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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
This might be a half-baked misreading, but it seems that "I, Fatty" is more politically conscious (or maybe developed, or realized or whatever) than anything in your earlier books. There's nothing definite I can point to, I guess. It's a matter of contrast -- your last novel had the premise of a photo of George W. Bush's privates in the hands of couple of crackheads, which seems written in an entirely different mindset.
First off, nothing in my writing, for better or worse, is "conscious." That implies more choice, control and volume control than this particular writer possesses. That said, this happened to be a time in America when the archetypal moral giants running our life today -- self-righteous, Bible-clutching geniuses like John Ashcroft -- were in the first flush of cultural battles. Billy Sunday, who persecuted Fatty Arbuckle, and Sen. Rick Santorum share the same enlightened vision of humanity.
Ignorance was a tad more baldfaced back then. Rooming houses sported signs like "No dogs! No colored! No actors!" On the other hand, this was a time when heroin was legal -- manufactured by Bayer, marketed as "housewife's friend" and sold over the counter, leading to an epidemic of addiction among the most mainstream, upstanding members of society. The war on drugs was in its nascent phase -- America switched from smack to cocaine with Coca-Cola and assorted other cocaine-based tonics in the early decades of the last century.
The "war on moral degeneracy," i.e., the culture wars, of which Arbuckle was the first and most public example, drove the studio heads, who were savvy enough to sniff anti-Semitism beneath the right wing's concern for protecting America's youth from moral corruption, to invite Christian fundamentalist Will Hays, an ex-postmaster from Indiana, out to Hollywood to assume the position of censorship czar.
You can, among other things, trace the origins of Rob and Laura Petrie's twin beds in "The Dick Van Dyke Show" to dictums laid down by "Big Will." Rumors that he harbored a secret desire to be urinated on by women dressed as milkmaids were never confirmed. And even Randolph Hearst -- who invented the tabloid business on the back of specious Arbuckle rumors -- shied away from printing possibly doctored photographs of Hays in the throes of a water-sports orgy.
How was it writing about someone from another time and place? Your previous novels have been contemporary in setting.
I don't really buy the "outside your own experience" category. We all breathe, fuck, sweat, cry, hunger and a few other things I'm probably forgetting, so, in the end, the specifics of our experience mean less than the universality of our emotional response to them. In terms of, say, Roscoe Arbuckle, I may never have been forced into a fat suit to keep up the illusion of girth for an adoring public, but I can certainly imagine the shame of that situation, the kinds of conflicts, torments and weirdness it must have instilled in the early-abused Arbuckle to have to endure such a circumstance.
Speaking of conflicts, torments and weirdness, have you been keeping up on your political reading? Now that the election's over, the only people left on the bestseller lists are Jon Stewart and Ann Coulter. I saw Coulter on TV recently, and she looked exhausted or strung out.
Do you think it's drugs or anorexia?
I don't think it's either. I just think she's just tired, or maybe she just looks that way.
I heard that vicious rumor that she was Rush Limbaugh's drug buddy.
No way!
Sort of the Courtney Love to his Kurt Cobain. I mean, not a lot of people are talking about it, but I'm just saying, that could be. That's an image you might want to put in your brain. But I don't even want to speculate what she's up to. That's the thing, I don't judge. If she needs a little recreational crack, God bless her.
I thought you were serious for a second.
Yeah, the Kurt and Courtney of the conservatives and neocons. I'm just saying that could be. I'm not saying that's my next book, I'm not saying it isn't. But it's something to think about. She is skinny and it doesn't look natural.
Yeah, but Rush didn't exactly lose any weight as a junkie. He's still a pig.
Well, some people go up and some people go down. I mean, Charlie Parker was a fat junkie because of all the candy bars and shit, so Rush obviously wasn't on an exercise regimen. I'm just thinking that Ann has more discipline, you know?
Rush Limbaugh a junkie -- it's such a delicious thing. It's the same type of thrill you got when Jimmy Swaggart got caught in a motel room jerking off on a prostitute. It's such a weirdly American breed of hypocrisy, like George Bush posing as a brush-clearing regular Joe instead of the zillionaire Ivy League, born entitled, never-had-to-fill-out-a-job-application oil skeek that he is. Not that that's all bad: If you and I could banish our dirty piss tests like Bush did in the Guard, America would be a better place for all involved.
On a more serious note, you have to give Rush credit -- he's probably done more to curb the spread of opiate use in this country than anybody. When I was coming up, you had this hipster dope-fiend legacy: Lenny Bruce, Miles Davis, Burroughs, Richards and Nick Cave. Now you've got ... Rush Limbaugh. I mean, who wants to do the same drug as some overfed, unlaid right-wing toady? I can just picture Rush scratching his nose and explaining his anti-immigration policy to the maid he bought his shit from. Buying Dilaudid from your maid -- does it get any more Republican?
