Confessions Of A Writer

Pablo D'Stair.  Can't keep a good man down.  He has this idea for a series aiming to get the reader a little closer to the mind of the writer.

All the writer has to do is confess to something in their past, something they're ashamed of, something that stops them sleeping from time to time.

You'll see a lot of these confessions going up if you pay attention. 

Just to make the confessor squirm a little, there's a Q&A session to follow each.

The good news for us is that Pablo is playing along.

Here's his first confession to kick off his brand new series. 

Like what you see?  Then try and find more.  Now there's a challenge.

PABLO D'STAIR CONFESSION NUMBER ONE

I was fairly regular as far as petty crime went—fairly regular even with things tilting up in the direction of slightly-more-serious-than-petty-crime. One time in particular, my habitual thievery from various retail establishments I worked at—primarily video stores—went off as follows:

I was subbing at a location where I used to work, subbing as the key-holder, opening shift manager, and so figured I would make it kind of a big day as far as running bullshit return scams in conjunction with register grifts went—especially as I was leaving the company, period, in just a number of weeks and my grifts at my main store were completely out of control it seemed like “What the fuck, why not?”. 

So, I was the only person on until the evening manager relieved me around four, all seemed ripe for the plucking.  This was no-brainer, clumsy return scam stuff (the tape for the security-camera at this store was never really up-kept and even if it was, I just decided to “not remember” to switch it on when I got in) this was just grab some merchandise off the shelf, process it as a return, take the cash out of the drawer—absolutely no kind of cleverness to it. 

I did my take pretty early on—one big return of some Star Trek boxed set and some other big ticket thing—had my two hundred dollars or so in pocket.  Now, what I really needed to happen was to have at least two hundred dollars or so (preferably a bit more) worth of business happen so that the drawer counts didn’t wind up in the negative—I mean, the count could wind up in the negative, it would just be more awkward; if the count was in the positive when the evening manager came on, it’d go smooth (either way I’d probably mention the big ticket return, but headaches are always best to avoid). 

Thing was (of course) it was dead as a bastard all day—I’d never known the location to be this way, and even without doing a single transaction grift, it got to be three o’clock moving up toward four and the count was still negative one hundred seventy bucks, at least. 

So, what I obviously needed to do was just reverse my return—no problem.  Except, once a grift is done, once that money is in my pocket, it feels like mine, so then it would feel I was being suckered, I’d been beat—it would feel like circumstances were stealing from me. 

It was my fucking money. 

Turned out it was moot, because the evening manager showed up early with his lunch to eat in back, nothing I could do by way of unloading.  So, I was left in the position of just “Do I tell the evening manager there is going to be a negative count and why (“the big customer return”) or do I just leave and let him figure it out?” 

As I say, other than the fact that it was obvious what I’d done, there was no way to prove I’d done it—and anyway, I was gone from the whole company in two weeks. 

So I left.

This is a take from an organization.  They lose a few hundred dollars, but their ship keeps rolling.  Can you justify the act now?  Feel better that no individual was hurt during the process?  There was no personal damage, no loss of sentimental trinkets, no sense of violation.  Doesn’t that make it OK?

It’s like you’re trying to talk me into doing it again! Well, to answer simply on those grounds: Yes, I think it was okay.  At the time—this was early job-related-crime—I would even have said that thieving or grifting from a company was kind of doing it a favor, like I was an unofficial efficiency expert—if they couldn’t stop me doing what I was doing, it reflected poorly on their managers and safeguards etc. 

I was an asshole. 

But, a bit more directly, it wasn’t something I honestly needed to be Okay, and I look to make it Okay now, even less—it isn’t a good mindset, it was symptomatic of other things, and I know that and I like knowing that.

There is an age, I’ve come to think, for doing things like that and roiling in the philosophies and the justifications, there’s a charm in it not being Okay—I don’t know how far to extremes I’d take that, I don’t think certain things’d ever have charm, even if the roots of the things being “understandable” are there.  Teenagers should steal from their jobs, but then they should just stop, out of propriety, not out of realizing the activity is out-and-out wrong, just it’s not right to do, anymore, like “there is a time to put away the things of youth”—if I had a company and people worked for me, I’d figure they were stealing, you know? Calculate it into the finances.

You have two children.  They have stomachs and mouths.  Say you couldn’t afford to put the food they needed into said mouths, could you do it as a mature man?  How far could you take it?

It’s a rougher question—because gut reaction is Sure, absolutely, I need to feed my kids and there’s no other way I’d grift a register, I’d do an after-hours job…I’d do God knows what. 

