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Greetings from Columbus!

Perhaps you’re excited about where things stand after the first 50 games of the baseball season. Then again, maybe baseball’s not your thing. Either way, I hope you’ll consider sending a little love in the direction of my Detroit Tigers. They’re off to a great start — but it’s a long season, and they can use your support.

I’ve been a Tigers fan since I was three. In light of that fact, it probably comes as no surprise that I’m constantly in the process of trying to gin up a little extra support for the team that nearly broke my father’s heart, not once but more times than I can count, during a period spanning seven decades.

Lately, I’ve been thinking back to a strange incident that occurred in 1999. Not only was it the year that followed my dad’s death, it was the final year before legendary Tiger Stadium, located at the storied Detroit intersection of Michigan and Trumbull, gave way to Comerica Park, where the Tigers play now.

For my entire life, I’d been groomed to root for Detroit. There’s a long backstory that explains how my dad, who grew up outside New York City, became a Tigers fan – but I’ll spare you the details, at least for now. The point I want to emphasize is that he was a fanatic in every way. He wanted me to become one, too.

For each of the many Tigers games I attended when I was a kid (including the 4th and 5th games of the legendary 1968 World Series, when the Tigers came back from a 3-1 deficit to defeat the mighty St. Louis Cardinals), I wore my baseball glove on my left hand. I dreamed of catching a ball. Fair, foul, it didn’t matter, just so long as the ball had come off a major leaguer’s bat.

All throughout my childhood and adolescence, I never once had a ball hit to me. My dad was always quick with words of encouragement. “Hang in there,” he’d say. “Maybe next time.”

In 1999, I went on a bus trip to Tiger Stadium with a bunch of neighborhood dads and their kids. We all knew it was the stadium’s final year. That was the main reason for our trip.

I didn’t take a glove with me that day but even so, I’d never relinquished my dream of having a ball hit to me. I knew the odds were miniscule. After all, it hadn’t happened yet — and I’d attended many games during my first 45 years, including both Spring Training games and games played during the regular season.

During batting practice on that day in 1999, I trekked with a few fathers and our kids out beyond the center field fence, which to me looked like it was about a mile away from home plate. We figured we’d observe batting practice from there – and who knew, maybe the impossible would happen and one of us would score a ball.

I was thinking of my dad, who revered that stadium almost as if it were some sort of secular church. The truth was that I hadn’t yet recovered from his death.

Just then, I turned to face a ball that was rocketing straight toward my face. I raised my right arm, palm facing forward, and the ball hit my hand, hard. As it fell to the ground, I dropped to my knees and scooped it up before anyone else had a chance to. Finally.

Most of the time, I tend to reject supernatural explanations for the things that happen in my life. But at that moment I knew for certain that something extraordinary had occurred, that my recently-deceased father had checked in with me while I was standing in center field at one of his favorite places in the entire world.

I took the ball and walked off so that I could be by myself for a few minutes. Immediately, I began crying. In that moment, my skepticism about the supernatural seemed to melt away. I knew what I knew, and no one could have convinced me to believe otherwise. I felt my dad’s presence that day. The “ball incident,” as I’d refer to it every time I told the story, helped me as I struggled to accept the reality of his death.

Now that I’m older, I often think back on my many years of devotion to the Tigers. Whenever I do, I remember that day in 1999, a little less than a year after my dad’s death, when he chose center field at old Tiger Stadium as the place to remind me of his presence, gift me a ball, and assure me that all would be well.

RIP Jack Smalldon. And go Tigers!

• On Wednesday, May 7, I appeared as a guest on the podcast Up and Vanished, hosted by Maggie Freleng. I’m awaiting final word on when the episode will drop.

• On Saturday, May 17, I was one of the participating authors at the Newark Book Fest in Newark, Ohio. The brainchild of hardworking and author-friendly organizer Steph Loughman, this book fair has achieved a reputation as one of the top such events in central Ohio. I made a lot of new friends, talked to a lot of interested and interesting readers, and had a great time.

  In the photos below, I’m shown inscribing a copy of my book and posing with my table mate Trang, who writes in her memoir of growing up in Vietnam and coming to the United States in the early-1990’s.

• Recently, Dr. Amy Carpenter interviewed me and invited me to appear as a guest on the television program she hosts in nearby Fairfield County. In all likelihood, the episode featuring my segment will run in late-summer or early-fall.

•  On June 10, I’ll be discussing my book at the Wheeling Public Library in Wheeling, West Virginia.

• I’ve been invited to be a featured author at the Columbus Book Festival, slated to be held inside and outside the main library in downtown Columbus on the weekend of July 12-13. I’ll be appearing on at least one panel. In addition, I’ve volunteered to participate in a “speed-matching” exercise, where a number of authors will rotate among six or so small groups and give five-minute “pitches”in an attempt to generate interest in their book among the members of each small group.

