I Think You're Totally Wrong (31 page)

DAVID:
Ian Hamilton was a British biographer and editor. A friend came up to him and said, “You know, all this drinking we always do—I'm not sure I really even enjoy it anymore.” Hamilton said, “Enjoy it? Whoever said you were supposed to enjoy it?” I love that line. It's a very British way of saying no matter what you do you're fucked.

CALEB:
You love to say that, that we're fucked. “We die and so therefore we're fucked.” That's your thing. You and I aren't that fucked.

DAVID:
We're back now to the Khmer Rouge?

Silence
.

DAVID:
But the drinking, I mean. Do you get pretty lit at these social—

CALEB:
Like tonight, you mean?… Remember when some politician said corporations are people?

DAVID:
Romney.

CALEB:
Corporations
are
people. Microsoft employs ninety thousand.

DAVID:
Corporations are populated by millionaires.

CALEB:
Would you rather live in a country with corporations and millionaires? I've been to places without either. They suck.

DAVID:
I see your point, but corporations have been given—

CALEB:
Capitalism is two restaurants in a place that can support only one. The restaurant that provides the freshest, tastiest food for the best price and with the best service will
survive, and the restaurant that serves crap will die. And that's how it should be.

DAVID:
No one's arguing for the end of capitalism. Even Norman Goldman.

CALEB:
Yeah, well, Goldman and Limbaugh cancel one another out.

DAVID:
Hardly.

CALEB:
Both are wrong.

DAVID:
You actually go out of your way to listen to talk radio?

CALEB:
I'm in the car at least an hour a day, taking the girls to school, to day care, going to the health club, running errands, and that's all I listen to.

DAVID:
What do the kids want?

CALEB:
Music. I'm a dictator when I drive. As they get older, they'll make more noise.

DAVID:
I promise you, you won't be listening to talk radio anymore.

CALEB:
They already have “princess” disease.

DAVID:
In the sense of wanting to dress up as princesses?

CALEB:
In the form of wanting to be treated like princesses.

DAVID:
Those three girls are pretty cute.

CALEB:
We went to Disneyland. I call the experience the closest I've ever been face-to-face with evil. They could get rid of Guantánamo and make terrorists spend a day in Disneyland—they'd talk.

DAVID:
It was pretty painful? The one in LA?

CALEB:
Doors open at ten a.m. We get there a little before, and I'm surprised: the line's not so bad. Terry's pregnant with Kaya. Ava's almost four and Gia's two. Two and under are free, but we still pay two hundred bucks for two adults and
a kid. That's a living monthly wage in Thailand. We go in to Disney Village: mountains and oceans of people. The gates to Disneyland won't open until eleven. We have two kids dying for Disneyland, and they want every toy they see in every store. Mickey Mouse puzzle: eighteen bucks. Lion King figure: six bucks. We die a slow death for one hour. Eleven a.m. approaches, people line up, the girls are going nuts, we finally get in at maybe quarter after eleven, and every ride is jammed. We start at the Snow White adventure, wait fifteen minutes, sit down for the ride, and then we come out and keep doing it for another eight hours. Line, ride, line, ride, line, ride, we get done, and Terry turns to me and says, “That was fun. Let's come back tomorrow!”

DAVID:
Ouch.

CALEB:
You never went? You didn't take Natalie to Disneyland?

DAVID:
Almost, once.

CALEB:
Did Natalie want to go?

DAVID:
I was up for it. I'd put on my anthropological pith helmet and try to—wasn't it fascinating?

CALEB:
It's an odd study of the human animal. We had lunch at the Rain Forest Café (cruddy food at high prices), but they had beer. Terry says, “You get a beer. The kids are having a great time. It's not so bad, is it?”

Back at Khamta's house
.

CALEB:
The opening of
Still Life with Woodpecker
: “Albert
Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether to kill yourself or not.” Tom Robbins then says, “There
is
only one serious question. And that is:
Who knows how to make love stay?
Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”

DAVID:
“Who knows how to make love stay?”

CALEB:
That gets to something.

DAVID:
No, it doesn't. That takes Camus and turns him into Rod McKuen. That's terrible.

CALEB:
The Robbins line reminds me of William Gass's “Politics … for all those not in love.” Both are getting to the same place.

DAVID:
The only reason Robbins is a romantic is he's bedded more women than Sinatra.

