Six Questions For ... Frank Beekman

It's time for the second installment in my award-winning interview series, also known as "Get To Know Your WYSIWIG Bloggers."

Today's contestant is Accidental New Yorker Frank Beekman. Frank opines about Oprah, Jennifer Connelly's bad hair day, littering in Texas and where to get a good burger in Manhattan, among other things. Actually, after reading his thoughtful, well-written answers, I suddenly wish I had come up with better questions. Behold!

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1) What's accidental about you being a New Yorker?

The name of my blog is, of course, a riff on the title of Anne Tyler's most famous novel,but in a broader sense it's meant to express the mostly peripatetic nature of my life. I was born in the Philippines, and lived in no fewer than five other places by the time I turned eleven. That was when the military sent my family to Texas, where I spent seven unfortunate years in Corpus Christi before escaping to Austin for college. Austin is an amazing town, and I wouldn't live anywhere else in the state.

You might think that all the moving around made me very cosmopolitan, but I was basically raised in suburbia, so the most worldly thing about me was probably the world in my head that sprang up from what I read in books. I always had very literary leanings, and people in college used to opine to me that I seemed like a very "New York" kind of person and that I ought to be living there. At heart I was--and, in certain ways, still am--quite provincial, and I always laughed at these suggestions. Me, move to that dirty and overpriced and fucked-up city? Why couldn't I write just as well in Texas as I could in the Big Wormy Apple?

But in my own mind I couldn't deny the romance of the New York idea. Not long after finishing college, I dated a guy named Hamilton, who has been a significant "character" in my blog. He'd lived in New York for years, and he slowly convinced me that I should give it a try. I came to the conclusion that I would try to make the move to New York, and a couple of months later the World Trade Center fell. My job in Austin went with it.

It was a difficult and sad time, not just for me but for the entire country. Yet I realized that my own changed circumstances, adverse or not, had cleared my slate and left me with an unusual opportunity to start completely over. If anyone had told me a year before that I would be living in Manhattan, I would have called them certifiable. But less than six months later, I stepped off a plane at LaGuardia with three suitcases, two New York acquaintances, one lump in my throat, and zero specific job prospects to my name.

The rest, as they say, is in the blog.

2) Why is Texas so damn big? Maybe if it didn't take up so much space people wouldn't mess with it so much.

I guess the simple historical answer is that the original white settlers in Texas really liked big open stretches of land. They're the ones, after all, who managed to wrest Texas from Mexico in the first place (remember the Alamo?), and Texas was an independent republic for about a decade before being annexed by the United States. There is actually a splinter group that believes the annexation was illegal and that Texas is still an independent republic. They have a little "capital" set up in a small Texas town, complete with their own president and vice-president, and they even make their own currency and try to pass it off at the local diner. (This pisses off the waitresses.) I have a fun T-shirt that says "Texas secede!"

Speaking of T-shirts, the ubiquitous T-shirt slogan "Don't mess with Texas" actually originated, people may or may not know, as an anti-litter campaign slogan. [Ed. note: I am all too painfully aware of this fact. To the tune of $15,000, actually. A story for another day.] Personally, I always thought it sounded a little too bellicose--although, in light of the George W. Bush presidency, perhaps the phrase was simply prescient.

3) Does blogging make it easier or harder to do actual writing that might turn into something useful?

To me, the biggest problem with "actual writing" is actually writing. This is true of everything from actually exercising to actually spending time with your kids to actually getting a prostate exam. It requires discipline. I'll admit that blogging can be an excuse not to work on my novel because hey what if I actually finish it someday and then it's rejected and I realize I'm not cut out to be a writer. But I also think blogging is a crucial form of therapy for me--I've always been better at expressing myself through writing than through actual talking, although that gap has narrowed with maturity. Plus, I think it's always valuable to hone one's autobiographical writing skills. We're not necessarily talking apples and oranges here, writing-wise. A friend of mine has even suggested that I turn some of my blog into an essay collection. In the meantime, my priority is my next novel.