But, that this is the gut, kind of a machismo I’ll-do-anything-for-my-kids reaction pauses me up. 

What’d that mean “No other way?”

It sounds like a weakness to me, one I recognize I have and could let slip by—to “do anything” for my kid’s’d include swallowing my pride, working any shit job, living off assistance it came to that, do anything I could make it that doesn’t have to stay the case, forever—do anything should be do what’s right first and foremost. 

Thing I know about theft, crime, is that each little take resets the chances—you don’t “get better” at it, just because you’ve done it twenty times, odds of getting pinched the twenty-first are just as plain as the first—and then the trouble of, you know, could be folk’re on to me, just letting me dig myself in—how’s that help my kids? 

Honestly, kids and growing up in general, it posits crime—in general and that which I’ve committed—in the complex, tangible, fascinating light it truly belongs in.  Because say I’m writing a story and it’s some young guy doing some crime—there is a romance there, there is something cool and to even be admired (even a chastising admiration) there’s something in the character that is lively and beautiful for the maladjustment—but have the story and it’s an older guy pulling the same tricks…well, right away, no matter is it fucking Daniel Ocean or what, it seems kind of…sad, is immediately either fantasia (totally removed from reality, so who cares, it isn’t really about crime anymore, that’s just a trinket to play with) or else…uncool, a story that shows the grotesque plainly, something out of time and place.

How close were you to the perfect scam on this one?  You say there was no way to prove you’d done it and that must come close.   If you weren’t that close, is this the sort of thing you sit up at night dreaming about? Or can you process these thoughts as a writer by making your characters do extraordinary (and sometimes stupid) things?

Ha!  No, this was a drift away from the perfect scam. 

Interesting thing, when I say “There was no way to prove it” it sounds pretty clever, but time and again in doing a crime, what I realized was everyone fucking knows you did it, that’s the thing, and so “they can’t prove it” is just taken as read—if I kept doing it, they could prove it, here it was I’d’ve just left a little piece’d eventually have the potential to fuck me. 

The basic register grifts I’d do at work, they, in themselves, were the “perfect scam”, because the idea was built in that it was supposed to be just a trickle, just get ten extra dollars a shift, that’s fifty extra dollars a week, that’s twenty six hundred a year—no one’ll notice it, ever.  Perfect.  Panhandling is the perfect scam—city I lived in released a study/investigation on some of these panhandlers made six figures. 

But at the same time, it’s perfect because it’s almost nothing, that’s the trick.  Taking a soda over to the magazines, drinking it, leaving the empty—perfect scam, but also, not-at-all-impressive.  Scams aren’t about perfection like art isn’t about perfection—or they aren’t to me, even when I was doing them, which was a dangerous headspace. 

As to dreaming about it—I didn’t just dream, I’d fill notebooks with equations and plans and methods—I’m not joking—and some things I’d go through with, some things I wouldn’t—thing I could never do was keep control.  Stolen money is gone before it’s got—I could, and did, get eight hundred dollars, two thousand dollars for something I’d pull—it’d be gone in three days, while at the same time I got a paycheck of five hundred, it’d last three weeks—absurd, but nothing could be done. 

Honestly, I think that’s appropriate—if someone could just steal money and amass a fortune, squirrel it away, I’d find that perverse—I mean, if they were doing something noble with it, maybe, or if it was an experiment of some kind, but other than that, as soon as a lot of money is stolen, presto, it’s a little, it’s less than you had before you stole and that’s how it should be. 

My characters—thing is, they do things I haven’t done, but largely are based on things I have.  And some things—take the set up to Mister Trot from Tin Street—they’re things I thought up, would think about, just like a story and not a story, at the same time.  Any crime I did, it might as well’ve been a story and vice versa—

and the excitement, the honest rise, the actual patterns of thought and consequence, as banal as they often were, those became the veins and bones of a thriller—I think just like I write, write just like I think. And especially in crime fiction, not just the specifics of the acts, but all the peripheral things, it’s pretty hard for me to untangle “where I am” and “what is utter fiction”—the streets, the people, trains, the thought patterns, the clothes, the walls, the sidewalks, somehow it seems that 100% of what I write is literal, but somehow piling a bunch of literal circumstances on top of each other an extra bit, utterly fictitious, comes up. 

Which, as we learn in kindergarten, is writing—but I do find it strange that sometimes when I write something I literally did, something I literally thought—literally, I mean I’m practically just writing a diary entry and saying it’s a story or a scene—then I read it and it’s like the writing has taken the place of the memory, some subtle shift. 

