Dear Esteemed Readers,
There’s a 1987 Jack Morris baseball card in the center drawer of my writing desk.
Back when I lived in Philadelphia—at least once or twice every summer—I used to go to The Vet / Citizens Bank Park and root, root, root for the Phillies. But I never really was a proper baseball fan. These days, I don’t even watch America’s pastime on TV. To my knowledge, I never saw Mr. Morris play. When I received the card, I didn’t even know who he was.
So why do I keep the hall-of-fame pitcher—who never even played for the Phillies—in the drawer under my laptop?
Around the time of my Silver Linings movie experience—circa 2013—I was sent an advanced copy of the novel, Shotgun Lovesongs, written by a new writer from Wisconsin named Nickolas Butler. The book had a connection to the musical sensation Bon Iver and it sure seemed like the publishing-hype machine was in full swing.
The letters that accompany blurb books—usually written by editors and not writers—always claim that I am the perfect reader for the enclosed novel. Most of the time, I can immediately tell this is not the case. But there was something about Shotgun Lovesongs. Was it the title? The cover? The synopsis? The hype? I don’t think I could have told you back then. But that je ne sais quoi made me want to read it.
I fell in love on page one.
Shotgun Lovesongs is about male friendship and music and how the business of art strains relationships and time tests all bonds. It’s about knowing that it’s hard to love people, but loving them anyway. It’s also about small-town America and the midwest. Butler’s beloved Wisconsin is perhaps the true main character. The novel is authentic and heartfelt and smart and humble and intimate and, yet, somehow BIG. I devoured the whole thing in just a few sittings.
Here’s the blurb I sent the publisher:
“Nickolas Butler ripped my heart out with rare honesty and good old-fashioned unapologetic love. A book that makes you want to call old friends. A writer who makes you feel more human than you thought possible.” ―Matthew Quick
I received a nice email back from the editor, who said her father grew up in a Pennsylvania town where parts of Silver Linings Playbook were shot. She thanked me for helping a debut author.
Whenever I blurb a book that truly moves me, I fantasize about befriending the writer. Making such a thing happen is a tricky dance. Authors aren’t always who they appear to be on the page. We’re storytellers, after all. Many of us are neurotic. Many of us are wounded. And the writing life can often feel like a zero-sum game. Still, as Nickolas Butler’s work read so brotherly to me, I had allowed myself to dream that he and I might become good friends. I hoped he might get my email address from his publisher and write me in response to the blurb I offered. I probably should have just written him directly myself, but back then—with most potential friendships—I was more of a hoping man rather than a doing man. And I’ve never been able to master the seemingly ever-changing publishing-world etiquettes.
Maybe ten months or so later, I found myself on the phone with a British journalist—who, if memory serves, was writing for GQ. She wanted me to talk about Shotgun Lovesongs, which was soon to be published. I raved again about how much it moved me. I remember really enjoying the chat. It’s always easy to tell the truth.
Then, in the New York Times, there was a huge write up about Mr. Butler and his debut. They were even circulating a little video of Nick. It first shows winter Wisconsin scenes, then Nick reading from his book, him at his writing desk, him trudging through the deep Wisconsin snow, and him lighting up a cigar—all of it set to voice over of him reading from his novel and answering interview questions. Then that’s juxtaposed with shots of Justin Vernon (of Bon Iver)—one of him biting down on his golden Grammy trophy—set to his music. After that, they show Nick smoking a cigar in the snow and talking about his geographical link to the famous musician. It ends with Nick helping out on a buffalo farm and then building a bonfire.
He got the kind of coverage that can make an envious writer turn greener than Ireland.
I figured he was off. He was about to become a star. My chance of befriending him was probably gone.
I knew he had attended the prestigious Iowa Writers’ Workshop and his work was being touted as literary. A dark part of me worried that he might find my work lowbrow.
Was he maybe embarrassed to have my blurb on the cover of his hardback? Is that why I never heard from him? drunk me wondered.
But I just couldn’t make the man who wrote Shotgun Lovesongs resemble the type of person who would big-time an author who had blurbed his book.
A few months later, I received an email from Nick. He had read what the British journalist had done with my words and wanted to express his appreciation for that and the blurb. He was warm and kind and grateful. We traded one or two responses, but they were short and careful. We became email acquaintances, but not yet friends. I think we were both sort of stunned by the strange aftermaths of our brief forays into the writing-world limelight. Attention comes and goes. That can make even the most level-headed writers feel dizzy. And, as we both lived and worked far away—in every way possible—from LA and NYC, I think we were mostly guessing our way through much of the industry stuff, but feeling that we should both pretend otherwise.