CALEB:
I partly agree with you about Robbins. Too many talking spoons.

DAVID:
(strumming the guitar)
I'd now like to sing some songs I've written.

CALEB:
You're a musician?

DAVID:
No. I wish.

CALEB:
There's a comedian inside you dying to escape.

DAVID:
Oh, he's escaped.

CALEB:
You know, when you read my first novel, for class, you compared it to
The Stranger
. My narrator describes childhood, going to Sunday school, and a teacher tells him, “In heaven, when you fall, an angel will catch you.” I
close the paragraph by saying, “My childhood must have been wonderful.” And you compared this detachment, I had thought positively, to Camus: “Mother died today, or maybe it was yesterday.”

DAVID:
I did mean it as praise, but compared to
The Fall
,
The Stranger
is a slog.

CALEB:
I love when the warden shows Meursault the cross and tells him that every prisoner, before execution, breaks down and weeps. Meursault calls bullshit, sending the warden into a rage. Meursault's a sociopath, incapable of feeling guilt or joy in the lives of others, indifferent and malleable, willing to go along with his surroundings. The novel satisfies my X factor.

DAVID:
To me, it's all so obvious what Camus is doing and saying in
The Stranger
. You get it on about page twelve. I've tried to teach
The Fall
many times, and most students hate it. They literally throw the book across the room. Maybe it's a limitation of my aesthetic: basically, the only thing I really love is listening to people think really well about existence for 120 pages. What else is worth my time?

CALEB:
The Stranger
ends: “… they shall greet me with howls of execration.” In another translation the title is
The Outsider
, and it ends with “cries of hatred.”

DAVID:
That's terrible.

CALEB:
It's a more literal translation of
“cris de haine.”

DAVID:
“Howls of execration” is so beautiful.

CALEB:
For the
Nervous Breakdown
, I wrote a comparison: “Tao Lin's
Richard Yates
vs. the 2006 Dodge Caravan Owner's Manual.”

DAVID:
Do you own one?

CALEB:
Terry does. The manual kicks Tao Lin's ass.

DAVID:
Maybe envy is a young man's disease. Of course I want my work to be admired—be as famous to the world as I am to myself, as a teacher of mine (the same woman who told me the Toni Morrison anecdote) once said—but I'm so busy I literally don't have time for it. The title essay of a book Stanley Crouch wrote was a lengthy critique of
Black Planet
: he thought I needed to write more about being a Jew in America, or something like that. He got [David's former UW colleague] Charles Johnson to keep faxing me things to try to get my dander up, but I didn't have any interest. That book was years in the past by then.

CALEB:
I'm a nobody. I've got nothing. I'd like to take the high road, though, and say that I don't. How am I diminished by the success of others? When I was single, did it bother me that other men dated fantastic women? When I
played basketball with Nate Robinson or Jamal Crawford [NBA players who grew up in Seattle] or played music with fantastic musicians, I was aware of my inferiority. I want to be better, but I like the challenge. Being on the same court or stage improved my skills. I'd rather be the worst player on the court; my own game will rise. Reading high-intellect writing has the same effect. I did get a kick out of Eric Lundgren's two-star review of
Reality Hunger
on Amazon.

DAVID:
Let's pull back and look at the thing from afar: What are we doing here over this long weekend? Are you in some sense seeking validation, approval, manuscript appraisal, career counseling? I'm seeking in a way the opposite. I'm seeing if you can undermine me, so I can restart my engine. Feel free to offer devastating or semi-devastating critiques of me and/or my work.

CALEB:
If you're looking for a critique,
Remote
is probably my least favorite.

DAVID:
Ooh, really? I still like that book a lot.

CALEB:
What else? The Spider-Man thing in
How Literature Saved My Life
and the chapter in
Reality Hunger
when you do little responses to other people's books. Your collage books read like
Esquire
's “Dubious Achievements.”

DAVID:
I gotta stop you. That is so ridiculous.

CALEB:
Good bathroom reading, doctor's office reading.

DAVID:
Ha ha.

CALEB:
What you consider velocity means quickly skip one paragraph for the next; it lacks the feeling of being in a book. A good novel gets progressively more interesting. Your books lack this momentum and acceleration; the first
ten pages are as good as the last ten. To you, there may be structure, but you could almost read
Reality Hunger
backward and get the same impression.

DAVID:
I don't know what to say. You don't have a clue how to read my work.