If that makes sense…or even answers your question, right?

This Letter To Norman Court: The Penultimate Section

Free download of Crimefactory 6 anyone (TONY BLACK, ERIC BEETNER, ANGELA SAVAGE, DOUGLAS SULLIVAN, ANDREW NETTE, LIBBY CUDMORE, JOHN MANTOOTH, JEDIDIAH AYRES, THE NERD OF NOIR, MIKE SHEETER, TOM LARSON, GRAHAM BOWLIN,SEAN MAY, SCOTT MILES, JOHN M RADOSTA)?  It's easy as 1,2,3 and you really should have one somewhere about your person.

this letter to Norman Court is a novella consisting of 22 sections (each around 1250 words) I am releasing by way of serializing the piece across blogs, by reader request. A little hub site is set up at www.normancourt.wordpress.com  that has a listing of the blogs that have featured or will feature sections—please give it a look, get yourself all caught up if the below piques your interest.



It is my simple hope to use this as a casual, unobtrusive way to release this material to parties interested. As of now the 22 slots have all been requested (cheers to everyone for that) but if you enjoy what you read please do get in touch with me via unburiedcomments@gmail.com . I welcome any and all comments on the piece (positive, negative, or ambivalent) or general correspondence about matters literary.

Cheers,


Pablo D’Stair




This is the penultimate posting of the Norman Court Story.  There have been enough twists by now to stop me from beginning to guess what will happen in the final installment. 

I want to thank Pablo for having the idea of a blog tour for his story in the first place.  I'd also like to thank those who followed by offering space - Pablo's a fine writer with an amazing appetite and energy, so I feel it's right and proper that good folk like yourselves celebrate that through your generosity.

I'm going to miss this story being part of my life, but as this door begins to swing shut another is most definitely about to open.

Here it is, Pablo's return.


this letter to Norman Court


Pablo D’Stair

twenty-one

Since it was Murray’s dime, took a room the night right in town, bought myself a few packs to smoke and a modest bottle of vodka when I couldn’t find bourbon anywhere near as cheap, the same size. Had the television on, volume up too loud I couldn’t concentrate right but I didn’t turn it down, just sat on the toilet the door closed it got I wanted to focus.


Couldn’t leave it with Norman’d just wandered away we’d had a drink he’d put a gun my hands kept telling me say I promise.


Nothing thoughts clogged me up, idiot things really—like find some report about someone dead, say that’d been the guy, or even as far as thinking I’d shoot myself the hand or something, say a struggle’d gone down, I’d got the worst of it now had no way I’d ever find the guy, again.


It was this meandering finally got me to unscrew the vodka, poured some in one of the plastic cups wrapped up at the sink, added a little water just to convince myself I’d more than I did and maybe it’d keep me paced. It really wasn’t I wanted to get drunk, just couldn’t only keep up the cigarettes with nothing else in me and the thought of food was impossible.


Getting the first swallow down, hissing from it tasted excruciating, it struck me Give him back the money, give Norman back the money it’d be done.


Doing vague math in my head, even after the five thousand I’d paid off the guy with, I had something twelve thousand—eleven thousand, twelve thousand, kind of’d lost track of incidental expenditures, so say eleven thousand—which meant I could give back the whole six thousand something he’d given me with the gun, this’d leave me five, then even I gave him back what I’d first took off him I’d have three, two or three, something.


Got caught up it was funny if I’d only have three left, meant I’d spent more than the original two thousand I’d been given deliver the letter—if I’d only be left three, or say even I was left four, it meant that still didn’t account for the four thousand something Lawrence’d paid me out and neither the two I’d bled Klia.


This was all immaterial, but still it got my head in a fuss, wanted to be at the storage unit to give things a count, couldn’t be satisfied with the figures I was coming out with.


Switched back to cigarettes off now a straight, waterless glass of vodka, took the room phone and sat it in my lap, puzzled out did I remember the address right to Norman’s place—town was called Door, address something like one two three, but I couldn’t get it right, odd combination of numbers seemed normal but wasn’t.


Figured out to dial information, hung up, stared at the cigarette I hadn’t smoked, stubbed it and poured a vodka, just a half inch high of it, downed it.


One five seventeen Pillowglen, it came to me I looked at the bed, my congratulatory handclap dull and pudding sounding, more the sound of slapping a plump belly.


Dialed information, again, relit the cigarette I’d stubbed but stubbed it right back it tasted odd, got a new one going while I answered the woman asked City and State.


