    
Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 1951
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, March 17, 2006 - 03:12 pm: | 
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I'm surprised none of y'all already jumped on this
http://www.dfw.com/mld/dfw/entertainment/columnists/jeff_guinn/13904940.htm
Writer on the storm
By JEFF GUINN
Star-Telegram Books Editor
Three years ago, E. Lynn Harris had everything he thought he wanted.
One of the bestselling black authors in history, Harris drove a
Mercedes, owned a mansion in Atlanta, had an apartment in Trump Tower
and had carved out a prominent place in the Manhattan social scene.
The former Dallas computer salesman who, not so long ago, only dreamed
of getting published had now forged the way for other African-American
writers to make bestseller lists with entertaining, sexy fiction that
rivaled the best efforts of Danielle Steel and Sandra Brown.
Perhaps most satisfying of all, Harris was finally able to give his
mother, who'd raised him in Little Rock while working as a maid and
then in a factory, everything she could ever need.
But amid the accolades, Harris says, he lost his way. For the second
time in his life he felt the onslaught of crippling depression, a
condition that previously drove him to alcohol abuse and even an
attempted suicide.
"When you experience entitlement for a while, you start to constantly
expect it," Harris says, sipping bottled water in his hotel room
during a recent visit to Dallas. "With some of the things I did, you'd
think I was brought up by wealthy parents. One time in Atlanta I was
at my place there, which is built on four levels. The air-conditioning
in my bedroom went out. I called somebody to fix it and was told they
couldn't get there for three days, and my reaction was, 'What? I'm E.
Lynn Harris! I don't want to wait three days!'
"I got a suite at a fancy hotel when I had the rest of a big house
still air-conditioned," Harris says, bemused. "And I was a kid raised
with no air-conditioning, and in the summer when I tried to sleep I'd
have the mosquitoes eating my a--. How ridiculous was I acting?"
After turning out about a book a year for a decade, Harris stepped
away from the literary limelight. He needed a break, and a new
perspective on life.
Little did he know he'd find it at his alma mater, the University of
Arkansas.
When he was invited to spend a semester teaching writing and
African-American literature in Fayetteville, he hesitated, then
realized he had to try something different.
"I was at a difficult time in my life," Harris says now. "I had to get
away from being a celebrity writer. I wasn't enjoying my success. I
was in a bad place with my partner. We were breaking up after a
seven-year relationship. I figured I'd rent an apartment in
Fayetteville, have my classes, and be gone."
He ended up staying three years and is going back for a fourth.
Meanwhile, he'll hit the road in May to promote a new novel --
re-energized and ready to reclaim his place as one of America's
bestselling authors.
And he'll need that rediscovered optimism to face down critics who
have characterized his writing as "smut" that degrades
African-Americans. In January, Nick Chiles, the editor of Odyssey
Colour magazine and co-author of the literary novel A Love Story,
wrote a New York Times commentary complaining of "smut . . . being
produced by and for my people, and it is called 'literature.'" Neither
Harris nor any other prominent black author was specifically
identified by Chiles, but Harris realizes he's part of the group being
criticized. (Kimberla Lawson Roby, Harris' friend and fellow
bestselling black author of pop fiction, says she knows exactly why
Chiles would complain: "He didn't sell as many books as he hoped to.
What other reason could there be?")
"I know I write to entertain," Harris says, exchanging his usual broad
smile for a grimace. "But I get people to reading, and that's better
than not reading at all. I don't know why people would let that bother
them."
Harris says he knows who to thank for his new, relaxed outlook on life
and fame.
"I owe it to my kids," he says, referring to his UA students and the
members of the school's cheerleading squads, which he has helped
coach. (When Harris matriculated at UA from 1976-79, he was one of the
first black cheerleaders in the old Southwest Conference).
Twenty-year-old Kelly Williams, who is a team captain, says she'd
never read his books or even heard of Harris when he showed up to help
with the cheerleading squad during her freshman year.
"First I Googled him, then I looked at his books," she says. "I
thought they were really, sort of, interesting. But they didn't offend
me. Even though I was never interested in writing myself, I ended up
taking both his courses. I've talked to him about everything in my
life, and I want to be his friend for the rest of it. All of us think
we're so lucky he came into our lives."
Discovering himself
Everette Lynn Harris was no stranger to depression in fall 2003 when
he drove his Mercedes convertible from Atlanta to Fayetteville. In
What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, his memoir published the previous
year, he included a description of a 1990 suicide attempt. In the
hospital after surviving the overdose of sleeping pills, he faced the
facts.
Though Harris earned a six-figure income, he hated his professional
life in computer sales. "Self-destructive behavior," mostly
alcohol-related, was wrecking his health. He had pretended long enough
to be, as he put it, "the perfect black boy," and decided he would
openly identify himself as gay. And he would pursue his dream of being
an author.
