CHANTILLY'S CAFE SAVED MY LIFE

Cafes seem to hold a special attraction for writers. I've been musing over this the last several days, after reading Sharazade's response to Wal-Mart eating my novel, Part 2, below. When I was young, I didnt use cafes to write. I wrote on a giant old Underwood typewriter at home, or wherever I lived. I spent many years hauling that machine around the world, from Borneo to India to Africa. In my 30s, I traded it for a hardy, though heavy, Hermes portable. I still have both machines: they sit in my adobe room, like hungry, prickly animals. I remember using the Hermes in Australia to write Metropolis: I'd awaken in the morning, in my flat in Henley Beach, make a pot of tea, and start typing. In the afternoon I often got on my bicycle -- an old French racing Follis that I'd converted for touring -- and hit a nearby cafe, where I'd count up my words and make notes for the next day's session. Cafes then were very much an adjunct to my work. I didnt write in cafes, I just mused. I wrote where I lived.

Some years later I rode my motorcycle into Mexico. It was a rather desperate journey: I'd been living in the U.S. for seven years, and found myself unable to write. I resolved I would either write again --  or I would die. I loaded some clothes and the Hermes typewriter into my paniers and headed south. Near Manzanillo I found an abandoned house on the beach, in a coconut grove, just below a lagoon. I jury-rigged a room to make it secure. I set up my typewriter. On the first morning, not sure what to do, I rode to town, saw Chantilly's Cafe right there on the plaza, sat down, took out my pen and notebook -- and immediately started writing on what became The Ethiopian Exhibition. This to me was a miraculous event. In three months the first draft was complete. Chantilly's Cafe saved my life.

That was 1986, I believe. I spent most of the next twenty years writing my books in Mexican cafes. Maya appeared in bits and pieces, scattered all over that country, from Lagos de Moreno to San Andres Tuxtla. I remember cafes in Xalapa, in Merida, in Morelia. In Patzcuaro, in the mountains of Michoacan, I found The Queen of Las Vegas. It was written entirely in the cafe in Los Escudos Hotel, on the big plaza. Eventually I found myself settling in Aguascalientes, a colonial city near Guadalajara. I wrote Orifice, Autobiography of a Wanderer, and most of Hag in Aguascalientes. In the mornings I would walk from my $3 a night hotel, Amuebladas Mina, to the Excelsior Cafe in the El Parian shopping center. In the afternoon I did a second session in the cafe at the Casa Teran, one of the Casas de Cultura. It was there I met my wife, the Mexican poet Jacqueline Lizarraga. About five years ago we came to Hemet, California, where I still own the house my father built. There are cafes here, too, of course, including the ubiquitos Starbucks, but the work is rather more problematic. I shall write about this another day. But meanwhile it is pleasant to think of writers and their cafes, whether Joyce in Trieste, say, or Hemingway in Madrid....