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| covers.booktopia.com.au |
“They say everybody has a book in them. I don’t know about
that; I couldn’t write a novel. But everyone has a memoir in them. Everyone has
a story.” That’s what I overheard author Anthony Martignetti say as he signed a
copy of his newly published memoir, Lunatic
Heroes. Seated next to his longtime friend, Amanda Palmer and her husband
Neil Gaiman, Mr. Martignetti greeted each person that eagerly waited in the
line that snaked around the columns of the lobby of Cary Hall in Lexington, MA.
The book signing was the final note to the book launch party that had been as
much a celebration of life, love, and friendship as it had been about the book.
Martignetti moved in next door to Amanda Palmer when she was 9, she
informed us as she opened the evening with the foreword that she had written
for the memoir. And yes, when I say Amanda Palmer, I do mean that Amanda Palmer, of the Dresden
Dolls. She and Martignetti have
had a friendship since then that, as she said, is difficult to describe, but is
best put to words as something like this “Anthony moved in next door when I was
nine and taught me everything I know about love and knows me better than
anybody and we still talk almost every single day even if I’m in Japan.”
Their
relationship is enviable, one that many of us will never get to have, and it
was the understated focus of the evening. Amanda clearly wanted everything to
be perfect for Anthony, especially in light of the bombshell that she dropped
early in the evening. Mr. Martignetti, in his sixties, is battling leukemia and
is possibly in the last 6 months of his life. Everything he read from that
point, every memory recounted was not just told to share, but to preserve
something fleeting.
The rest of the evening was a performance shared between the
three principal actors, Anthony, Amanda, and Neil. Anthony read a story from
the memoir called “Force Fed”, about being scared into eating his family’s
unappetizing food by the haunting (and fictitious) gorgon-like woman that lived
upstairs. Neil and Amanda cuddled while they listened. Amanda played some
songs. She and Neil sang “Making Whoopee” and he forgot the words. Neil read
from his new book, The Ocean at the End
of the Lane (being released in June 2013) which I will not spoil, but which
promises to be well worth the wait.
But the part of the evening that I keep going back to, that frequently
haunts my thoughts, was when Anthony read his story, “Swamp”.
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“Swamp” started off as a light-hearted tale about summers in
Lexington in the 1950’s, when Anthony and the neighborhood kids would try to
catch the elusive Bullfrog from the swamp behind his house. It quickly turned
sour, however, when several teenage boys finally caught Bullfrog and blew him
up with dynamite in Anthony’s front yard, while he watched, speechless. In the
text, he compared this event to the self-immolation of the Buddhist monk Thich
Quang Duc in Vietnam in 1963, who burned himself alive to speak out against his
Catholic oppressors. Both Bullfrog and Duc, who accepted their fates
peacefully, were heroes to Martignetti, and as he read what he’d written of
their destruction, he cried. In fact, he wept. I was both moved and shocked;
why was he so upset about a frog he watched die over 50 years ago? Because it
changed him, watching that senseless violence and realizing, in the aftermath,
that he could have stopped it was important, maybe even pivotal. And given where
he is in his life now, I’m sure the event has more permanence that it ever
seemed to have; it’s something that he cannot change and may not have the time
to repent for. I was seated too far away to see his tears, tucked away in a
dark corner of the theatre, but the sound of him crying made me realize the
need to reevaluate myself, and I’m certain I was not the only one in the
audience who felt the same way.
Later, as I waited in the long book signing line, I cracked
open my newly acquired copy of Lunatic
Heroes. Over the top of the book I noticed a little boy a few places ahead
of me in line, probably not any older than Amanda had been when she met
Anthony. He looked sick; he had odd wires wrapped around his ears and patches
of his hair were thinning. Clutched in his hand was a copy of The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman that
he kept flipping through. It was past eleven o’clock at that point and way past
his bed time. Although I of course wanted to meet everyone at the signing
table, I thought to myself that if I didn’t get to, I would be satisfied if at
least he did. And that’s exactly the way it happened. I realize now that that
evening was indeed about life and love and friendship, but it was also about
heroes and the strange places that we find them. True heroes are unlikely
things, not the Captain America kind, but the kind that change you for the
better. That little boy got to
meet his hero, and walked away beaming. Amanda sat next to hers. Some of
Anthony’s were immortalized in the pages of his memoir. And so even though I
didn’t get to meet one of my heroes, I still left that evening with hope to
find a true hero someday, even if they turn out to be a lunatic.
If you are interested in reading Lunatic Heroes (and you really should, its lovely), here is the
Amazon link where you can purchase the book: http://www.amazon.com/Lunatic-Heroes-C-Anthony-Martignetti/dp/0988230003/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355190871&sr=8-1&keywords=Lunatic+Heroes
To watch Anthony Martignetti read “Swamp”: http://vimeo.com/54980785
By Meaghan O'Brien
