San Francisco
December 9, 2005Another whistle stop. Arrived in town at about six, read at seven, then some drinks, a few hours sleep and the road to Vegas. What was special here was a chance to spend a bit of time with a special friend and some fellow Shakespeare veterans.
One of the people who made a great impression on me at Shakespeaere and Company was Chris Cook Gilmore, a writer who split his time between Morocco, Paris and Margate, New Jersey. He started writing while in an Italian prison for drug smuggling in the 1970s and had his first success with ‘Atlantic City Proof’, a coming of age adventure novel set in Atlantic City during Prohibition. I wrote about Chris in my book, so I won’t go on too much here, but suffice it to say he was an inspiration: a working writer who’d lived off his wits for the better part of 40 years.
Chris died last year, shortly after visiting me in my Marseille apartment. For two days of his visit he was the Chris I knew – peppy, funny, dashing off to Chateau d’If so he could see the setting for the Count of Monte Cristo. The other two days he was laid out on the couch, a ghost of himself. It turned out to be brain cancer and he was gone a month later.
Everybody who knew Chris misses him, but nobody more than his wife Anita. She is a tremendous woman, a total spark. She gave me Chris’s watch when I passed by Margate to pay my respects last year and I wear it with pride. She also came out to my reading in Philadelphia and then completely surprised me by showing up in
San Francisco too. She now runs an underground speakeasy, so if you are ever Atlantic City way, look her up …
One of the reasons she came out here was to visit Karl and Jordan, friends of ours from Shakespeare. They live in a great art squat, a natural continuation to their Paris bookstore life. It was good to empty a few glasses with them.
