234
PARTISAN REVIEW
frequently, I've noticed, an endearing trait in a person. And
disarming, at the very least.
So
now you know I want to be liked.
Is that so. terrible?
Or
unique? As I said, I could get into some
explanatory literary criticism as to why I no longer like,
or
read
Beckett
or
Nabokov, but I don't really want to. That's true. Why
should I? (For that matter, there are writers, like Vonnegut and
Hesse fOr example, whom I can stand even less than Nabokov
and Beckett.) The only reason I brought them up was because
someone had mentioned one of them in connection with the first
sentence of my book. Now, if this guy had said, "That sounds
like P.C. Wodehouse," that would have been O.K.,
or
Trollope,
or
Dostoyevsky
...
or
Tolstoy, my god! But Beckett, Nabokov.
(Wodehouse and perhaps even Trollope might sound provoca–
tive in the same sentence with these others but I'm going to let
that stand, without explanation
or
defense, although I assure
you I could explain and defend. But I'm not going to. No.)
What's wrong with "Today I feel like I'm dying"? The
sentence is perfectly O.K. "Today I feel like I'm dying," and that
day when I wrote it the sentence was O.K., and it's still O.K., but
because Beckett
or
Nabokov said it, it, (the sentence) suddenly
became literature. No. Literary, not Literature.
So
I can't use it.
The next sentence was:
Nothing serious, I mean, just that I didn't get much sleep,
and I went on to say,
that, plus I have a hangover. I got about two hours sleep. The
doorbell jolted me out of an erotic dream.
The doorbell jolted me out of an erotic dream.
Jolted doesn't sound right. Erotic dream doesn't sound
right. If I was talking to myself,
or
to you, would I say, "The
doorbell jolted me out of an erotic dream?" What would I say?
"The doorbell woke me up. I was having a dirty dream." (Why
equate erotic with dirty? I don't, really.) Anyway.
When I went to the door, no one was there. I couldn 't fall back
to sleep. I thought, I'll gel up and do some work. Might as
