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nd so we
had read at Prairie Lights, where I had bought
my first copy of Writers Market when I was 19 years old. And so
it had gone well, more or less. There had been some gnashing of teeth.
William had been accosted by a crowd of young M.F.A.-getting poets who
said that language poetry was not allowed, and in response he had read Table of Forms,
or anyway part of it. Coover had appeared to be amused, at least enough
that he refused to sign any autographs while we were reading. There was
some tension in the room, sure, but as long as Coover was happy, we were
happy.
Frank Conroy was already drunk. Dirk had already vomited, as usual, and
then read haiku. I think it was peyote, this time. I apologized to Conroy
about a piece Krass-Mueller had written about him, which had seemed to
me to be mean. Krass-Muellers piece was about how Conroy wrote a travel
piece for some cruise line. This was in Krass-Muellers piece, which was
ripping on cruise lines, for Harpers, who sent him on the cruise,
which he did not enjoy. It was a funny piece, but I thought it was kind
of cruel to rip on Conroy when Conroy was just doing the kind of thing
that we (I mean writers, you know?) all do when were hard up for cash.
I mean we (The Unknown) had already done shit that was far worse than
that. For cold hard cash. For the Almighty Dollar. We were prostituting
ourselves for the sake of American literature, and I told him that our
friend Frank had even written copy for Procter &
Gamble. Writers gotta eat, I said to him, and fuck, if you can get
on a cruise for free, you get to eat, which is part of the job, right?
Or at least it comes with the territory. I told him about some fucking
intern at Harpers whod pissed me off once when I sent them a
story. But he didnt piss me off so much that wed turn down the opportunity
to publish excerpts of our travel memoirs in said magazine.
I mean I dont hold a grudge, you know? Of course later, wed blow that
opportunity too, when we missed our dinner with Lapham.
But this was all before that ugly night in Boston.
This night was special. I wasnt even on heroin
at the time.
And so we had read at Prairie Lights. I read some shit I wrote when I
was 19, and thought that the best way to get published was to send stuff
out to some of the addresses in Writers Market. And dont get
me wrong, theres some great people at F&W, and that whole sending stuff
out routine works for some people, Ive got a lot of friends whove built
whole careers like that. And others whove built careers around fucking
editors. There I mean fucking in the physical sense. Poets. Whatever works,
I guess. But the mailits not for me. I mean, I tried that once, back
when I was 19, back when I still had a pretty good relationship with the
U.S. Postal Service. But they had fucked me since then, countless times
postal workers had fucked me over. Fuck in the
metaphoric sense, I mean, there. Graduate school
applications had been lost, magazines had been
stolen, books had never been delivered. And
so I was supposed to send my shit out into the hands of those fucks? Trust
them with my blood, sweat, and tears? I dont think so. So that created
some problems. Most publications still dont take email submissions. And
even if it got there, I was supposed to trust my work to some pimply-faced
fucking intern at Harpers? I told Conroy all this, I was kind
of babbling, and I told him that that book of his Stoptime is a
real classic, in my book.
Anyway, the reading was pretty decent, the people in Iowa City just love
a decent reading, and were decent readers. Then we (that is me, Wm.,
Dirk, Aukema and CooverConroy, as Ive
said, was pretty much wasted by the time the reading started and retired
to his rooms shortly thereafter) went back to Chucks house and we sat
in his kitchen and rolled a couple doobies of the Brown
University chronic. Coover didnt actually smoke any of it, at least
not in front of us. The air was pungent and wholesome. Coover is, hey
lets face it, one of my heroes. So even if he did smoke any, I wouldnt
mention it here, because it turns out, we discovered, that a lot of people
who read our hypertext novel tend to believe that everything we write
about all the highly regarded literary figures who we mention in the hypertext
is true. Which, as Ive explained, again and again, its not. Its mostly
bullshit, as they say in the vernacular. Still nobody believes me. Like
this is some kind of fucking biography. But
anyway, Im not gonna have anybody believing that Coover, who is an American
literary icon, a true great man in the great man theory of history
sense of the word, was actually sitting there getting
stoned with us. Regardless.
So we were flying, and then William got lost
on Aukemas porch. I should explain. Aukemas porch is a great library.
Bookshelves floor to ceiling, chock-full of literature. Almost all of
the influences of the Unknown are in there, a lot of them signed. Because
Aukema, I should mention this about Aukema, Aukema knows everybody worth
knowing whos a writer. Almost. The script to Taxi Driver, for
instance, was sold over a long distance phone call from the very kitchen
we were right then sitting in. T.C. Boyle made Aukema a dwarf character
in his novel Worlds End. Aukema is a very cool guy, who, I should
mention this right now as a little bonus for all you dissertation-writing
types out there, actually had a great deal of influence on the course
of late twentieth century American literature. Particularly hypertext literature.
Once, I got into a fight, not a real fight, but some pretty serious verbal
sparring, in that kitchen of Aukemas with Chris Offut, who thought that
my short-short story Mohawk Hangnail was dangerous,
and that it would be a bad influence on American literature. That it would
be bad for the kids. I like Offuts
stuff, but we had both been drinking quite a bit of whiskey. I think the
word fuck was exchanged several times. He might have said fuck postmodernism,
and I might have said fuck naturalism, but Im not sure. As Ive said,
we were both quite drunk. Hes a good writer though, check out his book
Kentucky Straight.
But we were talking about Coover. Have you read Pricksongs and Descants,
or A Night at the Movies, or Pinnochio
in Venice, or The Public Burning? If you havent read any of
his work, Id recommend that you pop open another window on your browser
(yeah, right now, but leave The Unknown open,
too) and go to your online bookstore of choice (But not Barnes
& Noble, fuck them, monopolists) and purchase a copy of one of his
books. Now, you might not be able to find a few of his books, but I think
that most of them are back in print, finally. Which is very good. That
its back in print. His work. Which is good. So let me just come out right
now and admit that weve (the Unknown, here referred to collectively)
lifted a few techniques from the guy. Is that a crime? I dont think so.
Writers can get away with all sorts of that kind of shit. He didnt mind,
at any rate, at least thats what he said, when we were sitting in Aukemas
kitchen and we admitted to his face that we were ripping him off left
and right. And its not just us Im talking about either, its a whole
generation of hip American writers. But thats another story. Or is it?
We talked about a lot of things with those two guys, Dirk and me. We talked
about molecular biology. We talked about cannibalism and stereotypes of
Native Americans. We talked about new medical instruments that are invisible
to the naked eye. We talked about evolution. We talked about various pharmaceuticals
and how they are tested. We plotted, we schemed,
we made big plans for American literature.
Hypertext especially. It was a good night, that night in the kitchen at
Aukemas house in Iowa City. I think William stole
some books from Aukema. I remember thinking that I write an awful
lot about marijuana when I am out of it, or some words to
that effect.
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