Looking back through my emails now, I see that Nick and I dotted the next few years with sporadic missives—all of them brief and courteous. In retrospect now, it almost appears as if we were scouting each other. There’s one from him saying he liked The Reason You’re Alive. There’s one from me saying I loved his novel, Little Faith. Then there’s one from him with a photo attached—Parnassus bookseller Sissy’s shelf-talker endorsement of TRYA. Nick had snapped it during the Nashville leg of his book tour. The pic is accompanied by an offer to chat on the phone. That email was dated March 25, 2019. Circa six years after I first read Shotgun Lovesongs in galley form.
I was nine months sober. And sober me is a very different animal. I wonder if Nick sensed that somehow. Or maybe sobriety improved my emails. Sober, I began to attract very different people into my life. In retrospect, I’m glad our relationship didn’t really take off until I was on the road to recovery. As sober me started to deal with my own insecurities, I think I became an easier and better friend to have.
Nick and I spoke on the phone and we’ve been trading calls ever since. Despite the fact that we’ve never met in person, he’s become one of my closest writing friends. He’s a man I love very much. And I grew to understand that my initial instincts about him being an all-around good human being and a potential writing friend—drunken as those hunches may have been at the time—were spot on. For the past half decade, we’ve been having two-hour phone conversations once every few months. He tells me about his rural life in Wisconsin. I tell him about my coastal life in the Carolinas. We talk publishing and try to problem-solve our careers. We run fiction ideas by each other. We celebrate each other’s successes. And we commiserate when the writing gods are cruel. But mostly we encourage each other to keep facing the blank page—to keep writing.
A few years ago, Nick excitedly called and told me about this conversation he’d accidentally overheard while he was at a bar. He’d witnessed two lovers reuniting after many decades apart. There was an epic kiss that had set his creative mind aflame. He was talking with great passion and I knew right away that the writing gods had given him an all-you-can-eat buffet of storytelling manna. In my experience, that doesn’t happen too often, so I just smiled and said, “Go! Go! Go!”
Before I knew it, I was reading a Nick Butler love story about second chances and alcoholism and believing in people again. A sunset romance. With all the human warmth, midwestern decency, and everyman poetry that I’ve come to treasure in my friend’s work. It’s everything I admire about Nick.
Here’s the blurb I gave the publisher this time around:
"Life-affirming and straight-up beautiful. Will stoke the good fire in your chest. I absolutely loved it. A must-read." - Matthew Quick
Today—February 4, 2025—is the official publication date for A Forty Year Kiss. I highly recommend you bump it to the top of your reading list. Fans of this Substack will swoon. (Alicia loves Nick’s work too.) You can buy a copy here or anywhere books are sold.
But what about Jack Morris?
Well, after the publicity blitz for We Are The Light was over and the sales weren’t what we had hoped for and the first attempt to put the movie together fell apart with what felt like deliberate and unnecessary cruelty, I called Nick and admitted to being down. My friend listened and tried to put a positive spin on things, but he also just understood where I was coming from in a way only other novelists who have been through such things can.
About a week or so later, I received a card with the northern lights on the front. Inside was a handwritten Nick Butler letter and the Jack Morris baseball card.
In the missive, Nick talked about working on A Forty Year Kiss. There was a bit of LA business. And there was some discussion about how unfair the writing life can feel, which I took to be for my benefit, because he was clearly high on his current work in progress, writing, “I can feel my good juices running like maple syrup.” In closing, he wrote that every office needs at least one sports card in it. He went on to say Morris wouldn’t let the coach pull him from game seven of the ‘91 World Series. Morris would not yield. Then Nick wrote, “Our kind of man.”
Sometimes I take the baseball card out and look at it. In a Detroit Tigers uniform, Morris is hunched over after throwing a pitch. A painful but determined expression anchors the photo. I study the right-hander and glean what I can. It always helps.
The work has brought good people like Nick Butler into your life, I tell myself.
And then I do not yield.
I’ll leave you with a video of my best Wisconsin-loving friend talking about A Forty Year Kiss, which I’ve posted below.
Your man in the Lowcountry,
Matthew
PS - This Substack page has been renamed Letters From Matthew. It will no longer be called There Will Be Mistakes.
PPS - The next Letters From Matthew will post on February 21, 2025, after which time I will (attempt to) post every month on the 21st.
PPPS - Did you read the January 1st post? “People Are My Comrades” (Renewed Faith In Myself And Others)