It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way- in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.
No, that has too much of an essence to it. I don’t like it, I can write something better. In fact, I feel that today I can write a far, far better opening than I have ever written before.
Try Again, John.
When Gregor Samsa awoke from troubled dreams one morning, he found that he had been transformed in his bed into an enormous bug. He lay on his back, which was hard as armor, and when he lifted his head a little, he saw his belly – rounded, brown, partitioned by archlike ridges – on top of which the blanket, ready to slip off all together, was just barely perched. His numerous legs, pitifully thin in comparison to the rest of his girth, flickered helplessly before his eyes.
Damnit, that’s just too weird. That would never get published. Who turns into a bug anyways? That lacks certain credibility. Maybe I could turn that into some sort of allegory about modernity. No, I could never pull that off. I like the weird angle though, what can I do about that. Maybe I’ll write something, where the human stays human.
Listen:
Billy Pilgrim has come unstuck in time. Billy has gone to sleep a senile widower and awakened on his wedding day. He has walked through a door in 1955 and come out another one in 1941. He has gone back through that door to find himself in 1963. He has seen his birth and death many times, he says, and pays random visits to all events in between.
Whoa. Maybe acid is not the best drug to abuse when you need a clever story line. It works for the late nights working on the Enquirer, but I want to be a real writer, not a forth-rate hack writing for a trash magazine picked up by old ladies with far too many cats. What will be my legacy? Maybe poetry. I liked poetry in college.
I was by the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff – and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside too, I’d duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I’d let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my Glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land.
I don’ know, I’m not a poet. I need to think of my motivation. My job keeps me in the minor luxuries that I could ask for, and there is nothing to be wanted in my love life…It was that telegram that got me thinking about posterity, about my legacy. Maybe I could write about that.
Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don’t know. I got a telegram from the home: “Mother deceased. Funeral tomorrow. Faithfully Yours.” That doesn’t mean anything. Maybe it was yesterday.
No, no, I can’t write about her yet, it is too soon. I just fall into writing like a second-grader, and that will never establish me as a literary force. I want to be remembered for ages, as the greatest writer that (Who?) ever lived! Hahahahaha.
Or maybe, I’ll just keep the job. The world needs to know about batboy and the other curiosities that abound in the world. It just leaved me empty inside, and I cannot look my friends from college in the face if we were ever to run into each other again. Maybe this is just my fate, and it is true that …
I am a sick man…I am a wicked man.
Oh, shit, I think I have it; I can be the Misanthrope of my age? Who better to chronicle our generation than one who knows the total underbelly of society? Maybe my job could pay some dividends. All right, now all I need is a plot.
Thanks/Sorry
Camus
Vonnegut
Kafka
Nabokov
Dickens
Dostoevsky
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