Wednesday
Jun182008

International Calls

“One last question.”

“Yes?”

“If you could pick one writer who influenced your life, not your writing, necessarily, but your life…”

“Not Stephen Dedalus?”

“A writer.”

(beat)

“Somerset Maugham.”

“Really?”

“Yes.  Is that odd?”

“No, but…”

“Maugham taught me everything I know about women.”

(beat)

“Let me see if I have this straight. Heh.”

(beat)

“Everything you know about women is from a writer who was the most famous closeted homosexual of his generation?”

“Well, I didn’t realize that at the time.”

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Wednesday
Jul092008

Tintinant Aures

“A few more questions.”

(sigh)

“I have time for only one today.”

“Haven’t you read your Pound? What advice does Mr. Nixon give?”

”Consider carefully the reviewer.”

“Good, so don’t you think…”

”I never mentioned a man but with a view

Of selling my own works.

The tip’s a good one, as for literature

It gives no man a sinecure.”

(beat)

“One question.”

“Don’t you think this has gone too far?”

“Not far enough, sometimes. Kingstown pier, a disappointed bridge.”

“The scope is audacious. Aren’t you worried you’ve bitten off more than you can chew?”

(beat)

“I’ll answer with my own question. Have you ever heard of the Kissinger rule?”

“No.”

“As an undergraduate at Harvard, Kissinger wrote a senior thesis that was almost four hundred pages long. The Kissinger rule states no undergraduate thesis is to be longer than a hundred pages.”

“I don’t understand how this relates to the Melancholy Korean.”

“His biographer, Walter Isaacson, wrote that having bitten off more than he could chew, Kissinger proceeded to chew more than he bit off.”

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Saturday
Oct172009

Rebirth

“So, the Melancholy Korean returns. May I ask its author a basic question?”

“I’m not sure I want to….”

“For what purpose did you start this so-called ‘fictional narrative in blog form’?”

“That’s not a hard question to answer.”

(beat)

“I started the blog for the same reason any artist attempts a work of art: I write in order to give physical form to an image of beauty that has been indelibly, and cruelly, imprinted on my soul, in the hopes that I might, through this act of creative generation and expression, find peace.”

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