• On July 28, I’ll be discussing my book at the Moundsville-Marshall County Public Library in Moundsville, West Virginia. (Readers acquainted with the long version of the Manson story may recall that the West Virginia Penitentiary in Moundsville is where Manson’s mother was imprisoned when Manson was a youngster. It was there that Manson saw the interior of a state prison for the very first time.)

During the past month or so, I’ve found myself gravitating toward books that speak to a small subset of my obsessions, subjects I return to again and again: repeat killers and the stories behind their crimes, musicians and the many songs that comprise the partial soundtrack of my life, and artists who push boundaries and straddle the worlds of literature and popular culture.

How is it possible that I waited more than a decade before getting around to Burt Bacharach’s memoir? No excuses. At least no good ones.

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve been enchanted by the music Bacharach created with long-time collaborator Hal David. “Alfie,” “Do You Know the Way to San Jose?” “(They Long to Be) Close to You,” “Arthur’s Theme (Best That You Can Do,” “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head,” “Walk On By,” “A House Is Not a Home,” “The Look of Love,“ “Promises, Promises.” The list goes on – and on.

Bacharach, who died in 2023, was best known for his unexpected chord progressions and unusual time signature changes, both reflections of his classical training as a pianist and orchestrator.

Bacharach-the-kid was a shy, insecure loner who reluctantly went along with his family’s tendency to address him as “Happy.” He struggled at school, regarded girls with an attitude of wary trepidation, and lived in constant fear of being outed as a Jew. Happy he was not.

His childhood unhappiness followed him into adulthood. There were his three failed marriages before he finally fell head-over-heels in love with a ski instructor, in part, he said, “because she wasn’t in the business”; there was his difficult and misunderstood daughter Nikki, who was diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome not long before her suicide at age 40; there were the many professional conflicts that arose during his career, many of them the result of his own narcissism, extreme perfectionism, and strong obsessive-compulsive tendencies; there was his chronic insomnia, a by-product of the music that kept playing in his head long after he tried to will it to stop; and there were the feelings of self-doubt that persisted even after he’d become one of the most celebrated popular composers of the 20th century.

The list of his close collaborators is beyond astonishing: Marlene Dietrich (who apparently convinced herself that she couldn’t live without him), Vic Damone, Elton John, Neil Diamond, Joel Gray, Steve Lawrence and Edie Gorme, Mitch Miller, Carole Bayer Sager, and many others – not to mention Hal David and Dionne Warwick (whose real last name is Warrick, a bit of trivia that I learned from this book).

I’m sure there are plenty of listeners who find it hard to tolerate the archaic lyrics of undeniably chauvinistic songs like “Wishin’ and Hopin’” and “Wives and Lovers” – but I’m not one of them. Those songs are of a different era. To this day, I still enjoy listening to them. Others might view the matter differently, and of course they’re entitled to their opinion.

Bacharach believed that his single greatest achievement was being awarded the 2012 Gershwin Prize for Popular Song. Only Paul Simon, Stevie Wonder, and Paul McCartney had been awarded the prize before him.

I strongly recommend this book – which is actually a hybrid oral biography/memoir – to anyone who’s ever listened to “Alfie” and thought, “Is this perhaps one of the greatest pop songs ever written?”

Who can resist the seductive appeal of a story concerning a “criminal episode” in Dublin, Ireland that was so bizarre and so brutal that it came to be known as the GUBU scandal, with the acronym standing for “grotesque, unbelievable, bizarre, and unprecedented”?

Not me, that’s for sure.

In 1982 (just three years after I’d completed my year of study at Trinity College), a man with a posh wardrobe and a patrician bearing was a familiar sight on the streets of Dublin. He didn’t work and he seemed wholly committed to a life of leisure and study.

People who knew him were utterly shocked when they learned that he’d been identified as the primary suspect in two grotesque murders – the first one involving his use of a hammer to bludgeon a young woman named Bridie Gargan in the middle of Phoenix Park, a crowded gathering place in downtown Dublin; and the second one involving his firing of a single shot at the face of a farmer named Donal Dunne. Even more bizarre, the man, whose name was Malcolm Macarthur, was found to be sharing a flat with Patrick Connolly, Ireland’s attorney general.

Macarthur was found guilty of the two murders and sentenced to a long term in prison. He served 30 years and then reappeared on the streets of Dublin in 2012. That’s when Mark O’Connell sought him out, secured his uneasy cooperation for a book-length project about his life and crimes, and began his attempt to ask and answer a wide range of questions about Macarthur’s mind and motives.

The result is a book that I found utterly absorbing. Early on, Macarthur tells O’Connell, “I’m a normal person, after all.” I couldn’t help but be reminded of Charles Manson’s protest, in a letter he wrote me in 1975, “That beast [in the media] was not me”; and of serial killer John Wayne Gacy’s chilling claim, “You’re going to find out I’m a normal person, just like you.”

