Re: welcome matt, re: seymour/dying of the light
Tim O'Connor (oconnort@nyu.edu)
Fri, 26 Sep 1997 10:44:19 -0400 (EDT)
> first time around and i've already settled on doing the struggling writer
> bit. after all, you can't lose as a writer, can you? ;)
Garrison Keillor once ruminated on the radio about the absurd challenge
of being a writer. If writers were doctors, he said, most of their
patients would die in the waiting room. And I think he mentioned that
the writer's family would wonder if there were not a touch of insanity
going on, for anyone to choose that as a way of life.
Strangely enough, speaking of writers and struggle, Kurt Vonnegut has a
new novel out, and there is (I swear!) a connection here. I saw him
at Barnes and Noble on Monday. He was going to read, but it was so
crowded he only answered questions posed by a moderator and was
outrageously funny the whole time. He said that there was no comparison
between how the world was for writers when he started out, and how it
is now. He rattled off, in the book, a list of post-WWII writers,
including our pal JDS, and remarked that none of these people would have
a chance today, because the market has dried up so badly for their work.
At one point he remarked that he had calculated that only about 17% of
humanity was worth having around. (Remember, absent any body language
here, to take that as a deliberately cynical statement!) The moderator
asked him to define that 17%. Without missing a beat, he replied, "The
people here, of course!"
--tim o'connor