In 1991, Harris self-published his novel Secret Life after being
spurned by publishers leery of its gay characters. Unencumbered by job
responsibilities -- he'd left corporate life behind and was living off
his savings -- Harris peddled the book in every independent,
black-owned bookstore he could find. A copy found its way to Anchor
Books in New York City, which offered to publish Secret Life in
paperback. Its national sales success convinced hardcover publishing
giant Doubleday to offer Harris a modest contract for more novels.
Just As I Am sold respectably, and Harris' third novel, This Too Shall
Pass, hit the New York Times bestseller list.
It made Harris rich, and a hero to whole new generation of black writers.
During the early to mid- '90s, Harris and Terry McMillan (Waiting to
Exhale) were among the few black writers to regularly make bestseller
lists as crafters of "pop" fiction. Literary works by African-American
luminaries such as Toni Morrison, Richard Wright and James Baldwin
were assigned in college classes; Harris' racy escapist fiction was
what fans crammed into their carryalls for a weekend away.
"That was an important step," says Sonsyrea Tate, editor of The
Washington Informer, a District of Columbia publication that focuses
on African-American issues and artists. "It helped open doors for
writers like me, when I was able to get my first book published in
1996. He proved a black author who could tell good stories could
succeed, and that set such an important example."
Harris became a mentor to younger authors -- Travis Hunter and Roby,
among others, describe him as a friend and confidante.
"He felt responsibility to others as well as himself," says Tate. "And
though he was open about his own life, his books did not just cater to
the gay and lesbian crowd."
"I'm writing about people and the way they act and feel," Harris says.
"That cuts across race and sexual orientation."
Three cheers for Coach E.
A few days into his tenure in Fayetteville, he got a call from an
assistant athletic director who wanted to know if Harris might be
willing to put his cheerleading expertise to use and assist the coach
of the current squad.
Glumly, Harris accepted. He was still feeling depressed, but at least
coaching would be better than moping around his apartment, he figured.
Now in February 2006, Harris is counting the days until he returns to
the college campus for his fourth fall semester. He'll teach, joyfully
-- and he'll coach the cheerleaders through one more season.
To them, he's Coach E., close friend to all and second father to many.
"It's been freeing for me to find these young people accepting me,
embracing me, because of who I am," Harris says. "I wasn't putting on
any act. I wasn't separated from everybody else in a fancy apartment.
We were all together all the time, just enjoying each other."
As a teacher, Harris is no educational drone.
In his African-American literature course, students hear about James
Baldwin -- and current bestselling author Michael Eric Dyson, who's
been known in print to dis Bill Cosby. Alice Walker gets her props,
but Coach E.'s assigned reading list has included Karrine Steffans'
Confessions of a Video Vixen. Rewards for the best papers have
included autographed copies of Janet Jackson CDs. Coach E. thinks his
kids will be more open to reading the writers he admires if they feel
he has respect for the authors and artists they like most.
At the same time, Harris' students have made sure their teacher knows
they care about him for who and what he is.
"A lot of us went out and read his other books, read his memoir,"
Williams says. "Cheerleaders are always in the public eye and it's
hard, so what he was willing to write about himself and make public
made me appreciate him so much. In that way he's teaching us to be
honest about who we are. After reading [What Becomes of the
Brokenhearted] I said to him, 'I loved you before, but I love you more
now.'"
Harris has caught the writing bug again. Because he's relaxed, story
ideas are flowing.
During his Fayetteville sojourn, he's not only completed I Say A
Little Prayer but a second novel as well. It's ready for the editors
at Doubleday, and Harris is already planning his next tale.
Harris says his fourth semester in residence this fall may be the
last, but not because he's in a hurry to leave.
"I met Kelly and many of the current cheerleaders as freshmen," he
says. "Now they're seniors, and after graduation as they go on with
their lives it may be time to go on with mine."
Turning the page
If E. Lynn Harris has changed a lot in three years, so has the
literary landscape and, in particular, his chosen genre of fiction.
Increasingly racy novels from black writers have acquired the label of
"street lit," and while they've developed a following they've also
attracted strident attacks from critics and African-American authors
who think their more literary fiction is being overshadowed by printed
smut.
Previously, that would have bothered Harris much more; he's always
considered his fiction to essentially be morality plays where sex
plays a part but self-respect is ultimately the issue. When I Say A
Little Prayer hits bookstores in May, Harris says, he's prepared to
greet his fans and face critics.
"I've realized again how fortunate I am to be able to write. I've got
better perspective in so many ways," he says. "Up in Fayetteville, the
teacher learned some lessons, too."
There's additional joy. After refusing for years to leave her old
neighborhood, Harris' mother, Etta Mae Harris, has allowed him to buy
her a home in a tony, gated Little Rock neighborhood. She's just moved in.
"I'm not used to it yet," she says. "And it's got this glass back door
I don't like."
Harris says his mother doesn't realize yet she finally lives in a safe
community.
"She thinks somebody will break in through that door," he says,
laughing. "I tell her, 'You're not in a place where you have to be
worried anymore.'"
And thanks to Coach E.'s students, neither is he.
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