Literature Then And Now
I have another charming and classy Bad Sex piece on Nerve. The editors published it on the holiday to try to prevent people from knowing the truth: That a woman once brought me to orgasm by comparing me positively with a dead literary critic. Such are the memories I'm currently trying to exorcise with my newfound enthusiasm for fiction writing.
Among the 17 of you readers who've stayed with me through this difficult year, maybe half of you care, but this really has been a time of great revelation for me. That persona that I put on during the McSweeneys years of my life was fun at times and I never got totally consumed by it, but its maintenance was a burden, particularly because the whole experiment didn't turn out that well. Nonetheless, I've emerged a better writer. Others may feel differently, but in my mind I know I've had a minor awakening, and it's been a long time since one of those for me.
Since New Year's, I've finished three stories, and today I did an outline of a fourth. Some of these pieces are better than others, but they all combine the character-based, simply written narratives that I developed when I was a reporter with the bitter satire that came along later. Even if most of these stories don't get published, and I hope they do, it's been a fulfilling intellectual experience for me. Plus I've had fun. Isn't our individual fulfillment all that matters in the world besides helping the victims of the tsunami? My example will inspire the world. And to think I didn't even have to receive plastic surgery on national television!