I am done. As of 6:00 this morning, I finished editing the last sentence. I knew I was done when I found myself spending a great bulk of time editing one letter in one word repeatedly. The last sentence is (and you will not get this out of context), "I drew pictures of myself." In my early-morning-up-since-three-not-enough-coffee-overediting-to-a-fault haze I couldn't decide if the sentence should be past or present tense. So I kept changing my mind and agonizing over literally one letter that would change "I drew pictures of myself" to "I draw pictures of myself." Finally I decided two things: 1) since the entire book was in past tense it made no sense to traumatize the reader with a present tense verb out of nowhere, and 2) I was seriously overediting. I also decided that it was time for another cup of coffee.
So there it is, children. Off to Agent Sarah! May she be kind. May she read it and say, "You, Genevieve, are done. This is a master piece. And that past tense verb at the end seals the deal. Here is a publisher, an ungodly advance, and a Starbucks gift card."
So what else is going on with me? I'm happy to start writing something else now, for one thing. The kids and I have been reading the Junie B. Jones series the last two evenings and having a great time. I have the absence of cabel television to thank for that. How am I romantically? Financially? Emotionally? My appetite, blood sugar level, and heart rate? Well, I have a storage bin of disposable lovers, money to burn, happiness aplenty, and the constitution and the body of a goddess. That's my official statement, which I have filed away and am prepared to deliver at the next family gathering I attend, where 50 people will all come up and ask how I'm holding together. And then when they walk away I will turn around and bang my head on their living room wall repeatedly.
But atleast the next time someone asks me about the book I will be able to say that it's in my agent's hands now. That I feel throughout my soul that it is truly done, no more changes. Right, Agent Sarah? Right? Pretty please? With Splenda on top? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Old bones over bars any day
It's official. I don't know how to be single yet. Last night one of my friends invited me out to a bar (by the way, I officially don't like bars) and I felt completely out of place.
Not in the way I felt out of place in high school - not like I was lower than everybody or less attractive or less witty. It's taken me up to this point in my life to get a truly sober perspective on people in a bar. None of us are all that superior, attractive, or witty. So I didn't feel out of place in a ugly-girl-in-a-room-of-prettier-girls kind of way. I felt more like a lamp in a swimming pool. I didn't work in there. You know, I stood there with a beer. Looked at the guitarists on stage who were good, but didn't play anything I could dance to, so I just tapped my foot. There were other drunk couples who danced awkwardly to music with no beat to it, which would have been amusing if seeing couples together didn't make me want to throw tiny cocktail umbrellas at them.
I felt much more comfortable at the cemetery I'd visited earlier that day. My friend Vicky (not the friend I went to the bar with) and I went to Holt Cemetery, which is a potter's field near City Park. It's where the jazz dude Buddy Bolden is buried in an unmarked grave, along with hundreds of other people whose families didn't have much money to bury them anywhere else.
To say that this place is not kept up well is a serious understatement. It's a mess. But that's what's so great about it. The grass isn't mowed on a regular basis, so it's too high. Some of the plots are covered in clover that's long enough to braid. The graves aren't in rows, they're just scattered everywhere, some right on top of each other. There will be a headstone and then less than a foot in front of it, a wooden cross with someone else's name scribbled in permanent marker.
The grave markers are wooden, cement, steel rods sticking out of the ground, and broken off pieces of plastic. The homemade ones have misspellings like "Bourn: 1923 Die: 1960." My favorite one had a misspelling and what seemed like an interesting story behind it. It said "Here lie my husbans" and then gave their names. Her husbands? She buried them together? One at a time, or both at once? There were "in loving memories" of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children and teenagers, their faded names on cheap pieces of anything. My favorite name was a World War One vet named Obadiah Wise.
The two most unusual things about this graveyard was - no. I take that back. The two creepiest things about this graveyard were the things that Vicky and I found lying on the ground. Oh, and the big, crumbly brick construction that appears to be an incinerator towards the back of the graveyard. I wish I had pictures to go with this. We're not sure that's exactly what it was. Neither of us have seen a crematorium before but if we had to bet money we were guessing that's what it was. Judging from the potato chips bags, water bottles, and cob webs inside of it, we guessed that whatever it was, it hadn't been used in a long time.
