Q. Do you have credentials that qualify you as a writer?
A. No. As far as being a master of anything, I hold an MBA degree, not an MFA degree. However, I have heard, spoken, read, and written English for nearly sixty years now. I guess you’d say I am a native speaker and there’s no question it’s my language. I recognize it immediately every morning when I pick up the Wall Street Journal.
Q. Are you a full time professional writer?
A. No. But neither was William Carlos Williams. He was a doctor. In fact, a pediatrician. And his short story The Use of Force is one of the best I have ever read. Probably because it came on such good authority. William Carlos Williams didn’t have to look far for material. Material came to him. He didn’t have to pull a story out of his ass. I doubt if he ever required a prompt from anybody either.
Q. If I’m not mistaken, you sound like you might have an attitude.
A. Who doesn’t have an attitude?
Q. Good point.
A. And, for that matter William Faulkner didn’t start out as a professional writer either. To hear him tell it in his famous interview with Jean Stein in 1956, he was a self-admitted bum. “I’m a vagabond and a tramp. I don’t want money badly enough to work for it.” So Faulkner took to hanging around the hotels and bars in New Orleans and happened to cross paths with Sherwood Anderson. Spending their afternoons and evenings together eating and drinking, he saw that Anderson only paused to write in the morning. Faulkner “decided that if that was the life of a writer, then becoming a writer was the life for me.” So, he wrote his first book, Soldiers Pay and in several weeks he chanced to meet Anderson’s wife on the street. “Sherwood says that he will make a trade with you,” she said. “If he doesn’t have to read your manuscript, he will tell his publisher to accept it.” And the rest is history as the saying goes.
Q. I’m not sure how to respond to your subtle brand of passive aggression.
A. Let’s just summarize things. I am rather comfortable with my qualifications. Despite the fact that I am neither a pediatrician, nor a bum.
Q. Do you intend to make a living writing?
A. Certainly not. Last time I heard, even a “successful” literary title only sells 5,000 copies. 10,000 copies would be a grand slam. Considering the cheap price of books (and the expensive price of agents) that doesn’t sound like a living to me.
Q. You know, you can be quite an asshole.
A. I do it without trying. And by the way, somewhere recently (although I am not prepared to give you a citation) I read that Joyce Carol Oates advises aspiring writers not to count on making a living writing. Be content to pursue it as an avocation, she says. And her students made it into Princeton! So, making a living, no. However, I do intend to be published. And do you think Joyce Carol Oates is being sincere there? Some people might mistake that for an attitude. To me it sounds self-serving considering how long she’s been taking up space.
Q. Well Joyce Carol Oates is quite the authority.
A. Yes, and so were William Carlos Williams and William Faulkner.
Q. And by the way, you seem to know a thing or two about attitude.
A. Now you’re taking me the wrong way.
Q. I do appreciate your making time for this interview.
A. De rien.
Q. Excuse me.
A. De nada.
Q. Are you trying to be cryptic?
A. Ever heard of Berlitz?