Free Why I Don't Write Children's Literature by Gary Soto Page B

Bush Streets — all the lost souls of the sixties. This was my generation of burnouts pleading for their daily bread. If, in the city wind, a single sheet of newspaper flew down the street like a ghost, it would be filled with obituaries. Our names could be among them.

SHAKESPEARE & ME
    The pen pusher with the doily-like collar, the forehead scrubbed bald from creative worry, the pointed nose sniffing for language both highbrow and low . . . he must have had help from others. The master couldn’t have written all those plays and sonnets, one brilliant work after another, with such an inexhaustible display of genius and commercial sense.
    I dispute this rumor. I picture — through my own sepia lens — Shakespeare straining to write in a tavern by candlelight, backstage at the Globe Theater, or in rooms smelly with wet hay. I see him in his abode, indifferent to his urine (and his lover’s urine) in the corner pail. His quill busily scratches out lines on parchment. The ink is dark and his fingers are stained from his literary pursuits. I see the master sidestepping beggars and yokels, not in the least pained by the sight of a fluttering hen on a chopping block. He has somewhere to go and something to do. He must make his living solely by his wits. And let’s forgive him his indifference to family: in a thatched cottage in Stratford-upon-Avon, his long-suffering wife pokes at a fire. In the yard, his forgotten children play.
    Some scholars attribute much of Shakespeare’s output to Francis Bacon, others suggest that Christopher Marlowe also came to the rescue. A fellow at Oxford argues that Sir Walter Raleigh penned his later works and that maybe, just maybe, the Countess of Pembroke was involved. I’ve even heard it argued that Queen Elizabeth was the playwright of the histories. Not true, of course. But, like Shakespeare, the queen was a wit — both on and off her throne. I recall her quip when a lady-in-waiting scolded, “Queen, your hands are so filthy!” Elizabeth might have turned her hands over for a quick inspection, or she might have kept them on her lap. Those details have been lost, but her words were recorded: “You think my hands are filthy. You should see my feet.”
    All the world’s a stage, but some scholars should get off it and go home. Shakespeare was a genius who wrote his plays and verse. He also produced, bankrolled and, in a pinch, played minor characters. He lived, loved, and died, and his indisputable masterpieces survive for all.
    I’m no Shakespeare. In fact, considering my difficulty in placing material in magazines, I’m not certain that I’m a writer at all. Nevertheless, I deliver a story here about an incident in which my own authorship was once called into question. It was after a night of drinking, a night when I resembled a Shakespearean fool among other fools. I woke to our landline telephone ringing. I stared at the scolding instrument, then picked up before the answering machine could click on. A woman on the other end whispered, “Gary?”
    Depends , I thought in my heart.
    Without other introduction, the caller said, “It’s me, Alma. Remember me?”
    I replied without seriousness, “Alma, is that you?” Then I sat up in bed. I couldn’t locate Alma in the Rolodex of my injured brain. I should have stopped after that first six-pack of domestic grog.
    â€œYou remember?”
    I couldn’t say I did, though I remembered I was home because my cat was looking at me. I answered, “Yeah, of course.” My old cat had mustered up enough leg strength to jump onto the bed.
    â€œWe were in the same class.”
    Same class? The cat nudged my ankle, his engines of pleasure starting up. I gave him a scratch and got out of bed. I managed to shove my feet into my slippers and pad down the hallway in direction of the kitchen.
    â€œYou wrote book?” she asked. “You really wrote