Incendiary Lit

 A quote from David Mamet’s essay “Hearing the Notes That Aren’t Played” about a certain trend/type of writing.

 Yes, it is true that life would be better if we were all a little kinder, and it is true that paint splattered in the air will fall to the ground. Both are true,but who would have suspected that they were notable?

which reminds me of a little selection from “James Dickey’s Dream” by David Kirby:

…………………….that makes me think of the remark
Jane Smiley made about how much better it would be

if American literature had sprung from Uncle Tom’s Cabin
instead of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
and Roy Blount, Jr.’s reply that that’s like saying
it would be better for people to come from heaven
than from sex.

Why? The two quotes are related, but I flipped through House on Boulevard Street like a madman til I found the quote which is follow (and preceded) by the idea of mimicry and homage. Coincidence? Heck yeah. But probably influenced by little memory ticks from studying the (Kirby) poem.

And now for something completely different. (borderline nsfw, but in a good way)

I’m working on an essay, just, you know, because, and I’m only half-remembering a Vonnegut quote about the two types of writers. One of them he called “bangers” I’m pretty sure, but essentially what he was saying was that some writers mentally edit each line over and over again before they’ll let it touch the page, while others will just write-write-write then spend a lot of time on the editing process. You can’t half-quote or summarize someone in a halfway decent essay, so I turn my search over to you, sentient beings of the internets. That series of tubes. Google was unable to satisfy my search. I feel like a hologram suddenly popped out of R2D2 “Help me internet surfers, you’re my only hope.” I believe the essay was in either Palm Sunday or Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons, because I have a distinct memory of reading the quote at work at Red Oak on a break, then re-reading the essay by buslight as I bumped and jostled my way home, eastward in the darkness. But, I could’ve sworn it was Li-Young Lee who wrote “the halved-apple faces of owls” when really it was Amy Hempel. In my defense, my memory of reading that line as I walked into the Singing Hills kitchen at 5:00 to get the restaurant ready to open was indeed correct, it was merely the book that I had wrong, having read both Reasons to Live and Rose in the same week.

So if anyone happens to know the quote I’m talking about, I’ve been scouring both books and haven’t found the quote so I’m beginning to think maybe it was in an unrelated essay, or, gasp, could possibly be an entirely different author. I hope not, though, because I’ve got it in my head that it was K, and I’d hate to be wrong about that.

“The opposite of love is not hate, it is indifference.” -Elie Wiesel.

This can be applied to atrocities such as Darfur, or to why Sarah Johnson didn’t clap when you got a touchdown. Remember this when you’re writing your arch nemeses, your evil counterparts,  wicked women, whatever. If you want the character to really, really get someone’s goat (what are we, in haiti here? Where does “get someone’s goat” come from even? [checked, no one knows for sure, could be from a french phrase which meant to take someone’s livelihood, or it could be about race horses, but entymology on the internet again illudes me!]) you gotta (remember where this started? Getting someone’s goat with indifference for those with too short of attention spans for my meandering blogging) almost give them the silent treatment. Make them really not care about the main character’s efforts or what they say or anything. In the human psyche, that is much more of a devastating blow then to have someone think you’re so important that they obsess over what you’re doing, like a good, ego-boosting arch nemesis.