-Norman Court I’m trying to call, address fifteen seventeen Pillowglen in Door.


-Pillowglen?


I nodded, didn’t bother saying Yes, smoke out my nose, mouth, nose, mouth all from the same drag.


-I’m not finding any listing for that.


-I scratched my neck, answered There’s a bar with something the same address, don’t know the name of it, but almost the same address, Pillowglen.


-I have listings in Pillowgreen Glen.


-I nodded nodded nodded, cleared my throat. That’s right. Norman Court in Pillowgreen Glen.


She made a kind of whisper sound, but didn’t say anything.


-I’m not seeing a number listed for Norman Court.


I stubbed my cigarette, grimaced at myself because it’d be thoughtless, thing still more’n halfway good.


-How about there’s a bar that address?


-I have a number for Eastwick Pub, one five eleven Pillowgreen Glen.


-Should be it, I think.


Before I could ask would she just tell me the number she said she’d connect me. My instinct was to hang up I wasn’t ready, but as I didn’t feel I wanted to go through it with information get the number again I got a new cigarette up, stubbed the two I’d just stubbed all the way out because they were leaking scums of dark smoke was sort of annoying me to smell it.


-Eastwick.


I coughed, apologized, said Hello.


-Can you hold on?


I didn’t answer, figured he wasn’t waiting for me to.


-Half minute later someone else was on the line, a woman. Hello?


-Hi.


-What can I do for you?


It didn’t sound so busy, woman’s voice was even, undistracted.


-I’m trying to call for Norman Court, guy he’s upstairs I think. Left me his number a message I lost it, thought maybe you all would know.


-You’re calling for Norman? Who are you?


There was something to the tone, I got uneasy and the vodka seemed all of a sudden it was scuttling its way up in my ears.


-My name’s Murray Flake, I said, almost chuckled at the freeform combination. I’ve just been trying to get through to him a few weeks about something, finally got he gave me his number. Maybe I got it wrong. He said he lived above Easwick’s, though, I remember that.


Another odd pause like I was saying something didn’t make any sense, but then I could tell she’d cupped the receiver, was saying something off to the side someone.


Suddenly back in my ear, same even tone, she said Norman Court died few days ago on Thursday.


While I blanked on anything to say, heard her confirming off to the side Thursday? then I guess someone’d corrected her she said Wednesday night in my ear.


-Man’s voice broke in, You say it was Norman you were calling for?


-Yes.


-He swallowed his medicine cabinet on Wednesday, what are you calling us for?


Got the idea from his tone the man was standing up tall as he could, waiting for me to say something else he could swat me down.


-Well, it was just he gave me his number awhile back, I’d lost it.


Swallowed odd, abruptly, coughed once then just stammered a minute, said I’d call back, then—didn’t mean to say it, but right away the guy was in with No, don’t call back here, we don’t have anything to do with him.


I said Okay, but he’d already hung up.


Sat, phone in my lap, moved it back to the bedside table, looked around for my vodka and when I didn’t see it stood, heard it tip over my foot knocked it, stared blurry watching it glug out into the sand green of the carpet.


Counted off on my fingers—Wednesday was day after I’d seen him.


No.


Yes. It’d been Monday I’d got out from the police, then next day’d seen him.


Realized the television volume was still up high, shut it off, but when the quiet got thick all over me like water spilled from a mop bucket I turned it back on, went to the sink and started washing my hands, my face—wasn’t until I’d scrubbed hard a towel, was feeling around for my cigarettes, it hit me I was crying, sniffles and burps. Tried to take in a drag, it made me sneeze. Sat to the floor, leaned a cuddle in close the heel of the bed.

Pablo D’Stair is a writer of novels, shorts stories, and essays. Founder of Brown Paper Publishing (which is closing its doors in 2012) and co-founder of KUBOA (an independent press launching July 2011) he also conducts the book-length dialogue series Predicate. His four existential noir novellas (Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate; i poisoned you; twelve ELEVEN thirteen; man standing behind) will be re-issued through KUBOA as individual novella and in the collection they say the owl was a baker’s daughter: four existential noirs.

this letter to Norman Court

this letter to Norman Court is a novella consisting of 22 sections (each between 1000 and 1250 words) I am releasing by way of the following experiment: I am trying to serialize the piece across blogs, by reader request. If you read and enjoy the section below and have a blog the readers of which you think would enjoy a selection, as well, please get in touch with me to be an upcoming host. A little hub site is set up at www.normancourt.wordpress.com that will have a listing of the blogs that feature sections, as they are posted. Each forthcoming section will include a link to this hub so that readers can have access to the entire available novella as well as see what other sites have served as host.

