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IN THE BEGINNING was the Word. Then came the fucking word processor. Then came the thought processor. Then came the death of literature. And so it goes.
Besides, history viewed from the inside is always a dark, digestive mess, far different from the easily recognizable cow viewed from afar by historians.
Prison always has been a good place for writers, killing, as it does, the twin demons of mobility and diversion,
“Language serves not only to express thought but to make possible thoughts which could not exist without it.”
I TRIED TO explain this to my friends on Heaven’s Gate. “Piss, shit,” I said. “Asshole motherfucker, goddamn shit goddamn. Cunt. Pee-pee cunt. Goddamn!” They shook their heads and smiled, and walked away. Great poets are rarely understood in their own day.
“The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.”
It was the same with Hitler’s Mein Kampf or Stukatsky’s Visions in the Eye of a Decapitated Child.” “Who was Hitler?” I said. Tyrena smiled slightly. “An Old Earth politician who did some writing.
Most of us, I hope, have had some child or spouse or friend like Beatrice, someone who by his very nature, his seemingly innate goodness and intelligence, makes us uncomfortably conscious of our lies when we lie.
She had always felt that the essence of human experience lay not primarily in the peak experiences, the wedding days and triumphs which stood out in the memory like dates circled in red on old calendars, but, rather, in the unself-conscious flow of little things—the weekend afternoon with each member of the family engaged in his or her own pursuit, their crossings and connections casual, dialogues imminently forgettable, but the sum of such hours creating a synergy which was important and eternal.
The dialogues were in no way prayers but took the form of angry monologues which—just short of the point where they became diatribes—became vigorous arguments with himself.
Sol realized one day that the topics of the heated debates were so profound, the stakes to be settled so serious, the ground covered so broad, that the only person he could possibly be berating for such shortcomings was God Himself.
Our persona was opinionated to the point of absurdity, prejudiced beyond rationality, and functionally insane. It took a year of tinkering before we discovered that the persona was accurate; it was the man who had been nuts. A genius but nuts.”
Though a quarrel in the streets is a thing to be hated, the energies displayed in it are fine.
I laughed but managed to keep the laughter under control. “Jesus wept, Johnny.” “Almost certainly.”
“I think one begins to feel when things aren’t important. I’m not sure how to put it. When you’ve spent thirty years entering rooms filled with strangers you feel less pressure than when you’ve had only half that number of years of experience. You know what the room and the people in it probably hold for you and you go looking for it. If it’s not there, you sense it earlier and leave to go about your business. You just know more about what is, what isn’t, and how little time there is to learn the difference.
