The only two ways

Sadly, at my library, there are only two methods by which things are fixed.

Over in version number one something breaks and a series of consultations commence in the back room. A manager is brought into the discussion and after a lengthy meeting someone is appointed to make contact with the proper department. The proper department investigates and the wheels of repair are set in motion. As long as whatever broke hasn't ground the library to a halt we settle in to wait. Parts are ordered. The job is assigned a work order. It is placed on a docket with an unclear level of priority. Weeks, sometimes months go by as everyone works around the broken element. Occasionally the broken thing is brought up in discussion with the department responsible for repairing it, and the complicated reasons for the delays in it being fixed are explained. More weeks go by. Eventually everyone gives up hope. We get used to our temporary work arounds. Then, one or two workers, either ours or from somewhere else, show up. They work on the problem for four to six hours while we all hover excitedly about. They hit an impasse. A part they don't have and that is only in Ohio must be ordered in. It's fantastically expensive. They leave. Eight days later they return. In half an hour the broken thing is completely fixed and works and looks like nothing ever happened. It is like new.

In version number two something breaks and we start foraging for wrenches and rolls of duct tape. We pry a chunk of metal out of something. We reboot. It works but wobbles. We whack it six times to bend it over a bit then shove a binder clip wrapped in rubber bands to space it correctly. It holds! Job done. It will never be the same, but there is a good chance it will hold forever, and if it doesn't, well, now we know what to do.

I have dreamed of a third way, but in my heart I understand it is beyond the scope of human capability.

Not I alone

Someone whose identity I will protect brought in two enormous chocolate bars to the free food table in the break room (it was Marcus, the teen librarian, but you didn't hear if from me). It was more than two full pounds of chocolate in sheets too thick to break by hand. One had to drive a knife down between squares to get it into usable chunks. I strongly resist eating any food on the free food table. Usually this is easy because that food is disgusting. Sometimes though the free food is marginally good enough to require a reminder to myself that I have my own food and don't really do well eating whatever it is. But chocolate I do eat, and this was not bad chocolate. In fact it said right on the package that it came from Belgium. That's gotta be worth something, doesn't it, chocolate from Belgium? So I had a square of chocolate.

Several hours later when I was in the break room getting my 14th square of chocolate I suddenly noted that all this once seemingly endless chocolate was nearly gone. I was stunned. I did a quick, rough calculation and realized that for this to be possible nearly everyone else at my job had to be eating as much chocolate as me!

I had no idea. They all look so innocent.

Alternate perspective

If you have been in any way following along with clerkmanifesto over these 1,600 posts you will likely be aware that my politics are leftist. They are so far to the left and so passionate and idiosyncratic that I can't much bring them out into polite conversation. They are too wild for me to safely handle with others around. My politics are so far to the left that mostly all I can do with them is take them into distant open prairie land and hunt small game with them. And though the whole vast panoply of Center and Right Wing politics that have dominated every aspect of power in my country throughout my life have been nothing but a bitterly painful sight for me to regard, there is at least some small satisfaction I get in venturing out to the aerie in my back yard, collecting my politics, and taking them to the edge of the city where they can hunt down mice and voles and small rabbits, even down by the river once, a couple of not insubstantial fish. Then I let my politics tear into the fresh meat before I take them home and hood them. 

So, in my complicated way, I am saying that I have not had much experience with thinking like a reactionary, or in employing the handy, evil, frequently stupid catchphrases of the right.

So when it happened today it was something of an interesting surprise. Bracing, disturbing, liberating, and educational.

A colleague was relating a story from the front desk of our library. He said that a patron came up to him and said "You know that man with all the bags who sleeps upstairs in the fiction section?"

My colleague knew exactly who she was talking about. This was Bagman, OCD man, current patron burden number one for my library. He sleeps for hours taking up a small suite of chairs, eats noisily and unpleasantly in public, does repulsive things into garbage cans, roams the library seeking antiseptic gels and getting people to open doors for him, leaves a dozen target bags full of strange items holding his place, sometimes overnight, and complains if they're touched or messed with in any way. He is occasionally noisy, churlish when approached, and, worst of all, always extremely smelly. Shelving, one will always know if one is within 40 feet of him.

So, as my colleague reported, when this patron came up speaking about OCD man, he was prepared for the worst. "Yes, I know that man." My colleague responded cautiously, and he quickly organized in his mind the weak defense that the library belongs to everyone and we try to curtail offensive behavior.

But the woman was not there to complain. On the contrary. "I just want to thank the library for giving that man a place to go." She exclaimed. "I so very much appreciate that he can be here!"

My colleague expressed his surprise at this comment to me, and I, in response to the grateful woman and her comments, exclaimed, both aware and lucid, and to my horror:

"Fucking liberals."

The coming of Summer

When the time comes, regardless of date, Fall is frozen out and becomes Winter. Spring on the other hand gets burned out to become Summer. And so it has. Temperatures in the eighties over the weekend and pushing towards the nineties tomorrow does something to the world. A burst of hard sun makes all the gentle niceties of Spring clear out and toughen up. The bugs are released from some secret nefarious bunker of God. The cute crinkles of nascent leaves unfurl and sprawl like we're in an age of dinosaurs. And no more the gentle wafting of the scent of blossoms, rather the air is heavy with the smell of flowers and the gutters run with heaps of bruised and swollen petals. Hot storms come streaming in. Lightning cracks and the playful squirrels start interspersing swear words into their vocabulary. Rabbit sweat. Ducks wrestle in the vast hard grass that has alarmingly grown a shade too green. The gentle and profuse dandelions throw off their innocence and initiate their secret plan to poison all their neighbors. Look at them now, ringed in death! Great flocks of birds heading north for the Summer like locusts devour what they can and continue on, figuring surely they have not come far enough. Pine trees sag and weep acid before bursting into flames, songbirds fleeing them and throwing themselves into drying patches of mud, panting. We, who thought we could spend all our free time in our new, posh, patio setup, watch ants trudging over our tabletop and say "Maybe we'll just go inside for a bit." And we do, leaving the drapes closed, the house dark, and sipping cold water as we listen to jets roaring overhead to other places.


