The most important thing Dave ever did for me was to tell me I was wrong. Somebody had to do it and he was very good at it. I met him during an interview for my college newspaper. It was when The Book of Rock Lists came out and the thing I most remember about the interview—and I swear I think I still have the cassette somewhere—is that for every statement I made or theory I posited he said some version of, “Well, I don’t think THAT’S true.” You have to imagine this all in a very thick Southern accent and a still quite strong (at least to my ear) Detroit accent. Finally, toward the end of the interview I made a reference to Eudora Welty. “It’s like Eudora Welty says,” I drawled, bad grammar and all, “there are no potential writers. There are people who are writers and people who aren’t.” There was a long, trademark Dave Marsh pause and he said, “She’s terrific, isn’t she?” Then we were off to the races on Southern literature and we could have done that for another hour but his daughters had arrived home from school. So at the end of this largely challenged and contested exchange he declared, “I’ve done a lot of interviews. This is a GREAT interview.” We agreed to keep in touch.
And we did. I sent him a handful of my record reviews in college and he mostly liked them. Then when I moved to Los Angeles and started writing for Music Connection, I sent him those, too. He liked those quite a bit less. Finally I sent him my first novel when I finished it, titled Little Heroes from a Bruce Springsteen lyric.
I remember the letter I received about that. He said, “I hope you don’t take my silence as meaning that I didn’t like the book because nothing could be farther from the truth.” This was finally what unqualified Dave Marsh praise looked like. I was beside myself. (Later I got a much stronger dose of that from a blurb for my novel The Music Teacher and I remember honestly thinking that I could die happy.)
Not long after this response to my first novel (whose title later changed to Skeeball and the Secret of the Universe), I sent him a few more record reviews and this prompted a phone call from him. Here’s some version of what he said:
“Look, you don’t want to do this. The only place this profession goes, if you want to advance, is becoming an editor. And you wouldn’t like that job. Here’s the thing. You’re not this kind of writer. You’re a creative writer. You need to write fiction.”
So I did.
It’s strange to say that the most important advice I ever got as a writer, from a writer, was to stop doing what I was doing. But of course he was right. And so very Dave.
Over the years, I have read everything Dave has written, including on Stratlist, and there have been times—many, many times—when I felt breathless and inspired by the greatness of his writing. I’ve enjoyed it all the more because I didn’t have to be jealous of it or feel insecure about it because I’m not that kind of writer. I might have spent way too many years finding that out.
So thanks, Dave, for showing me how to give up. And for, in the tradition of Bruce Springsteen, helping me to see the difference between running away from something and running toward something. Thanks to you both, I arrived.