4) Who is the greatest actress named Jennifer (currently or all-time) and why?

That's a tough one, as Jennifer is such a common name now. I haven't thought much of Jennifer Garner since seeing her forced-seeming improv acting skills on the Saturday Night Live episode she hosted. I have a certain respect for Jennifer Connelly, although she has a tendency to be in these embarrassingly overwrought independent films that I hate, such as Requiem for a Dream and House of Sand and Fog. (Oh, and I will be haunted until the day I die by the horrific image of her at the end of A Beautiful Mind, when her aging makeup and bizarre hairdo made her look like a character from Cats. I'm just glad she didn't cough up a hairball.)

Moving on, Jennifer Saunders can be all right (in small doses, so she can't exhaust you), but she's hardly a great actress. Jennifer Jones ranks much higher up; she did some very fine work in such films as Minnelli's Madame Bovary and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. But my final pick would be Jennifer Jason Leigh. She has this ineffable, fascinating quality, despite her slightly sardonic persona. You know she'll lie to you, but she'll only do it to make things more interesting. One of her more mysterious, forceful, and interesting roles was in the Cronenberg film no one's ever seen (should I narrow that one down?), eXistenZ. But I also particularly enjoyed her in The Anniversary Party and her appearance on Broadway in Proof.

5) Think of your favorite food. Got it? Now where is the best place in the New York to buy and/or eat it?

I'm something of an omnivore, but two humble genres immediately spring to mind: Mexican food and hamburgers. Coming from Texas, I must say that what passes for Mexican food here is truly appalling. There are some good places in Spanish Harlem, but I can't remember specific names. As for burgers, I have really been digging the Shake Shack in Madison Square Park. They make their burgers with ground sirloin and brisket, and they're so juicy and tasty. The fries are crisp and strongly potato-flavored (get the cheese ones!), and the chocolate shake is the best I've ever had.

6) Last, but not least, support or denounce the following statement: Our country would be better off if more people would just listen to Oprah.

When I worked in a bookstore we would always make fun of Oprah's book club selections. There was so much crap (what the publishing industry dubs "chick-lit"), like Where The Heart Is. But then Jonathan Franzen incited all that controversy by declaring publicly that he wasn't sure how he felt about having The Correctionsidentified with Oprah's book club, saying something to the effect that he wasn't sure it was the right audience for his book. It struck me how elitist both he and I were being. After all, who was he to say which people were intellectually capable of cracking open his novel, and who was I to decide what's literature and what's crap? To paraphrase a Supreme Court justice, I know crap when I see it. It's a personal decision, and that's okay. I mean, in its initial incarnation she actually chose some books I think are amazing, like Song Of Solomonand Breath, Eyes, Memory.

I totally respect the direction Oprah chose to take after the Franzen mess, which was to choose older "classics" by authors like Steinbeck, Faulkner, and Garcia Marquez. As an immensely powerful black woman, she stands as a vital message by merely existing. Does she still do exploitative shows? Sure. Are we sick of hearing about her friendship with Julia Roberts? Absolutely. Is Stedman her beard? Who knows? Does her show suffer from the same problems as many other female-oriented talk shows? You bet.

But she has also done a lot of good, and much of what she's accomplished has earned my respect. Oprah is someone you should listen to, but then, as with listening to anyone else, you should always make up your own mind. What sets her apart from people like Rush Limbaugh, Adam Carolla, and the entire cast of The View is that, much of the time, she's actually worth listening to.

[Frank writes back with this addendum:] I want to add something to my response about Oprah. I just finished watching her show today {Tuesday} in which she traveled to New Orleans to report on the devastation and to deliver food and water through her charity organization. Tomorrow the show will report from Mississippi. At least in New York City, the show is rerun in the early morning (1 AM). It is worth seeing.

Whether or not you think some of the moments are hokey--and there are probably such moments--her coverage will have a tremendous impact. The last thing she said today was one of the most important: these people should not be called "refugees," but rather survivors. I will absolutely be listening to Oprah.