Ok this is going to be long and rambling but here goes. My father, Peter Straub, died on Sunday night. He was the fucking best, and here’s why..:
1. Big Pete read everything. He read poems, he read mystery novels, he read gnostic biblical history, he read graphic novels. When we opened the bookstore, he gave me handwritten lists of writers he loved, to make sure they were on our shelves.
He loved meeting and supporting younger writers–sure, whippersnappers you’ve heard of, like Kelly Link and Ben Percy and Dan Chaon, but he also exchanged endless emails and notes with zillions of other folks.
3. He was a fucking hilarious pen pal. Sometimes he sent emails as fictional characters. When I was at summer camp, he would send me letters telling me everything that happened on All My Children. He added a lot of murders.
4. Speaking of soap operas, he had a multi episode role on One Life to Live, playing retired police det. Pete Braust, an anagram of Straub. He was, ahem, not a great actor, but he did love having a SAG card. Michael Easton, who played John McBain, was one of his best friends.
5. Horror writers win prizes that are a thousand percent cooler than non-genre awards.
6. Big Pete got immense pleasure out of children. When I was in preschool, he would stay and hang out drawing mermaids and making up stories until my teachers kicked him out. He was, of course, an incredible story-teller, and in addition to his three beloved grandchildren, every kid who ever came across his path got the same attention, respect, and imaginative fun.
7. He had a sweet tooth for the ages, and in general, ate like a French king. Though in his later years, he had given up drinking and smoking, at heart he loved nothing more than deep indulgence.
8. He liked music and he liked it loud. Liked doesn’t even cover it, actually. He knew every note to thousands of records, and the names of every jazz musician for fifty years. That was how we knew, at home, that he was happily working–the music would be blasting.
9. When I wrote my first novel, he left me a voicemail that said ‘Emma, you are going to sell this book for $200k.’ I sold it to no one, for zero dollars, but it didn’t matter. It took me ten years to sell a novel but when I did, he was in the first fucking row, every time.
We read together at the Poetry Project, at BookCourt, at Barnes and Noble, probably other places that I’m forgetting. His delight in my career, and his total belief in me, is a buoy that I will hold onto for the rest of my life.
10. This Time Tomorrow was all about him dying, which is a weird thing to give your parent when they are, in fact, still alive, but I am so glad I did. Every bit of my love for him is in that book, and it is one of the great joys of my life that he read it (so many times) with so much pleasure and pride. That book, and our mutual understanding, meant that when he died, I didn’t doubt for a second that he knew how grateful I was to be his, and vice versa. I leave you with the sportiest Big Pete ever looked. Now go read one of his books.
