‘Frostbite’ turns 20 years old: Ruminating on the way it was

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My baby turns 20.

grazianoNext month, my son turns 17 years old, then, in June, my daughter—finishing her first year of college—will be 19 years old.

On April 1, however, another one of my children celebrated a birthday.

In April of 2002, Green Bean Press, a small independent publisher in New York City[1], released my first full-length book—a collection of interrelated short stories titled “Frostbite.”

I can look back at “Frostbite” now, two decades later, and say, with the objectivity that age affords, that the book had no business seeing the light of day.

But it did, and at the time, I was 27 years old and blithely arrogant, believing the literary world would happily spread its legs for me. It was, however, an entirely different landscape for writers back then—far more accommodating of our self-indulgent, and often self-destructive, whims.

In April of 2002, when “Frostbite” was released, people still went to bookstores to buy their books. Hell, people still read books. Amazon was in its infancy, and every block had a Border’s or Barnes and Noble to bully the independent bookstores, the latter who championed local authors like me.

In April of 2002, people still brought tangible books to waiting rooms and buses and airplanes,[2] as opposed to staring at their phones, swiping their index fingers across screens.

In April of 2002, the Twin Towers falling on 9-11 was still fresh in memories and had encapsulated the national zeitgeist. We all knew that our world—and its institutions—had irrevocably changed, but we didn’t know exactly how yet[3].

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Vintage poster from a reading I did at Barnes and Noble in 2002. Now it hangs in a closet in my man cave.

In April of 2002, a younger and dark-haired Nate Graziano had a slick new book of stories that were trying like hell to mimic Raymond Carver; he had recently met a beautiful woman who he was going to marry; and he truly believed that by 2022, he would no longer be teaching high school, or ever set an alarm clock, or have to write anything again that didn’t tickle his fickle fancy.

This version of me was an idealist in the way that everyone under 40 years old should be an idealist, shielded in many ways from the future’s mercurial fits, from the hard realities of death and taxes.

But I was also impractical, irresponsible and narcissistic.[4] I believed that success at the highest rings was a foregone conclusion for me.

Obviously, it didn’t work out that way[5], and thank God. I was an insufferable prick back then[6]. In short, I was too young to father a book.

Still, as Wordsworth wrote[7] “The Child is father of the Man,” and after eight books that have barely made a literary ripple, I’m still teaching high school and still married to that beautiful woman, but still—in the quieter crevices of my days—unafraid to dream[8].

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[1] Green Bean Press published books from 1997-2004.

[2] I’m trying really hard to keep this from devolving into some saccharine nostalgia piece where the old writer longs for a more uncluttered-era. So far, I’m not doing well.

[3] I still distinctly recall doing a reading at a bookstore in Manhattan in November of 2001 and the smell of something redolent of burning rubber hovering in the air. It’s a smell that still haunts my dreams.

[4] I’m not saying that I’m not still any of things, but these characteristics have been diluted by the years.

[5] Shameless plug: I did, however, have an audio-book made of my last fiction piece “Fly Like The Seagull.” You can listen to it for free here.

[6] Pipe down! (See footnote 4)

[7] I’m just quoting the British poet here. As a matter of public record, I do not condone weird, incestuous relationships with siblings.

[8] The epigraph for the book is quote from Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”: “We live, as we dream— alone.” That was a pretentious overreach.


 

About this Author

Nathan Graziano

Nathan Graziano lives in Manchester with his wife and kids. He's the author of nine collections of fiction and poetry. His most recent book, Born on Good Friday was published by Roadside Press in 2023. He's a high school teacher and freelance writer, and in his free time, he writes bios about himself in the third person. For more information, visit his website: http://www.nathangraziano.com