I just googled Holt to see if there was anything that confirmed our theory and I didn't find anything that mentioned it, but I found a much better description of the place:
"As you enter this graveyard through a ramshackle iron fence, your sweeping view of the cemetery will likely give you the impression of a grim forgotten burial waste land. There is no formal landscaping here at this time; bare dirt, mud clumps, and choking yellow weeds carpet this environment. Well and poorly tended plots intermingle. A narrow ditch of green water stretches the length of the Holt. Sometimes a bone works its way out of the ground as graves are re-dug for a second, third, or more burial in the same site. "http://www.examiner.com/x-17348-New-Orleans-City-Guide-Examiner~y2009m7d23-Visit-and-help-New-Orleans-Holt-Cemetery
And yeah, we found bones. That was the creepy thing. Half of a pelvis, a rib, and what we guessed was a thin arm or leg bone. I wasn't disgusted by it or anything. I was sad that whoever that was had unceremoniously popped out of the ground like that. But at the same time, decomposing is a rather undignified business whether one is in or out of the ground.
The other thing we found was an old glass bottle, like the kind you find at an antique store that once held homemade medicine. Vicky picked it up and read the words on the side "Embalmer's Fluid."
At that point it was time to go.
There really was a sweetness to that place, though. The headstones were like handmade cards rather than store bought. There was a loved one's handwriting, trinkets left behind of the deceased, like stuffed animals and a crossing guard vest. There was a wild parrot that was flying around making all sorts of racket, and it made me remember the city's bizarre wild parrot population. It was morbidly magical, if that makes sense. Not without hope.
So I guess yesterday I felt more comfortable in dead ruins than among living, drinking people. Scene of me talking to some dude the next time I'm in a bar:
"What's your name?" he'll say.
"Genevieve."
"What do you do, Genevieve?"
"I tour graveyards looking for bones."
[grabbing his beer and moving on] "Later."
"What? You don't want my phone number? Hey! It's cool. Want to see an incinerator?"
Ps- Yep. It's an old crematory oven. Just saw a picture of it online.
Not in the way I felt out of place in high school - not like I was lower than everybody or less attractive or less witty. It's taken me up to this point in my life to get a truly sober perspective on people in a bar. None of us are all that superior, attractive, or witty. So I didn't feel out of place in a ugly-girl-in-a-room-of-prettier-girls kind of way. I felt more like a lamp in a swimming pool. I didn't work in there. You know, I stood there with a beer. Looked at the guitarists on stage who were good, but didn't play anything I could dance to, so I just tapped my foot. There were other drunk couples who danced awkwardly to music with no beat to it, which would have been amusing if seeing couples together didn't make me want to throw tiny cocktail umbrellas at them.
I felt much more comfortable at the cemetery I'd visited earlier that day. My friend Vicky (not the friend I went to the bar with) and I went to Holt Cemetery, which is a potter's field near City Park. It's where the jazz dude Buddy Bolden is buried in an unmarked grave, along with hundreds of other people whose families didn't have much money to bury them anywhere else.
To say that this place is not kept up well is a serious understatement. It's a mess. But that's what's so great about it. The grass isn't mowed on a regular basis, so it's too high. Some of the plots are covered in clover that's long enough to braid. The graves aren't in rows, they're just scattered everywhere, some right on top of each other. There will be a headstone and then less than a foot in front of it, a wooden cross with someone else's name scribbled in permanent marker.
The grave markers are wooden, cement, steel rods sticking out of the ground, and broken off pieces of plastic. The homemade ones have misspellings like "Bourn: 1923 Die: 1960." My favorite one had a misspelling and what seemed like an interesting story behind it. It said "Here lie my husbans" and then gave their names. Her husbands? She buried them together? One at a time, or both at once? There were "in loving memories" of mothers, fathers, grandmothers, children and teenagers, their faded names on cheap pieces of anything. My favorite name was a World War One vet named Obadiah Wise.
The two most unusual things about this graveyard was - no. I take that back. The two creepiest things about this graveyard were the things that Vicky and I found lying on the ground. Oh, and the big, crumbly brick construction that appears to be an incinerator towards the back of the graveyard. I wish I had pictures to go with this. We're not sure that's exactly what it was. Neither of us have seen a crematorium before but if we had to bet money we were guessing that's what it was. Judging from the potato chips bags, water bottles, and cob webs inside of it, we guessed that whatever it was, it hadn't been used in a long time.
