Wednesday, December 1

Q: What was that?

A: I wanted to give the idea that Brew is a poet.

He's a novelist, who writes pamphlets of poems, and embeds them in his novels.

He's a serial novelist.

He doesn't know it now, but in the next six-and-a-half months he will write ten books.

It will lead to his getting fired. For writing on the job.

In six months and two weeks he writes ten books.

That's too much.

Q: Did he get his technical manual done, on time?

A: Yes, but they wanted him to get it done in half the time.

Q: What's wrong with that?

A: They were paying him half as much as he made at the job with Suent Scientific he was laid off from in Atlanta.

That's a four-fold increase. Write it in half the time for half the pay.

That's greedy.

That's too much.

You can shit on my shoulder but don't wipe your ass with my hair.

Q: Brew had an attitude.

He needed to be taken down a peg.

He was too big for his britches.

A: The greatest aid to the efficiency of labor is a long line of men waiting at the gate, Samuel Insull said.

You can't do that when a replacement is readily available.

You can only do it when they are desperate, and depend on you.

In a recession, there are men willing to work for less, to work more for the same amount, even to work more for less. That's what a recession is for. To bring wages down.
To make the wage-slave docile.

Fear of the sack keeps modern, Western man in line.

Q: That's no time to be on your high horse.

Didn't you know?

A: It's like Junior Frenger said in Miami Blues. A sociopath knows the difference between right and wrong, he just doesn't give a shit.

Q: Did they at least put a scare into you?

A: Oh, yes.

Now, I am speaking Newspeak.

I am calling faith-based programs evidence-based, in my grant applications.

It is evidence. The Bible. Scripture's just not refutable, like scientific evidence.

What do you think I am? A logical positivist?

Q: A secular humanist.

A: Brew didn't fuck up on purpose.

He let events get ahead of him.

He was complacent. Asleep at the wheel.

By the time he realized he was in deep kimchee it was too late to rescue himself.

Events overtook him.

Q: Did you get SEMIQUINCENTENNIAL off to LitVision Press?

A: Yes. I mailed it out Monday. First class mail.

Q: What if he says it could be better? Asks you to revise it? Buff it up?

A: I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Q: What do you think you'd say? If he calls it a first draft, and wants to see more polish?

A: I'd say the same thing I said to the committee at Tulane, who asked me to take the comprehensive exams over, and show improvement.

How much improvement, in what areas?

Q: What if he says, as they did, he'll know it when he sees it. You can't quantify the PhD mystique.

A: I'll say, as I did then, no thanks.

Why would I do it now if I wouldn't do it then?

I have new work to do.

That's finished work.

I am writing a new book. It keeps me busy.

I don't have time to polish books I've finished writing.

Q: Did John Bennett or Crowbar edit you?

A: Not so's you'd notice.

Q: Has anybody edited you?

A: Not so's you'd notice.

Q: What about when you worked as a technical writer? When you did work for-hire. And had inputs from several subject-matter experts to reconcile.

A: I adjudicated. I was an adjudicating motherfucker. I don't want to do that in my own work.

Q: Do little magazine editors edit you?

A: No.

Q: Did newspaper editors edit your bylined column?

A: One did and one didn't. The one who did, I quit writing the column rather than take the time to do what he wanted.

It's a question of time.

I have this ongoing series of books, and conflicting demands on my time, and simply cannot go back over something I did my best on, and am satisfied with.