It is my simple hope to use this as a casual, unobtrusive way to release this material to parties interested. There is some suspense, in that if a new host does not appear after each posting, the train comes to a halt (back tracking to previous hosts is not an option in this game). So, if you enjoy what you read and would like to host an upcoming selection, please get in touch with me via unburiedcomments@gmail.com . I welcome not only invitations, but any and all comments on the piece (positive, negative, or ambivalent) or general correspondence about matters literary.


Cheers,


Pablo D’Stair



this letter to Norman Court
Pablo D’Stair




one




One of the girls working behind the counter—I think maybe the one who’d wrapped my burger, passed it to the guy working the register to set on my tray—she’d made sort of quick, flirting eye contact with me while I’d been in line, but she hadn’t looked up to see where I’d sat down or anything. It had been flirting, though, like she’d for a moment, anyway, thought I was attractive, was probably even having a little fantasy about me, who I might’ve been, what I might say, do to her, but it was the sort of thing she knew it’d be ruined by looking at me again. I kept my eye on her anyway, kind of, not even so much thinking about anything.

I’d taken a large bite, was taking a drink to help me swallow it, when some guy sat down right at my table, nodded at me, smiling and it wasn’t until I’d mashed the swallow down, caught my breath and was saying Can I help you? I realized it was the guy I’d stolen his wallet about two days before.

-Sixty, seventy dollars, it isn’t much money, he said

I coughed into my hand, had another quick sip of my drink, wiped the excess from my lip.

-It was forty dollars.

No point in playacting the innocent for this guy.

-Forty? He hardly seemed like he was paying attention, his saying Forty might not even’ve been a question.

-It was forty, forty-two, something. Look, it’s gone, it’s spent. And I’m sure you probably canceled your credit cards, everything, but I don’t bother about those and I don’t leave them around for people might take them.

-Why not?

I didn’t like this person, he looked like the clothes he was wearing and nothing else, that’s all somebody would describe him by if he went missing or robbed a bank or something.

-Because. I don’t know why not.

-You can’t sell them to people or something?

I shrugged, glanced over to the counter, behind it, the girl not looking up, still.

-Why would somebody buy a credit card someone’s just gonna cancel?

I knew there were reasons, knew what he was talking about, but I didn’t know anything about it, in a practical sense—this guy’d probably watched a movie or some news magazine, had all sorts of little ideas about everything he’d picked up here and there. Thing was, he could chit chat it up, whatever he thought he was doing, I didn’t care. There was obviously certainly nothing he could do about it, unless he was gonna shoot me, cut me down at the Wendy’s or whichever place this was. The wallet was gone, it’d been forty-two something dollars, it’d been two days ago. Even if he was tape recording me, spy camera glasses, I didn’t know what he thought, like he was being tricky.

-Well, forty dollars is even less money, then.

I nodded, back to my burger, the bite I took shoving wet bread up, wedging it up into the gum of the tooth I was missing and I dug at this with my tongue while he went on with his bit.

-How would you like to make some more money than that? How about we talk about that?

I sighed, vaguely interested—at least it wasn’t what I’d been thinking, wasn’t so banal.

-How about we talk about it? Fine, talk about it.

-I’ll pay you two thousand dollars to deliver a letter to my brother.
I grinned.

-A small fortune. But what else is it for?

-It’s not for anything else. Though, I suppose there’s the stipulation that you don’t tell him it’s from me.

My mind drifted to cinematic pretend, trying to weasel around how he’d be edging me into something I didn’t want into, but at the same time I didn’t so much care, really, because it was going to be either he gave me the money, all of it, in front or there wasn’t going to be anything about me delivering any letter to anybody and so I could just walk off if I got feeling something was askew, money in pocket, dust my hands of it all.

-What’s he going to do with me I give it to him? I’m suppose to have a chat with him or what?

-Just in case, just in case he asks you something. I just need you to put it into his hand, personally, that’s the only important thing, no reason you have to say a thing to him after that, but just in case.
I ate my last bite, the girl wasn’t even behind the counter anymore so I did a phony stretch to see was she maybe wiping down some table but she wasn’t anyplace, was in back, employee toilet or something.

-And so how would this letter have gotten to him somebody didn’t steal your wallet?

He chuckled, very real chuckle, said he didn’t know, he’d been thinking about it all for awhile.

So it was something, it wasn’t normal, not like he could mail it from a pretend address —send it to a hotel inside another envelope, little note asks them to send it along so that the postmark is someplace strange — nothing that could be left to chance or have a straight third party involved with.