I just googled Holt to see if there was anything that confirmed our theory and I didn't find anything that mentioned it, but I found a much better description of the place:
"As you enter this graveyard through a ramshackle iron fence, your sweeping view of the cemetery will likely give you the impression of a grim forgotten burial waste land. There is no formal landscaping here at this time; bare dirt, mud clumps, and choking yellow weeds carpet this environment. Well and poorly tended plots intermingle. A narrow ditch of green water stretches the length of the Holt. Sometimes a bone works its way out of the ground as graves are re-dug for a second, third, or more burial in the same site. "http://www.examiner.com/x-17348-New-Orleans-City-Guide-Examiner~y2009m7d23-Visit-and-help-New-Orleans-Holt-Cemetery
And yeah, we found bones. That was the creepy thing. Half of a pelvis, a rib, and what we guessed was a thin arm or leg bone. I wasn't disgusted by it or anything. I was sad that whoever that was had unceremoniously popped out of the ground like that. But at the same time, decomposing is a rather undignified business whether one is in or out of the ground.
The other thing we found was an old glass bottle, like the kind you find at an antique store that once held homemade medicine. Vicky picked it up and read the words on the side "Embalmer's Fluid."
At that point it was time to go.
There really was a sweetness to that place, though. The headstones were like handmade cards rather than store bought. There was a loved one's handwriting, trinkets left behind of the deceased, like stuffed animals and a crossing guard vest. There was a wild parrot that was flying around making all sorts of racket, and it made me remember the city's bizarre wild parrot population. It was morbidly magical, if that makes sense. Not without hope.
So I guess yesterday I felt more comfortable in dead ruins than among living, drinking people. Scene of me talking to some dude the next time I'm in a bar:
"What's your name?" he'll say.
"Genevieve."
"What do you do, Genevieve?"
"I tour graveyards looking for bones."
[grabbing his beer and moving on] "Later."
"What? You don't want my phone number? Hey! It's cool. Want to see an incinerator?"
Ps- Yep. It's an old crematory oven. Just saw a picture of it online.
Monday, March 29, 2010
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
That was good to get out. I think we all feel a little bit better now.
That was good to get out. I think we all feel a little bit better now.
KFKD vs. The Super Human
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.....(sips coffee)....grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....(scowls at the phone as it rings)...grrrrrrrrrrrrr-Safety and Security, this is Genevieve.
That's how my morning is going. I'm not feeling good about myself today, but I'm trying to keep it apart from work.
My boss lent me a coffee cup that says "super human" on it, with lots of exclamation points. I don't feel like an exclamation point, though I am tall like one, and I do exclaim things from time to time. I used to feel like a big question mark, but I don't feel like that so much anymore. Maybe I'm a period at the end of a statement, but I would like to think that I'm something more fluid and less static than a fixed point.
I'm a human drinking coffee. Not super, but not despicable either. Last night I ate a piece of pizza that had cabbage and barbecued pork on it. That was pretty despicable.
Anne Lamott talks about tuning into a radio station in her brain called KFKD, which streams all the most horrible thoughts about herself 24/7 without commercial interruption. KFKD, as you have probably guessed or already know if you've read Bird by Bird, stands for "K-FUCKED" because it's all of her fucked up thoughts about herself, and about her writing. Today mine is saying, "You're a lousy whore who just wants everyone to like you, even the ones who have no reason to. And now you have cabbage breath because you ate that pizza." I think it's interesting that KFKD would call me a whore when I've been celebate for quite a while now. Who the hell is running that station, anyway? Like all bullies, the DJ for KFKD has thrown an insult with a nugget of truth in it. I do want everyone to like me, and I keep thinking that if I just try hard enough I can make that happen. I guess everybody does that, huh? Maybe I do it to an extreme because I'm just learning about boundaries and healthy stuff like that, but maybe that does't make me entirely pathetic.
You're not super bad or super good. Just human. Drinking coffee. Keep coming back to that and get back to work, Cabbage Breath.
That's how my morning is going. I'm not feeling good about myself today, but I'm trying to keep it apart from work.
