Travis James Gasper

“She believes that sometimes, when the spirit overflows, people can speak in a language they themselves do not understand, the same language that angels speak.

She believes that the one-dollar boxes of Little Debbie cakes she buys most Sundays at this Fastrip are the best deal in town.

She believes that the Joplin Full Gospel Church, which departed the physical world approximately two minutes ago, is as much her home as her thirty-year-old Solitaire trailer.

She believes that the roar that fills the Fastrip as soon as the windows explode is one of the worst sounds she’s heard in all of her sixty years.

She believes that the sound of the screams of the two little boys next to her is even worse.

She believes that Ruben, though she can’t hear his shouts very well above the screaming and the roaring, is commanding them all to pass through a silver doorway by the potato-chip rack.

She believes that God has already chosen the time and place of your death before you are born.

Donna Barnes enters the cooler on her hands and knees.”

At the end of the Phaedrus, Plato has Socrates tell the story of the god Theuth, who, legend has it, invented the art of writing. When Theuth presented his new invention to the king of Egypt, he promised the king that it would make his people “wiser and improve their memories.” But the king disagreed, claiming that the habit of writing, far from improving memories, would “implant forgetfulness” by encouraging people to rely on external marks rather than “the living speech graven in the soul.” I think of Schopenhauer’s observation about the perils of excessive reading: Just as he who always rides gradually forgets how to walk, so he who reads constantly without pausing to reflect “gradually loses the capacity for thinking.”

“Such is the case,” said Schopenhauer, “with many scholars; they have read themselves stupid.”

-Roger Kimball

Wish I could have attended this class.

(Source: millionsmillions)

INTERVIEWER

Your first book was published, you won a prize and were more or less on your way. Did you begin to meet other writers?

MURAKAMI

No, not at all.

INTERVIEWER

You had no friends who were writers at that time?

MURAKAMI

None.

INTERVIEWER

And over time did you meet anyone who became a friend or a colleague?

MURAKAMI

No, not at all.

INTERVIEWER

To this day, you have no friends who are writers?

MURAKAMI

No. I don’t think so.

INTERVIEWER

Is there no one you show your work to when it’s in progress?

MURAKAMI

Never.

INTERVIEWER

How about your wife?

MURAKAMI

Well, I showed the first manuscript of my first novel but she claims she never read it! So she got no impression at all, I guess.

INTERVIEWER

She wasn’t impressed.

MURAKAMI

No. But that was the first draft and it was terrible. I rewrote and rewrote.

An article about Dr. Seuss, Faulkner, John McClane, and the awesome resilience of my father.