It was pointless, making it all a little mystery—I wanted to know about the letter, I’d say Yes to the guy, take the two thousand, open the letter and have a look. I was no more certainly reliable than a hotel clerk, this little scene must’ve just given the guy a kick, this little intrigue, maybe he was full of it.

-And sort of mind reader, he out of nothing said I like you, I think you seem the sort of person who could do this and know that’s that.

-I seem that way, yeah?

-He nodded. Yeah.

-You know you have to give me that two thousand, that’s first, then

I take your letter. What’s your brother, gonna kill me I give it to him?

He shook his head, face a scrunch, a real genuine expression of it’s-nothing-like-that. In fact, I didn’t think it was—the suit of clothes I was striking the deal with, it was just too earnest for that, it was just something I’d never decipher and it was right, I really didn’t care and probably I would deliver the letter.

I said Alright, tilted my drink cup back, got an ice cube I broke and swallowed in two chews, looked over to the counter, behind the counter, the girl wasn’t there, still.


Pablo D’Stair is a writer of novels, shorts stories, and essays. Founder of Brown Paper Publishing (which is closing its doors in 2012) and co-founder of KUBOA (an independent press launching July 2011) he also conducts the book-length dialogue series Predicate. His four existential noir novellas (Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate; i poisoned you; twelve ELEVEN thirteen; man standing behind) will be re-issued through KUBOA as individual novella and in the collection they say the owl was a baker’s daughter: four existential noirs.

Dancing With Myself: PABLO D'STAIR interviews PABLO D'STAIR

Pablo D’Stair: Your supposed appreciation, even love, for the typographical error is a put on (begins coughing) Excuse me. (continues coughing)

Pablo D’Stair: Was that a question? I’ll take it to’ve been a question. No, it’s not a put on—or rather, you’re repositioning it to being a “love” or an “appreciation” when it’s actually neither of those things. It’s more banal—I just don’t mind them, they are there and they are meaningless. I detest, however—no, “detest” isn’t even strong enough a word—I…cannot fucking stand, we’ll just say I can’t think of a better word than “detest” at the moment…I cannot fucking stand any person—whatever the quality of their character else—who has any, even the most miniscule, problem with them, regardless of what rhetoric such a person might hide behind. It’s abominable, it’s horrific—it showcases all that is and all that can be wrong with a person-as-a-reader and goes a bit further toward an indicator of such a person’s true core character. The worst of the lot are those who “blame it on their education or jobs” or some such shit—this underhanded way of licking some hoity praise at themselves at the same time they’re putting down on something it’s just sick making. You know the people? “Well, I just spent so many years studying and having to refine papers and have had such a respect for diligence and language and etc etc that now if I see a typo my mind just locks down and I cannot go any further, even if I want to, it’s become an instinctive aesthetic response. Oh blah blah blah. Oh really it’s a sad thing, that I’m just so calibrated that my enjoyment of what I’m sure is a perfectly quaint attempt at writing must be destroyed. Pity me, oh pity me for not being able to lower myself into the realm of flaw that a moment’s caution or a dignified respect for linguistic and typographic cleanliness would have saved us all from.”

PD: Yes. (pause) Yes, fine. (pause) Wow, I have to say that I’m now terrified to actually ask you a question if that’s how you respond to something that wasn’t even a question.

PD: Wasn’t it?

PD: No. No it wasn’t. It was the start of what was going to be a connective series of statements which would have eventually become a question that was interrupted by a momentary bit of coughing—but apparently you’ve just a hair trigger when it comes to finding an opportunity to carry on like an obnoxious twat.

PD: What’s your first question?

PD: Do you have any cigarettes?

PD: (pause) Is that the question your statement I so rudely cut in on would have lead to?

PD: Christ, never mind. (coughs) You aren’t a fan of digital media—or rather, being fair, you don’t spend much time thinking about it and your appreciation for publishing and writing, in general, is primarily artifact based. You’re a physical book man, it’s imbued in your lowest psyche. What do you make of this news that—at least with regards to Amazon—digital books through Kindle or whatever the fuck it’s called for the first time have outnumbered the sales of print books? You must be mortified, yes?

