Q: Isn't July 10 early for a hurricane?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you evacuate?
A: Yes. Brenda and I got up at 3:00 a. m. and drove to Tallahassee. We
can't check into our motel until 3:00 p.m.
But we made it to town, ate breakfast
at a Cracker Barrel out by I-10, went to a Border's when it opened at 9:00 a. m.,
and killed time reading until lunch. Then we ate lunch and killed time reading at
a Barnes & Noble until check-in.
The drive over wasn't bad.
No
traffic on Highway 20.
No heavy rain.
No heavy winds.
Q: Do you have a room for two nights?
A: No. We check out at 11:00 a. m. tomorrow.
Q: What did you buy at Border's?
A: Two on-sale large red linen journals and a paperback copy of Henning
Mankell's One Step Behind.
Last year, Brenda and I came to Tallahassee
hurricane evac, from Hurricane Ivan. We stayed at a motel out by I-10.
I
bought a Henning Mankell novel at Border's and read it in the motel. Brenda watched
hurricane coverage on TV.
Mankell has another book out.
I've read
all of them. As they are translated.
In this one, the hero's father is dead.
He's another year older, and has broken up with the woman from Riga. He is lonely,
and worried about his health.
He's growing old. He has diabetes.
Is this a repetition or a rotation? Should I read The Moviegoer again?
Walker Percy said nice things about Screed.
Dear Jack: Thanks for Screed. It's good diatribe. The reason I know is that diatribe makes me feel better. And I felt better reading it.
One year I got a Christmas card from Walker and Bunt.
But, as I did
not reciprocate, the next year I didn't get one.
Shelby Foote is dead.
Ken Burns made a celebrity of Shelby Foote.
Walker Percy was a popular novelist.
Instead of living in the French Quarter and writing vignettes and feuilletons.
I thought I'd be a popular novelist. Writing roman-feuilletons.
I
guess that was naïve.
Q: There's a new biography of Anna Akhmatova out. Anna of All the Russias. Her work was banned by the Communists for 40 years. Joseph Brodsky said she felt like she had been buried alive.
A: It just drove her into the underground.
Who'd you rather be?
Anna Akhmatova or Anne Rice? Anne Rice could have been a poet.
She chose
success over suffering. Success over failure.
Q: Akhmatova didn't choose suffering. It was imposed on her. By the government.
Just as your entire oeuvre has been suppressed by New York and Hollywood.
A: That's incidental. My work is out there.
Q: In dribs and drabs. Here and there. A fraction of it.
A: I'm not a failure. Suffering doesn't define me.
I fight back.
And I'm still going on.
That's success. Going on in the face of indifference
and hostility.
Q: I read about the new biography in MOBYlives. Did they ever get back to you on your essay about writing programs?
A: Yes. It's time to lay the subject to rest.
Thanks but no.
Q: Good name for a book. THANKS BUT NO.
A: Writing is about character and writing programs are a test of character. Are you right for corporate America? A writing program is a long audition. It's like boot camp, only the drop-outs make it and the ones who succeed have failed.
Q: That's an ad hominem attack on all the writers who have gone through such programs, and the writers who teach at them.
A: Yes. It is.