leans backward in a perfect arch, leg still extended, as moans continue from the speakers. The song is “If This Pussy Could Talk” by Ken Doll. The moves are choreography by Raymond himself.
New York Times Uses 100 Interviews Without Linking Back. And Then We Work It Out.
In May, I wrote a piece on 100 Interviews about a couple in Staten Island, Amanda Curtis and Brendan Coyle, who run an art gallery out of their apartment.
Last week, Brendan Facebook-ed me to say that a reporter for the New York Times reached out to them about doing a piece. I thought it was cool. They deserve the recognition. In the message he wrote, “when she came to interview us she asked about your interview and said she was using it as a background reference on us to get aquainted(sic) with our story.” That worried me.
The Times piece came out on Sunday (ironically, the same day I had a small interview in the Times Magazine). The reporter didn’t plagiarize and I’m sure she got all the information from Brendan and Amanda directly but reading the piece, it didn’t sit right with me. The structure was exactly like mine, with no mention of 100 Interviews.
See: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/14/realestate/what-the-ravens-wrought-habitatstompkinsville-si.html
This is the email I sent to the Times in full:
#49. TESSA HULLS - “Someone with a gallery showing of their art.”
In March, Tessa Hulls broke up with her boyfriend in Seattle. With no immediate future plans and nothing holding her to the city anymore, she took off on her pink and white bike to cross the country she’d been born in but never really seen.
Starting in San Diego, she skirted the Mexican border, went through Texas and Alabama and turned up to New York, stopping for a week to visit with friends here. On average, she bikes 90 miles a day.
“I’ve got this horrendous glove tan,” she says, shaking her wrists at me.
Tessa is originally from Northern California, where Mary Schmich warned to “live just once, but to leave before it makes you soft.” Tessa doesn’t seem soft, which I’ll get to in a bit. She attended UCLA for a year, but hated it and transferred to Reed College in Portland to study art. As a kid, she tells me, she was always drawing.
“Growing up, I was pretty isolated because I had no friends that lived within 20 miles of me,” she says. “I did a lot of hiking and I read my way through the public library. I drew. I knew I could always entertain myself with a piece of paper.”
#39. BRENDAN COYLE & AMANDA CURTIS - “Museum curators.”
Photo by: Elyssa Maxx
When Amanda Curtis first moved to Staten Island as a high schooler, she experienced a bit of a culture shock.
Before her mother, an eccentric, flighty artist, moved them, Amanda had grown up with her grandparents in an old-fashioned bed and breakfast in Maine that she affectionately calls “the inn.” Because of the inn’s theme, Amanda was dressed in Victorian clothing for most of her adolescence. Her childhood turned the already-creative Amanda into an eccentric and artistic teenager.
“All I knew was living with 80 year olds,” she laughs.
But then, Amanda’s stepfather got in to medical school on the island and so Amanda was sent to the local public high school. Where she’d come from, her school had had art classes of all different kinds. Students were encouraged to choose a medium they felt suited them best.
But at her new school in Staten Island, there was no art program or art classes. Amanda felt trapped. With no way to follow her passion sanctioned by school hours, she searched for other outlets.
“I’d cut class with the theatre group kids and we’d lay in the fields or rub paint on each other,” she says. “There was nothing else to express it.”
Her boyfriend, Brendan Coyle snorts beside her. “Classic Staten Island,” he says, shaking his head.
#16. NAT AND ARMAND - “Someone who writes greeting cards.”
“There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.”
Let’s talk about rejection.
When I said 100 Interviews would be a book a little while ago, I wrote that I had signed with a literary agency. The next step is to sell the book proposal to a publisher. So far, that has not happened.
In an effort to understand how I can improve, I told my very sweet literary agent to forward me all passes from editors and publishers she gets regarding 100 Interviews.
Last night, I had a panic attack in bed. Heaving. Crying. Physical pain.
In my inbox were three pages of rejections.