My boss lent me a coffee cup that says "super human" on it, with lots of exclamation points. I don't feel like an exclamation point, though I am tall like one, and I do exclaim things from time to time. I used to feel like a big question mark, but I don't feel like that so much anymore. Maybe I'm a period at the end of a statement, but I would like to think that I'm something more fluid and less static than a fixed point.
I'm a human drinking coffee. Not super, but not despicable either. Last night I ate a piece of pizza that had cabbage and barbecued pork on it. That was pretty despicable.
Anne Lamott talks about tuning into a radio station in her brain called KFKD, which streams all the most horrible thoughts about herself 24/7 without commercial interruption. KFKD, as you have probably guessed or already know if you've read Bird by Bird, stands for "K-FUCKED" because it's all of her fucked up thoughts about herself, and about her writing. Today mine is saying, "You're a lousy whore who just wants everyone to like you, even the ones who have no reason to. And now you have cabbage breath because you ate that pizza." I think it's interesting that KFKD would call me a whore when I've been celebate for quite a while now. Who the hell is running that station, anyway? Like all bullies, the DJ for KFKD has thrown an insult with a nugget of truth in it. I do want everyone to like me, and I keep thinking that if I just try hard enough I can make that happen. I guess everybody does that, huh? Maybe I do it to an extreme because I'm just learning about boundaries and healthy stuff like that, but maybe that does't make me entirely pathetic.
You're not super bad or super good. Just human. Drinking coffee. Keep coming back to that and get back to work, Cabbage Breath.
Friday, March 26, 2010
character sketches
I have decided to invent characters for no good reason. Just a little writing practice. These are meant to be ficticious so if you know someone with one of these names or you are someone with one of these names I apologize. As far as I know, I made you up.
Characters:
Lacy Rodriguez
Stormy Malone
Pete Fellows
Carmen Moreno
Biggie Bell (whose real name is Hank Short)
Melvin Gillespie
Babette Fink
Geneva Sinclair
Lacy Rodriguez is a data entry clerk who loves to jog and wishes that she could do it professionally. Someone asks her if that means she wants to be a runner in the Olympics and she says no, that she really would love to get paid just to jog through the park and wear short-shorts. Stormy Malone is an actress who is beginning to believe that her dog is the best man she has ever known. Pete Fellows has red hair, works in a tobacco shop, and is annoyed that people automatically expect him to be pleasant because his name suggests that he is. Carmen Moreno once auditioned for American Idol and has dreams about running over Simon's cat ever since he told her that her voice sounds like a rake in a garbage disposal. Biggie Bell is a trombone player who is in love with Carmen Moreno and dreams about running over her cat because it would give him a great excuse to talk to her. Melvin Gillespie wants to know what it's like to live outside of the country, but thinks he doesn't have enough money to travel. He doesn't realize that if he just stops buying Starbucks every morning he could easily save up for a trip. Babette Fink has worked at the bank for 25 years and has saved every picture that her children have given her. Geneva Sinclair is a romance novelist who recently gave up smoking and has found working on her car to be a wonderful distraction from the cravings because it really pisses her off.
Genevieve Cancienne loves her oddball, beautiful characters, and totally identifies with the guy who spends too much money on coffee.
Characters:
Lacy Rodriguez
Stormy Malone
Pete Fellows
Carmen Moreno
Biggie Bell (whose real name is Hank Short)
Melvin Gillespie
Babette Fink
Geneva Sinclair
Lacy Rodriguez is a data entry clerk who loves to jog and wishes that she could do it professionally. Someone asks her if that means she wants to be a runner in the Olympics and she says no, that she really would love to get paid just to jog through the park and wear short-shorts. Stormy Malone is an actress who is beginning to believe that her dog is the best man she has ever known. Pete Fellows has red hair, works in a tobacco shop, and is annoyed that people automatically expect him to be pleasant because his name suggests that he is. Carmen Moreno once auditioned for American Idol and has dreams about running over Simon's cat ever since he told her that her voice sounds like a rake in a garbage disposal. Biggie Bell is a trombone player who is in love with Carmen Moreno and dreams about running over her cat because it would give him a great excuse to talk to her. Melvin Gillespie wants to know what it's like to live outside of the country, but thinks he doesn't have enough money to travel. He doesn't realize that if he just stops buying Starbucks every morning he could easily save up for a trip. Babette Fink has worked at the bank for 25 years and has saved every picture that her children have given her. Geneva Sinclair is a romance novelist who recently gave up smoking and has found working on her car to be a wonderful distraction from the cravings because it really pisses her off.
