Q: Hemingway said he went ten rounds
with Mr. Turgenev.
Bukowski said he went ten rounds with Hemingway.
Now you say you're going ten rounds with Ernie Pyle.
A: Yes. I write seven 1,000-word pieces a week. For no chain. For
The Daily Bulletin. I write seven 2,000-word pieces a week. I write
a book a month.
He wrote journalism, I write literature.
The working
stiff, the grunt, or foot soldier in the military, doesn't read literature because
there isn't any literature being written for him, or her.
Feminists like
Guy Lit. Woman grunts are feminists.
A woman grunt has not just men bossing
her, but women who act like men to get the stripe.
You don't get the stripe
by soldiering, as Maggio said to Prewitt.
Q: How do you get the stripe?
A: Office politics.
Q: And you mean to get the stripe by soldiering.
A: Or do without the stripe.
Q: Nuala O'Faolain said sleeping with a man you think is a toad is how the patronage was handed out--the teaching jobs, the magazine articles, the book contracts. The grants and prizes.
A: That's one way.
You can also make it by merit.
By application.
It can't be faked and it will not be denied.
Q: So you say.
A: So I did.
When all is said and did and done I did it.