Postaday for January 10th: Call Me Ishmael. Take the first sentence from your favorite book and make it the first sentence of your post.
Call me Russel Wren. I like to steal. I stole my name, stole the heft and weight of it, and stole its meaning. I don’t know what it means. I don’t know what scholars say when they say my name to each other. I don’t read books. You can’t cross the same river twice, they say, and you can’t read the same book anyone else has ever read.
Have you read Thomas Berger? I have. He died last year. No one told me. I’d been checking the web for years, seeing if he’d written anything, or died. Neither, for years, and then I stopped. And then I wrote the above, and decided to check one last time. His last novel, ever, was ten years ago. My favorite is Who Is Teddy Villanova? That’s where I stole that line from.
Listen to me. I’m Jason Edwards, but call me Russell Wren. I’m a fictional character. I’m a bumbler stumbling from one made-up mystery to the next. I don’t read books because I am in books. Joel Porter died too. I didn’t know that, either. I met Joel in grad school, and his writing was exquisite.
Thomas Berger, Joel Porter, Percival Everett. A handful of writers who makes sentences I want to steal. Joel went crazy, or was already crazy, literally crazy, committed suicide, and I didn’t even know until two years later. And I want to steal his words? I do. I can’t, but I want to.
Percival Everett is still alive. I’d steal from him too if I could. “I will begin with infinity.” That’s the first sentence of Glyph.
Joel Porter was like David Foster Wallace, but readable. “I am seated in an office, surrounded by heads and bodies.” Infinite Jest, my ass. I never saved any of Joel’s stories. Maybe if I’m lucky I can find one in an old email. And steal it. Steal the weight and heft. DFW killed himself too, that coward. That overrated coward.
Thomas Berger died of old age. I’m going to die of old age. But call me Russel Wren. I’ll die of being forgotten about. Jason Edwards will not die of being forgotten about. He’ll never die because no one will even remember they’ve forgotten him.