At another early juncture in his investigation, O’Connell describes himself in a way I found it easy to relate to. He wants Macarthur’s crimes “to make sense.” He’s determined to examine all the available evidence, then, when all’s said and done, arrive at some sort of “narrative coherence.” It should perhaps come as no surprise that he’s stymied again and again as he doggedly tries to fit together all the disparate pieces that make up the Macarthur puzzle.

The title of the first section of O’Connell’s book sounds just the right note: “Is This for Real?”

I strongly recommend this book.

The year was 1971. Elliot Mintz was twenty-one and the youngest radio talk show host in America when, intrigued by Yoko Ono’s new record, Fly, he chose to play it on his program and then invited Ono to participate in an interview conducted across the wires. He was in LA and she was in New York. Anyway, Yoko said yes.

Their connection was almost immediate. He liked her; she liked him. Before long, Yoko was calling on a near-daily basis to converse with her new friend. That was the beginning of a 9-year period during which Mintz came to regard each of those calls as part of a “single epically long conversation.” Weirdly enough, Yoko thought nothing of calling him at all hours of the day and night, “with no warning.” Mintz never said no, never once turned her away. (In fact, he would eventually install a red light on the ceiling of his bedroom that flashed every time there was an incoming call from either John or Yoko. Often, those calls came in the dead of night.)

Not long after Elliot and Yoko became long-distance acquaintances, Yoko convinced John to make a guest appearance on Mintz’s radio show. Elliot and John had their first [radio] “meeting” on October 9, 1971, Lennon’s thirty-first birthday. From that point on, John, like Yoko, would phone Elliot just about every day. Sometimes their conversations would go on for hours.

Mintz’s memoir is full of fascinating disclosures. For example, both John and Yoko were obsessively preoccupied with their weight. Another example: Neither John nor Yoko was in the habit of ending telephone calls with a simple “Goodbye.” Instead, they’d both just hang up when they felt like they were done talking. And a third example: John resisted talking about the Beatles because the subject “bored the hell out of [him].”

It was awhile – almost eight months — before Mintz and the famous couple had their first in-person meeting. According to Mintz, they clicked in person just as quickly as they had over the telephone. Before long, Yoko was referring to Elliot as her best friend. Elliot came to regard John as his best friend.

When only two or so years had passed since Mintz first reached out to arrange the interview with Yoko, Elliot came to the realization that “being at John and Yoko’s beck and call” had become his “mission in life.” In fact, he often felt like he was “married to John and Yoko.”

This memoir is a must-read for any fan of John/Yoko or the Beatles. In the terrible aftermath of Lennon’s murder in December 1980, Yoko appointed Mintz to serve as the official spokesperson for the Lennon estate. She also assigned him responsibility for cataloguing all of John’s possessions.

The book begins and ends with Mintz’s observations about what it was like to find himself rummaging through all the things John had owned. Those observations alone are worth the price of admission to this spectacular story of friendship and fame.

This might be the saddest book I’ve ever read. Even so, I’m glad I read it. At over 500 pages, it chronicles in painstaking detail the life of a deeply disturbed genius who managed to squeeze out three albums, then died by suicide at age twenty-six.

For a long time, I’ve wanted to know more about the Nick Drake story. Since the 1980s, I’ve loved his songs, for example “Northern Sky,” “The Thoughts of Mary Jane,” “At the Chime of a City Clock,” “One of These Things First,” “River Man,” “and I Was Made to Love Magic.” It wasn’t until my encounter with this comprehensive biography that I learned about Drake’s upbringing, about the two years that he spent as a student at Cambridge University, about the relatively brief period of time that he spent as an active recording artist, and about the circumstances surrounding his early death.

There’s a lot to love about this book. Readers are offered a close window through which to glimpse the heartbreaking campaign by Nick’s parents and sister to prevent – or at least slow – his eventual retreat into an interior world where it seemed no one could reach him. They’re also offered a close take on Drake’s relationship with wunderkind producer Joe Boyd, who remained Nick’s loyal friend and supporter, right up until the time of Nick’s death in 1974. The book also includes a detailed chronicle of the recordings that Drake left behind: Five Leaves Left, Bryter Layter, and Pink Moon.

Perhaps most important of all, readers learn a lot about Drake’s mental illness, which was variously described as “simple schizophrenia”; severe, treatment-resistant depression; and depression with psychotic features.

Of course I’m in no position to diagnose Drake myself. However, I can at least say this: Based on all the available evidence, much of it reported in this meticulously researched biography, it would surprise me if a panel of experts considering the sum total of the Nick Drake story wouldn’t unite around the conclusion that in addition to a severe mood disorder, Drake had a personality that featured prominent schizotypal, narcissistic, obsessive compulsive, and avoidant traits.