Genevieve Cancienne loves her oddball, beautiful characters, and totally identifies with the guy who spends too much money on coffee.
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
I'm that chick who answers the phone
"Safety and Security, this is Genevieve."
"Hi, I need to pick up a new ID. Where are you guys located?"
"We're right between the hazardous materials dump and the morgue."
Silence on the other line.
"I mean, the laundry room."
"Oh ok, great."
This is not how my conversations generally go, but more rather how I would like them to go. I would like to tell people that my department is between the hazardous materials dump and the morgue because it is true and because it is more exciting than saying that we're around the laundry.
I've found time to write again. Saying this gives me the same sensation as splashing cool water on my face. You know, like when your face gets hot and cool water feels nice on it. No? You can't identify with that comaprison? Well, like I said, I've begun writing AGAIN, meaning I've been out of practice, meaning my writing skills are rusty. Rusty like bicycle chain left out in the rain. See what I mean?
Anyway, I need to write so that I can keep appreciating my job. When I answer the phone sometimes I'm tempted to say, "Safety and Security, this is Genevieve and I should be writing, but I need the money." But! Now that I'm writing early in the morning I come to work feeling calm because the writing is getting done. I'm not just that chick who answers the phone. I'm that chick who writes in the morning and THEN comes in to answer the phone. And directs people to the morgue.
And listen guys. Yes, I am addressing you directly. I am doing the LAST changes to my book before I ship it off to my agent for the LAST time. I'm counting on you guys to badger me about this. The next time I say, "Yeah, I heard back from my agent and she said it's great but that she thinks I should change everyone's last name and make the character's T-shirt green on page 107," please, please, pleasey-please tell me to write her back and say, "Nope. It's done." Because it is. I can't write this thing anymore. Time for a new book, a new anything. I have edited to the extreme. My fingers have fallen off. I am typing this with my front teeth.
I would also like to add that I really do like it at Ochsner. I would like to keep working here for a really long time. It's just that (sniff!) nothing compares to writing. This is around the time Sinead O'Connor should pop into your head because of that song, you know that song that she did, "Nothing Compares 2 U" and I'm pretty sure she did other songs and they were probably pretty good but that's the only one I know, which is sad because she had a beautiful voice and should probably be recognized for more and - DEAR GOD! I'm rambling!
See! I'm totally out of writing practice. Run on sentences everywhere! No point to this blog entry! No common theme to string it all together! Just nonsense about my agent's expectations and early 90's music. Don't worry, dear people. I'll work on this. The girl between the morgue and the hazardous materials dump is closer to the laundry than you think - THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!
Let's start over. Hi. I am your Payphone Vigilante for the afternoon. Can I interest you in an analogy or a witty sentence fragment? Splendid! Tune in next time after Genevieve's had a few days of writing vignettes to herself.
"Hi, I need to pick up a new ID. Where are you guys located?"
"We're right between the hazardous materials dump and the morgue."
Silence on the other line.
"I mean, the laundry room."
"Oh ok, great."
This is not how my conversations generally go, but more rather how I would like them to go. I would like to tell people that my department is between the hazardous materials dump and the morgue because it is true and because it is more exciting than saying that we're around the laundry.
I've found time to write again. Saying this gives me the same sensation as splashing cool water on my face. You know, like when your face gets hot and cool water feels nice on it. No? You can't identify with that comaprison? Well, like I said, I've begun writing AGAIN, meaning I've been out of practice, meaning my writing skills are rusty. Rusty like bicycle chain left out in the rain. See what I mean?
Anyway, I need to write so that I can keep appreciating my job. When I answer the phone sometimes I'm tempted to say, "Safety and Security, this is Genevieve and I should be writing, but I need the money." But! Now that I'm writing early in the morning I come to work feeling calm because the writing is getting done. I'm not just that chick who answers the phone. I'm that chick who writes in the morning and THEN comes in to answer the phone. And directs people to the morgue.
