I Hear America Singing — Sort Of

With apologies to Whitman, the story of a boy, a man, his kids and their country

My kids and I recently conspired to self-publish a book. Our home-spun effort included e-mails, and even snail-mail, to hundreds of independent bookstores from Yuma to Cape Fear. Though we made lot of mistakes, we also sold a few books, made lots of new friends, and along the way, learned volumes about booksellers and about publishing.

Our family crusade was especially juicy for me, in part because my daughter and son did virtually all of the work. So, I had lots of time to have a ball. Not only did I get a proud-making glimpse of my thirtysomething children in pro mode, but I also got to take a sappy sentimental journey back to my boyhood.

It’s Eisenhower-era Brooklyn, and a young boy is in love with the United States of America. His passion has nothing to do with any founding principles, with any idealized notions of self-government. Nor is his zeal aware of the dark dimensions of Manifest Destiny. No, he’s a simple kid. He likes cookies and baseball and the map of his homeland, the outline of the lower 48. He doesn’t give a hoot about the bicameral legislature. But he’s smitten with the shape of his country. No question in his mind, it’s the greatest shape a country has ever had ever since they invented countries.

When I was a kid, the map of the U.S.A was a kind of hobby for me. One question dominated my red-white-and-blue brain: what other country even came close to the U.S.A for coolness of shape? Those giant lakes in the middle, toppy part! Big, fat Texas at the bottom, holding everything up. Florida sticking out down there, like a handle. Maine reaching upwards, an arm raised in celebration. I loved little curly Cape Cod. Geez, there were two Dakotas! How great was that? Other countries didn’t even have one Dakota! With its gently curved arc of a northern border, it seemed to me that America was smiling. You’d smile too if you were shaped like this.

I got grumpy in 1959 about the arrival of Alaska and Hawaii. Wait, you can’t just add states…can you? Wait. No. Hence, The O’Neill Rule: a state has to touch another state. I got annoyed with my father because he apparently didn’t object to just inventing new states.

I once replied to a Chamber-of-Commercey ad, and a giant manila envelope, stuffed with flyers about Oregon, made its way to Flatbush. Apparently, I was welcome in this land of Lewis & Clark, of mountains and beavers, this American Eden. I vowed that I’d settle there — as soon as Mom and Dad would let me leave. Boy, oh boy, I thought. Oregon looks neat! A fella might make a life out there. I wished I was named Meriwether.

Every bookseller e-address we harvested took me back to that map-loving kid who spent half his youth trying to draw the U.S. — free-hand with Crayolas. The e-mails summoned America, the Beautiful: the cool, forest-graniteness of New Hampshire, the on-and-on-ness of our Great Plains, the orange-red-pink-warmness of our southwestern Sonoran Desert.

What those madeleines did for Proust, the roll-call of bookstores did for me. Even before we got a single reply to our emails, I loved the very idea of sending messages to bookstores in Dodge City, Kansas and Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. We wrote to stores in two Clevelands (MS and OH) and at least three American Dublins (CA, NY, OH). We sent mail to both Panhandles (FL and OK). Our outreach struck me as somehow fundamentally American. Naive. Hopeful. Optimistic. In our cranky times, it even seemed downright neighborly, as though we were knocking on the door, just stopping by to say `Hi.’

Not long into our publishing campaign, there was a shake-up on Team O’Neill. Both my kids were first-rate professionals — competent, careful, really gifted at finishing stuff, closing loops. I was somewhat …well…less-skilled.

“Remember, brother,” Becky wrote to Josh, right after I’d botched something, “Dad’s not exactly…ahem… a detail guy.”

“We may have to let him go,” my son replied.

Yes, they knew I was on the e-mail chain.

The kids didn’t want me anywhere near anything that required either messaging skills. Henceforth, I would be the shipping department. “But you’ll be the head of shipping,” my daughter said, softening the blow. They would handle all executive functions, and I would put books in boxes and schlep them to the post office. I, in my late 60s, had become the muscle.

This may have been the shrewdest h.r. redeployment of all time. From moment one, I loved my new gig. Spelunking through Staples, I curated a cunning collection of boxes — one perfect for 3 copies, another that cozied up 5, and hooray, it turns out that the USPS Priority Mail box was designed to hold 10 copies of our baby.

And every day for a month or so, an independent bookseller somewhere said some version of “Sure, let’s give this a try.” Shout out to The Flying Pig in Shelburne, Vermont, to Canvasback Books in Klamath Falls, Oregon, to Sherman’s in Falmouth, Maine, to Garcia Street Books in Santa Fe, to Card Carrying Books in Corning, New York, to The Little Boho Bookshop in Bayonne, NJ, to Watermark Book Company on Fidalgo Island, off the coast of Washington. Our Whitmanesque catalog rolled on. Turn the Page Books in Westfield, Indiana, The Southern Market Shops in Knoxville, Wish Gifts in Denver. Pumpkin Patch Books in Ames, Iowa. Amber waves of booksellers! Within a few weeks, we even got our first re-order. The Book House in Millburn, NJ took its permanent place in the O’Neill Family Publishing Hall of Fame.

Oh, and then there was the tape gun.

Dear God, how I loved that tape gun!

It is, I believe, the perfect device.

Its growl — competent, assertive, crisp — became music to my ears. Each time, I laid tape along a box-seam –ggrrhggrrh! — I pictured the book-boxes, on trucks, zipping through the Shenandoah Valley, or down the coastal plain, or winding through Bear Canyon Pass. Each box was like our venture. Naive. Hopeful. Optimistic. Each box was a pioneer, jumping off, heading out.

And I didn’t stop with imagining the boxes on trucks. I even pictured booksellers in their back-rooms — slicing the pristine tape on the top seam, then curving their fingers under a box-flap, popping it up with a cardboardy-tapey snap. What a country!

I swear I even enjoyed the no-thank-yous. When a bookseller named Beth from Boise demurred with encouraging words, my first thought was of the shape of Idaho. Come on! I mean, how great is that shape? How else should a state be shaped?

And it wasn’t just booksellers who were supportive and kind-hearted. Everywhere we turned, folks were cheering us on. The woman at the post office quickly figured out my daily visits. “You wrote a book?” she asked, slapping postage on a five-copy box, San Diego-bound.

“Yes, mam,” replied the young Jimmy Stewart.

“Congrats,” she said, twinkling through her Covid-mask. Two weeks later, she eyeballed a box and said my taping technique was “getting better.”

A week after that, she said, “This is our first Iowa, yes?”

Frank Capra smiled.

This land was made for you and me.

If you love a new graduate (high school or college) who’s setting sail — for a campus, for a job or maybe for Oregon — you might want to slip Just A Zillion Things into their duffel. It’s got a handy wisdom — how to be careful and bold at the same time — not to mention snappy illos by a wizard named Dave Chisholm (Rochester, NY — all hail the Northern Tier!) You can take a look inside Zillion at www. hughoneillbooks.com, or even better, reach out to chat with our head of shipping at hjoneill7@gmail.com. He’s super-friendly.

Thanks to all the retailers who took a chance, and to all the book people who just took the time to reply — feedback matters to a new publisher — and to all the booksellers who just opened an e-mail from a stranger. For my money, even that small gesture seems a hopeful, American thing to do.

Oh, and Alaska and Hawaii, I owe you two an apology. You should know that, in some kind of karmic payback, you’re the only states we haven’t heard from. Not a single retailer-peep from 49 or 50. That’s fair enough. No question, I deserve it. But, for what it’s worth, and sixty-years late, welcome to the United States of America. Welcome to the greatest-shaped country in the history of all countries of all shapes.

This essay first appeared in Publishers Weekly.