An
Open Letter to Jack Kerouac, An
Open Letter to Dave Eggers, An
Open Letter to JK Rowling, An
Open Letter to Cormac McCarthy, A
Recent Interview with Jack Kerouac, An
Open Letter to Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Dear Tom,
How are you? I am fine.
I must say, though, I’m a little miffed you haven’t answered my letter
of the 25th in which I inquired about apparent inconsistencies
between the “gangbang” scene in your book, Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test, and the one in Hunter S. Thompson’s, Hells Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga. Something tells me (and it’s the Hells Angels
book) that the rape scene didn’t take place at Ken Kesey’s ranch in La Honda as
your book maintained, but at another party attended by the Hell’s Angels and
not the Merry Pranksters. I’m not upset
though. It was rude of you not to return
my letter, but I understand why you would shy away from such a sensitive
topic. You probably assumed that after
forty years no one would catch your mistake, or perhaps you thought no one
would waste valuable time on so trivial a matter. Well, you were wrong!
So.
What’s new? Still wearing those
white suits?
Oh, I know what I wanted to ask
you. Do you remember that famous spat
you had with John Updike, Norman Mailer, and John Irving? You know, you made the argument in your
famous 1973 essay “Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast” that literary or
imaginative fiction was dead, and you championed the rise of New Journalism to
replace it. They called you names. You called them your “three stooges.” Whatever happened with that? Did you guys ever make up?
To be honest, I never understood
what the problem was. Some of Mailer’s
best work could be classified as New Journalism and Updike’s fiction was so
boring it might as well have been true.
Then there’s Irving . You famously criticized one of his books by
pointing out a scene set along a real-life highway out in California or somewhere; you suggested that
he should, rather than suffocating under imagined contrivances, pull over to
the side of the road and write about the $20,000 Palomino horses that actually
reside at that location. I always
wondered what would have happened if he had taken your advice. How would he have weaved those horses into a
story about transvestite Belgian prostitutes who are also bears?
I suppose you know by now that
Updike and Mailer have been dead for several years. I hear Irving
is still alive. Why don’t you two get
together and hug it out? You might even
team up to write a book together.
Judging by each of your last few efforts, it couldn’t hurt. Am I right?
You guys might even finish that book about the Palomino horses. Just a suggestion.
By the way, how did that New Journalism thing turn
out? Has fiction become obsolete
yet? Seriously, I don’t know since I
only read books that are at least thirty years old. I just took a gander at the NY Times
bestseller lists, both fiction and nonfiction, and I can’t really tell by the
titles. Is The Lost Symbol reality driven?
What about Glenn Beck’s Arguing
with Idiots? I have to assume that
guy’s deeply in touch with reality. What
do you think?
On a related topic, I’m writing a
book right now that I think could crack the nonfiction top ten. It’s called Politics Shmolitics: Why Everyone is Dangerously Wrong but Me. It really is a devastating criticism of
everyone else. You’d like it. If that doesn’t sell, I figured I’d learn
from the bestseller lists. How about a
book in which right wing ideology liberates Vatican City from the papists? I’d call it Arguing with Lost Symbols.
Well, that’s all for now. Let me know if you want to buy any of my
ideas. As an elderly person, I imagine
your own well of creativity must be pretty close to all dried up by now, but I
still have, like, six ideas per day. John
Irving has already contacted me about that Vatican City idea. He wanted to know if I would mind dressing
the main character up in a bear suit.
I’m just saying…
Your Pal,
Purvis McGrew
Purvis McGrew
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