1.165 Degrees of Separation

"Talk about bizarre connections," the note from my friend Pete began. And once it all began to reveal itself, I said pretty much the same thing.

When it comes to the nature of the universe, I'm generally of two minds. On the one hand, I have no trouble accepting a universe that is absolutely chaotic and devoid of meaning-a universe made up of independently vibrating monads. A universe, in short, of accidents. On the other hand, I also have little trouble accepting the idea of a universe in which everything is connected-though often in ways we are incapable of comprehending.

I oscillate back and forth between the two notions rather freely depending upon, well, whatever. I've certainly seen plenty of evidence to support both beliefs. And thinking about it, I'm not so sure that those two seemingly contradictory ideas are at all incompatible. (But explaining why that is would involve getting into Buddhism and string theory, and Lord knows you probably don't want that).

All of this comes to mind only as the result of that aforementioned note, in which the connectedness made itself evident and caught my eye again. In fact, rarely have I seen so many real-world (i.e. non-paranoid) connections crammed into such a small space than I did with the arrival of that single, brief note. There was almost a novel's worth of connections in this e-mail, and they had precious little to do with what was actually written there.

Trying to lay it all out is a bit tricky. In the best of all possible worlds I'd have a blackboard to work with, but I'll still give it a shot.

Steven Shainberg, you see, is an independent filmmaker whose last film was the sleeper hit Secretary, and whose next film, Fur, is the much-anticipated Diane Arbus biopic starring Nicole Kidman. As it happens, the woman who produced Secretary, Amy Hobby, had also optioned the rights to one of my books several years ago.

I'm not sure if Mr. Shainberg was aware of that or not, but it's neither here nor there. Anyway, Mr. Shainberg and I had a brief correspondence about a year or two back. Just a friendly chat. Then last week, he wrote me another quick note. Catching up a little bit, saying hey and getting a little information.

Unfortunately, in the e-mail address, he typed "knipl," instead of "knipfel." Now "Knipl," as old Press readers (and plenty of others) may remember, was the name of the central character in the great Ben Katchor's brilliant comic strip, "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer." Katchor and I have been at a couple of the same papers at the same time over the years, and this has inevitably led to occasional confusion. I've been mistaken for his character and vice versa. More than once I've been asked if the strip and this column were related in any way, and I have to confess that-however much I love Katchor's work-the connection was in name alone, and even at that, a simple coincidence (Katchor himself will confirm this).

So OK, "knipl" isn't my name, and not part of my e-mail address. When Shainberg sent the note off with that name in the address slot, though, it still went ? somewhere. To someone. It could've gone to Hawaii, or Jordan, or Brazil or Dresden. Even Des Moines. It could've gone anywhere at all.

But it didn't. It went to Sunny's Bar-the literary joint in Red Hook. Or rather, it went to the guy who runs the reading series there. I've unfortunately never been to Sunny's, although numerous people have recommended it to me. It just hasn't happened yet. I haven't met Gabriel Cohen, the guy who runs the reading series there, either. Not that I'm aware of, anyway, but I hear he's a swell fellow.

Obviously, in turn, Cohen never met me, either (again, so far as I'm aware), but when he received this e-mail directed at me, he remembered that a good friend of his was a former neighbor of mine.

Peter Blauner is a novelist who has read at Sunny's. He's quite good, and his latest, Slipping Into Darkness, just came out at the end of January. He also used to live three or four doors down from me in Brooklyn.

So Cohen, knowing that Peter knew me, sent him the note from Shainberg and asked him if he could pass it along, which he did-along with the line which opened this column.

But it wasn't over yet. Because you see, in passing the note along, Peter also pointed out that he knew Shainberg's sister who, several years ago, had dated Peter's brother.

With that, it came around full circle, see? Because when Shainberg first contacted me a couple years ago, he'd (if I'm remembering this correctly) obtained my address from Peter's brother Andrew, who's a literary agent here in town.

So the note arrived, remarkably enough, and Shainberg wanted to check out the current availability of certain rights. I told him that I wasn't real clear on that myself (my God, but it's a complicated business!) and suggested that he might want to get in touch with Amy Hobby, his former producer.

Well, either her or Ben Katchor. One of the two. See?