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No, I’m not Marty. But I was The Playboy!

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Author Gerald Everett Jones is sometimes, but not often, mistaken for movie director Martin Scorsese.

While I was on a business trip a few years ago, I was walking down the hallway of my hotel, and two young people passed by me. Moments later I heard a voice behind me as one said to the other, “That’s Martin Scorsese, you know.”

It doesn’t happen often. Of course, perhaps the people who are gaping at me across the room at a crowded restaurant might think they’ve spotted Marty – or there might literally be egg on my face.

This was not the first time I’d been recognized in public by a stranger, whether for being myself or some (other) celebrity. I was surprised and flattered the other day when after introducing myself to a young woman on a business matter and handing her my card, she replied, “I’ve heard of you.”

I was afraid to ask her how!

I once spotted novelist Paul Auster having breakfast at a nearby table at a coffee shop in Brooklyn. I knew he lived in the neighborhood. I regret I didn’t have the nerve to walk over there and tell him how much I admire his work.

Gerald played the title role (Christy Mahon) in a summer-stock production of John M. Synge’s play, Playboy of the Western World.

But the most sensational of these experiences happened decades ago, and I fear it might never be surpassed. When I was the callow age of twenty and thinking someday I’d be a professional actor, I played Christy Mahon, the lead role in J. M. Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World. (I should explain that playboy in the jargon of the period apparently meant something like trickster – nothing like the implication it would eventually have for Hugh Hefner or James Bond.)

I undertook this challenge – a large role for a green actor – during a summer-stock internship at the Town Meeting Playhouse in Jeffersonville, Vermont. Our acting company took on nine roles in ten weeks, performing four shows each weekend, including a matinee as well as an evening show on Saturdays. The schedule was so hectic and compressed that we’d start rehearsals and blocking of the next show every Friday, the day of the current show’s opening night.

During those four performances of Playboy, I forgot my lines a couple of times, but the generous cast helped me ad lib to cover. The applause was enthusiastic, I was told later by the director, and Vermonters are not known for public displays of affection of any kind.

The closest big town to Jeffersonville is Burlington. One afternoon following the closing of Playboy, several of us cast members took a road trip into town. It was a rare day out. And one of the highlights of our spree was stopping in a bookstore.

While I was browsing there, a teenage girl pointed eagerly at me and exclaimed, “Oh, my God! It’s the Playboy of the Western World!”

Gerald Everett Jones is the author of the new novel, Harry Harambee’s Kenyan Sundowner, which will be released on June 29.

Thinking About Thinking #23 – Can you enjoy a story you don’t understand?

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Here’s my book review of Invisible by Paul Auster.

First off, there are many books with the title Invisible. Make sure you get the right one. Paul Auster writes fascinating literary novels, which are often baffling. This book presents three interwoven versions of the same story as told by three different narrators.

Main character Adam Walker is a young poet in New York. Soon after graduation he meets a worldly couple at a party – Frenchman Rudolph Born and his mistress Margot. Born is an international man of mystery, an unscrupulous character who may be con-man or spy or both. Margot is a seductress. Born helps Walker hook up with Margot, and the first plot complication is a love triangle.

Born pulls Walker into a publishing venture, and then – out of the blue – he murders a man in front of him on the street. He intimidates Walker into helping him cover it up.

Walker is now carrying a burden of guilt that will haunt him forever. When he thinks Born and Margot are out of his life, Walker has a love affair with his own sister. More guilt.

Walker tries to make sense of it all by writing an autobiographical novel. When circumstances prevent him from completing it, he challenges his friend Jim, who is also a writer, to finish the story. Jim then narrates the next part of the book, describing what he’s been able to discover about Walker’s past.

In a third narrative, a French woman named Cécile narrates. She was a minor character earlier in the story, but now she’s center stage. She met Walker by way of Born. She was in love with Walker and tormented by Born. Near the end of the book, she meets up with Born, and he tries to pull her into yet another of his traps.

The book ends on a final scene which seems to have no connection to Walker’s story. Like his protagonist Walker, Auster is a poet. It’s up to the reader to find meaning in this concluding image. This plot is complex and not easily understood. But Invisible isn’t a pulp-fiction whodunit. In the end, you probably don’t have all the facts, and the facts you do have, may not even be true.

In Clifford’s Spiral a stroke survivor tries to piece together the fragments of his memories. Was he the victim or the perpetrator? 2020 IPA Distinguished Favorite in Literary Fiction.