And listen guys. Yes, I am addressing you directly. I am doing the LAST changes to my book before I ship it off to my agent for the LAST time. I'm counting on you guys to badger me about this. The next time I say, "Yeah, I heard back from my agent and she said it's great but that she thinks I should change everyone's last name and make the character's T-shirt green on page 107," please, please, pleasey-please tell me to write her back and say, "Nope. It's done." Because it is. I can't write this thing anymore. Time for a new book, a new anything. I have edited to the extreme. My fingers have fallen off. I am typing this with my front teeth.
I would also like to add that I really do like it at Ochsner. I would like to keep working here for a really long time. It's just that (sniff!) nothing compares to writing. This is around the time Sinead O'Connor should pop into your head because of that song, you know that song that she did, "Nothing Compares 2 U" and I'm pretty sure she did other songs and they were probably pretty good but that's the only one I know, which is sad because she had a beautiful voice and should probably be recognized for more and - DEAR GOD! I'm rambling!
See! I'm totally out of writing practice. Run on sentences everywhere! No point to this blog entry! No common theme to string it all together! Just nonsense about my agent's expectations and early 90's music. Don't worry, dear people. I'll work on this. The girl between the morgue and the hazardous materials dump is closer to the laundry than you think - THAT DOESN'T EVEN MAKE SENSE!
Let's start over. Hi. I am your Payphone Vigilante for the afternoon. Can I interest you in an analogy or a witty sentence fragment? Splendid! Tune in next time after Genevieve's had a few days of writing vignettes to herself.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Caged narrator
It's been weeks. Haven't written a word. I'm beginning to narrate things. I'm tempted to pull people aside in the hallway at the hospital and begin telling them short stories, the character-driven kind where not too much happens but there's all of this beautfil imagery and whatnot and it would get mentioned in an obscure literary magazine that only wrters read where it would receive honorable mention.
Do I want to be that kind of writer? The kind that only other writers know about, or the kind that kids groan about when they find out they've got to read it in school? I don't think so. I think I'd like to be sensational. Someone who churns out a novel every year and a half, and writes the kind of books that people can't put down when they read in bed at night. Somewhere a woman will be reading in bed and her husband will say, "Don't you have to get up early tomorrow morning?" And she'll say, "I'm reading The Kinky Sex Mutant Wizard's Disco Inferno by Genevieve Rheams. It's sci-fi, fantasy, western, romance and autobiographical. I can't put it down!"
But damn it, I need to start getting up early again and writing. And sending stuff off! But until I get my ass in gear about getting published, I need to atleast let the narrator out of my head. I love my job here at Ochsner and everything, but there's no writing involved, I don't want to write on work time (like I am right now - eeek!), and my writer's voice is going so stir crazy that if I don't let her out, she's going to chew herself loose of her shackles. There will be no saving the poor medical students in the hallway when I corner them and demand that they listen while I recite Eudora Welty.
"Who is that?" they'll ask.
"She was one of the greatest southern writers of the 20th century. Won the Pulitzer Prize."
"Oh. Do you know any Dean Koontz?"
Do I want to be that kind of writer? The kind that only other writers know about, or the kind that kids groan about when they find out they've got to read it in school? I don't think so. I think I'd like to be sensational. Someone who churns out a novel every year and a half, and writes the kind of books that people can't put down when they read in bed at night. Somewhere a woman will be reading in bed and her husband will say, "Don't you have to get up early tomorrow morning?" And she'll say, "I'm reading The Kinky Sex Mutant Wizard's Disco Inferno by Genevieve Rheams. It's sci-fi, fantasy, western, romance and autobiographical. I can't put it down!"
But damn it, I need to start getting up early again and writing. And sending stuff off! But until I get my ass in gear about getting published, I need to atleast let the narrator out of my head. I love my job here at Ochsner and everything, but there's no writing involved, I don't want to write on work time (like I am right now - eeek!), and my writer's voice is going so stir crazy that if I don't let her out, she's going to chew herself loose of her shackles. There will be no saving the poor medical students in the hallway when I corner them and demand that they listen while I recite Eudora Welty.
"Who is that?" they'll ask.
"She was one of the greatest southern writers of the 20th century. Won the Pulitzer Prize."
"Oh. Do you know any Dean Koontz?"
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