PD: No. Well—Yes I’m mortified, but moreover I don’t care and really—really—in the final analysis it’s quite a good thing. See, I was most put off all the time by the Indie Scene’s insistence on embracing digital media as “their thing”, as The Alternative, the “thing that mainstream isn’t doing, so we’ll own it, force our identity onto it as principle, bloom with it—since they fail to see the value, we’ll nurture it to health and go into the future with it.” Ridiculously short sighted, you know? In fact, I’ve been longing for these digital devices to really take off and when they do to take Hep Publishing and it’s marketplace centered paradigm with them. It was a matter of time, you know? It always was a matter of time. Now the time is come and now what my problem is is that it’s taking Indie’s so long to extricate themselves—in fact mostly Indie’s’re even more than ever diving on board, all hands on deck, thinking it’s some El Dorado of giving them “a real chance to be in there with the big guys”. Fuck, even presses and writers who I’d’ve imagined wanted nothing to do with anything like “being like the big guys” have waddled over into the discussion. Instead of seeing this for what it is. Or better, for what it can be.

PD: What can it be?

PD: You wasted a question, there, because I was just going to barrel along, taking that question totally for granted, you know?

PD: I’m shit as an interviewer and you’re shit as a subject, so in the end it works out to all of our advantage if I burn through the allotted ten questions as quickly and inexpertly as possible. Don’t you think?

PD: Ha ha. Very nice. Are you even keeping track of where we’re at, question number wise?

PD: Are you?

PD: (pause) You know? Hmn. (pause) I’m not sure I should really be on your side, here. (pause) I mean, there’s cavalier recklessness that comes off as really clever and then there’s really just wasting questions. (pause) What it could be—returning to what you seem to be disinterested in having me go on about—is a re-imagining of what should be done with the print medium book—the exclusively print medium book—and who should be doing it. The combination of the continuing inexpensiveness of producing print books of increasing physical quality and of these books being available in a marketplace less and less interested in commoditizing the print medium is the perfect stepping off point for a reinvigorated Indie Literature that could make some real headway—non commercially—in increasing its audience simply by not going along with digital publishing’s expansion. The mistake—it’s always been a mistake, but is now a mistake made across the board manifest—of thinking that books made available through inexpensive, electronic medium equates to a rise in potential readership is very, very silly. It’s nothing trading with nothing for nothing with nobody watching. But, in pockets of early resistance among to the swell of digital literature among not-usually-interested-in-the-indie-scene readers there is a huge opportunity to get print books into willing hands—not in the commercial sense, or at least I hope nobody chooses to exploit it in that way as it could be exploited commercially to the further detriment of everyone—and this opportunity is pointed unique, right now, especially as the superficial quality of indie books, the artifacts themselves, are at a point they can so beautifully and inexpensively easily be made—I take the quality of the work for granted, you know? A huge step forward could be made in breaking the ill informed stereotype that “Indie books are lesser quality and you can tell by looking at them”—the chance is just there for the plucking and the fact that there is—though many still don’t think it—an incredibly erudite and eager reading audience who would adore the usual Indie Scene ‘alternatives’ if they would be presented it as an actual alternative—in how they receive it and what is it, what it represents—and these readers would love to “Get into the literary discussion” by discovering that the classic, print medium of books is offering itself in a non-monetized way, seeking earnest discussion and nothing else. That is, even amongst Leisure Books readers, Harlequin readers, Beach Read toss away folks, this more intimate dialogue with literature is still what readers want.

PD: (lights cigarette) I let you get that all out of your system, alright? But now I have to point out that No, it isn’t what readers want. Give-it-away-free or don’t is totally irrelevant, so I won’t touch that pointless rhetorical round and round—but No, no people do not want to discuss books, not like you mean, anyway. They want to tell each other if they liked the books they read, they want to have fun, amongst friends, dissecting the books they read to no consequence—yes—but people who truly want to discourse on them are a selective breed and they have been discussing and dissecting and dialoguing, forever—they have journals for that, hierarchies, it’s a fucking art form and a fucking industry in itself. And neither of those truths are negative. You—tell the truth—just so desperately “want on board with the dissertation lot” because you’ve convinced yourself that’s what you want for your work—you want to be talked about, discussed interviewed, inspected and as you don’t have the wherewithal to but in the miles to get in with the writers who would be worthwhile interview partners for Bill Moyer you are trying to substitute casual readers into their position, trying to prop up someone who doesn’t give a shit about the theoretical or rhetorical abstractions of your personal literary into the façade of someone who really does have a deep investment into the nuance and “purity of art”—don’t you have to admit that?

PD: What do you mean “convinced myself that’s what I want”?

PD: What do you mean what do I mean?

PD: Oh fuck off with that. Just…what do you mean?

