The Bookshelf Conversations: Michael Stahl

Going old school here as we return to an audio-only Conversations.

A couple of years ago, I was engaged to work on the memoirs of a gentleman from the Middle East. He was in my town on an extended trip, staying at an Air BnB run by friends of ours. Just about every day after my regular morning shift at Trader Joe’s, I would go over to their house for another three to four hours of writing and editing with the client sitting next to me (ah, those pre-social-distancing days) going over every word of his manuscript which had been written in Arabic and translated — poorly — into English. This was the first experience for me on such a project so I had no basis for comparison, but from what I know, that isn’t the way these things are usually done.

That’s one of the reasons I wanted to speak with Michael Stahl, the writer who helped the legendary Bartolo Colon publish Big Sexy: In His Own Words.

One of the things Stahl and I had in common is that English wasn’t the first language of the subjects, so I wanted to see how our experiences were alike, or not. Of course, Colon was an internationally-famous ballplayer while mine was just a private businessman working on a vanity project. (BTW, after almost two months working with my guy we had only completed about two-thirds of the book before I had to leave for vacation. Never heard from him again so I don’t know whatever became of him or the book.)

Look for my review of Big Sexy in days to come. Upshot: A nice, gentle story from a surprisingly thoughtful pitcher. Stahl dispelled a lot of misconceptions about Colon in our chat.