During Drake’s lifetime, the problem, or at least one problem among many, was that no one, including the various mental health professionals who tried to treat him, seemed able to arrive at a definitive answer to the question of what exactly was wrong with him.

In the three years that preceded his death, Drake seemed almost entirely out of reach. He seldom spoke; he often came and went without telling those around him where he was going or why; he showed up unexpectedly at the homes of people he knew and then refused to interact or communicate with them; and, bottom line, he gave the impression that he was lost somewhere deep inside himself.

How would I characterize Drake’s music, which is unlike any other music I know? A college friend of Nick’s described it as having “a dreamy, woozy quality.” To that brief description I’d probably add adjectives like ethereal, gauzy, evocative, and magical. It’s music you don’t forget once you’ve heard it.

And as for the music’s creator? People who knew Nick well during the short period of his adulthood described his shyness, his “gnomic reserve,” his diffidence, and his strong tendency to back away from interpersonal conflict.

If you’re looking for an uplifting book, I’d advise you to look elsewhere. I’d add, however, that this is a book that might well be worth your time. I came close to tears more than once while I was making my way through it. When I finally came to the end of the book, I had a feeling of profound sadness. Nick Drake: a fragile genius, gone way too soon.

There’s a 1999 Drake documentary with an apt title: A Stranger Among Us.

When most people think of serial killers, they think of the cunning, stealth, and elusiveness that often allow such killers to avoid detection, sometimes while they’re hiding in plain sight.

The truth, though, is that serial killers have difficulty accepting the burden of their anonymity. At their core, they’re provocateurs – and they long to be recognized as such. Their murders stand as monumental displays of arrogance and bravado. They revel in opportunities to assert their independence from society’s norms and expectations, but when they’re finally arrested, they often suffer because they feel shut off from the instrument – murder — that had previously served as the primary means through which they could express their profound disdain for the social order.

Serial killer Thomas Lee Dillon’s attorneys retained me as their psychological expert after Dillon had been identified as the primary suspect in five murders, committed in five different Ohio counties between the years 1989 and 1992. By then, he was in custody.

As I would soon find out, Dillon used crudely-drawn cartoons as a way to express his contempt for just about everything and everyone that registered on his radar.

For present purposes, I’ll provide just a few examples of the kinds of cartoons Dillon drew once he found himself a captive of the State of Ohio. He understood that many of the cartoons he drew would eventually find their way into the public domain. I spent plenty of time with Dillon, so I feel confident when I say that he relished whatever feelings of outrage he was able to provoke.

At the same time, he repeatedly insisted that he wanted just to be left alone: “You think I want all this attention? I don’t want the attention. I just want people to forget about me.” (It’s worth remembering that this is the same killer who complained, while he and I were discussing a book that chronicled the case of a father who killed his two sons, “I didn’t think [the story] warranted a whole book. Guy kills his two sons, big deal; that happens all the time.”)

In one of the cartoons that he drew during the months leading up to his July 1993 plea agreement, he mocked his one attorney, suggesting he was an incompetent grifter, utterly unconcerned with the challenge of how to save his client’s life.

In another of his cartoons, he depicted his 10-year-old son as a murderer, wanting to be “just like [his] dad.”

In still another of his cartoons, he depicted himself in prison, trying to place a call to his ten-year-old son — only to have his son say, ‘I’m watching my shows!’ “

Point is, despite Dillon’s protestations about all the attention he and his case were receiving in the Ohio press, he craved opportunities to mock his attorneys, his son, his wife, the law enforcement officers whose work had led to his capture, the reporters who were covering his case, his fellow captives, and even his victim’s families. He was, at his core, a provocateur. He intended outrage, and he got what he wanted.

Serial killers are ambitious in their way. They wish to be regarded as special, untethered to the laws, rules, and expectations that serve as society’s glue. Once they’re captured, they often feel frustrated because of their inability to find an alternative means through which to express their deep feelings of contempt. For Thomas Lee Dillon, cartoons were a way of communicating to people how he really felt. “Outraged? Oh so sad. I want you to know that I really couldn’t care less.”

I hope that wherever you are, spring has sprung and you’re gearing up for the warm days of summer. Until next time, 

–Jeff 

P.S.

For those of you who are interested in exploring music you might never have heard before, I have two suggestions.

Check out The Lemon Twigs song “My Golden Years.” It might take a listen or two, but I think you’ll come to regard it as a perfect blend of glam, pop-rock, and gorgeous Beach Boys-like harmonies. Here’s the link.

And here’s one more: Take a chance on Robert Harrison – formerly of Cotton Mather, one of my favorite bands — covering the classic “Someday We’ll Be Together.” We will. Here’s the link.