PD: When did this shift come about in you, man? When did you all of a sudden want to chit-chat with any stranger about your work—before, all the time before, while no you weren’t about the money, what you were about was just writing and maybe getting it to people. And look, I’m all for your wanting to “only get it to interested people” and your wanting “some way to track if a book is being actually read”—that’s all good and it should be brought a little more to the forefront, maybe, a subjective forefront—but when did it become about your having to personally talk to people? You never wanted that and then—Presto Chango— it’s all you prattle on about, so far to the point you name it as philosophical necessity for Writers capital W, not even just for your personal satisfaction.

PD: That, by the way, only counts as one question. And to answer: it isn’t “all about me talking to them”, me, or any writer, talking to them as stipulation for getting the book is just the only way to best assure future dialogue starts. I recognize this as something not everyone will dig and that can come off as bullshit—whether or not I say “it isn’t about wanting praise”, that “it’s about wanting to know any and all reactive thought to my work” I know it can boil down in the eyes of anyone to “Yeah, but it’s about you, you want to be the focus, not have the work be the focus.’ But the work is going to go off where it’s going to go off after the initial trading hands—me-to-reader or publisher-to-reader or whatever—the idea is to reset the paradigm, to say, definitively, that what is desired of a readership is not “the purchase of the book” and not even “JUST the reading of the work” (I need to emphasize that ‘just’—quiet, interior, personal reaction that is never shared is equally as valuable, if not more so, than conversation, but that is something that cannot be tracked or ever known so for all intents and purposes is an abstraction and is an abstraction I think it is silly and ill advised to assume is happening often, if ever) but what is desired, as exchange, as marketplace, is “giving life to a secondary expression of the work in a continuing—even sporadically and on other subjects—discussion referencing back to the work”. What literature is to a writer and what literature is to a reader are two wildly different things and always will be—what I think should happen is a kind of concerted effort to build a middle ground, an Esperanto, a place where the work—even if there is some construction, even artifice, to the method of discussion—is approached on equal—and appropriately equal—footing by both parties, author and reader. Reader-to-reader talk is wonderful, writer-to-writer talk is wonderful, but writer-to-reader talk, without some consciously understood admissions of the distance between the two and a concerted effort at a method to allow the interaction to have meaning, is worthless. A writer, when talking about someone else’s work, they are just a reader—it’s reader-to-reader, you know?—but if it’s their work being discussed, they need to find a way to break from looking at it as writer-to-reader discussion, they need to acquiesce that they, at best, are approaching their own work as “equivalently foreigner” as any other random reader and, probably, are impaired in their ability to interface with their work without it being filtered through the unassociated reader’s reactions.

PD: Jesus. (pause) So, the way you make it equal is “the Reader is talking about the writer’s book” but “the Writer is only discussing the reader’s reaction”—the writer admits they are no authority and to further place themselves away from their work they can only discuss, really, the response to the work—not argue with it, but have to take the response as meaningful, as inviolate, just as the reader is expected to take their book. Is that the thing?

PD: (pause) I think so. (pause) Yes. (pause) Yes, I think so. (pause) Why aren’t you saying anything?

PD: Because, come on, it obviously doesn’t even fucking make sense to you. It obviously doesn’t, man. (coughs, lights new cigarette) You used to just write—never published a thing, didn’t even think about it, commercial or otherwise. Remember that? All those novels so passionately written—some by hand even, some partially on a typewriter—and then a final, neat copy printed out and you’d hole punch it and go to the store to get those binder clasps you liked and put it all together and that was that. I admired you, then. I think that’s really admirable and I think that everything you’ve done since then has been a step down a long path of blah and run-of-the-mill, at best, neurotic, anit-art propounding at worst . Don’t you ever wish you’d never published and definitely that you’d never learned of self-publishing and all?

PD: (pause) Yes.

PD: Good. (coughs) Good. And I’ll tell you, I think your shame is apparent in your current work—it isn’t even as disguised as you think it is, you know? You think in your work that you’re disguising elements of yourself that you’re working through etc., but your real disguising is of the shame you feel that you can’t think about “just writing” anymore—it has to be Printed up, even five copies, you know? You have lost touch with the entity of literature, the personal tension between consciousness and unconsciousness you philosophize about so endlessly. You’re reduced to self-consciousness filtering through conscious attempts at self-effacement. (stubs cigarette, lights new cigarette) Remember when you were a writer?

PD: (pause) Yes. (motions for cigarette)

PD: That’s the ten. (lights cigarette, hands it across) Eleven actually. I just wanted to give you opportunity for a somewhat dignified curtain line.

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