I thought it was all horrible, but writing you I suddenly understood. No, it's all fantastic.

More desk hijinks

Here is a recent true life exchange from the front desk of the library:


Patron: I don't have a card, but I can prove who I am.

Me: Okay, go ahead and act like yourself.

Patron: I could break into song.

Me: If that's who you are.

Patron: (With a sly grin full of secret knowledge, hands me a license)

Me: (Resignedly, because it was a slow afternoon) Good enough.



 

The people we see most

The people I see the most at the library are the most baffling. I have been compelled to conclude that this is because anyone who comes to the library six or seven times a week, often for the full 11 hours we're open, is mentally ill. I don't mean this pejoratively. That's why I graciously employed the term "Mentally ill" over "Crazy", a word I am perhaps over fond of, especially when talking about people I strongly disagree with. These library patron mental illnesses are all somewhat functional, that is these people manage to eat and dress themselves and maintain independent lives, at least in as much they can continue coming to the library. But whether these patrons nervously roam the library at high speed, transacting some kind of business every fifteen minutes at the front desk for ten straight hours, or they sit on the computers all day long with library headphones cocooned wildly in toilet paper, or they complain about the library's collusion in allowing people to monitor their movements, there is some element of madness driving much of their time here.


I have always assumed that there is a peculiar strain of mental illness that pushes a certain kind of person towards a library. But what if I have it wrong? What if the library itself is a dangerous place that, under too much exposure, will drive people mad? Could it be a result of the danger from a surfeit of knowledge, all collected too densely here, so that, like the bible's apple from the tree, it is enough to drive one from the garden of sanity? I don't know. All I know is that I have spent roughly 65,000 hours here at this library.  I am hoping the small hourly stipend I receive confers a kind of immunity, that working negates the effects of an excessive ennoblement. Some days looking around at my stalwart and level headed co-workers I think surely this is so. But on other days I look around at some of the people I work with, who are here nearly everyday, staring with birdlike confusion at our check in equipment, or responding to every question with a disturbing monotone, and I feel an uncomfortable nervousness. My only balm, when I feel like this, is that ever and always I want to leave the library and go to my other life, rather than stay, and stay, and stay. 

Superpowers my way

I have recently landed in a few discussions regarding superpowers. And I doubt that there are any among you who have not had to contend with the question of what superpower you might like could you choose but one. Invisibility seems a tad loathsome and unwholesome, except perhaps for highly ethical people who would invariably ruin the effect by constantly clearing their throats and announcing "I'm here even though you can't see me." Flying strikes me as quite fun, but difficult to properly monetize. Although fortunately, as a library clerk, I have no real need of money, especially once cars and airplane trips become superfluous and I can collect all the valuable free stuff that collects at the tops of trees. 

Recently I have come to the conclusion that time travel would be the superpower to go with. It would make one pretty much a god, having all knowledge and the ability to redirect fate. But as much as I might like to put the superpower issue to rest by being the first ever "Time Travel Man" I am aware of the exponential paradoxes involved, and, even in fantastical discussion, I fear collecting the memory of so many streams of alternate realities that my brain would split apart.

And so I leave the fancy superpowers then to a younger crowd. Let them lift super heavy objects, or run at the speed of sound. I have grown more humble. For my superpower I shall merely go with good health. I will be "Good Health Man". The older among you will understand even as the young fliers may not. The middle aged and older, enthralled, will ask this super-powered version of me "Wait, you are 52 years old? Your knee never mysteriously hurts you? Nor your back, shoulder, neck, or sciatica nerve? You have no strange cysts for the doctor to check out as soon as possible, and your teeth never ache as you bite down on something a little too hard?"

And amazingly I will say "No. And also I can turn into an owl whenever I like."

Library definitions

Yesterday I put forward a little lexicon of updated political terms, a la The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce. Today it occurred to me that library terms have updated to new meanings every bit as much as political ones, so why not take a stab at those. But before I do I thought it might be nice to start off with a real Devil's Dictionary definition by Ambrose Bierce himself:

Plagiarize:

To take the thought or style of another writer one has never, never read.



And with that thought, we're off!



Library:

A community center for the purpose of building up one's immunity to diseases.


Library Card: 

A disposable reminder of the number one needs to access various online services.


Librarian:

The person one uses to google things when one is too tired to type.


Study room: 

A private room in which to eat crunchy snacks.


Book renewal:

An attempt to prolong the illusion that one will read a book.


Request:

A way to get in line for a popular book one will have lost all interest in reading by the time it arrives.


Book:

An item recently voted as one of the top 500 things to get at a library.

Dictionary updates

Today I was reflecting upon how in the many decades that I have followed politics many of the definitions of key words have incrementally changed to the point where I, or many other people, might have old, 1970s ideas of what they mean, but their real meaning has slowly become completely different. And so in the fine tradition of the The Devil's Dictionary I would like to take a stab at updating some of our common political terms so that you will know what they mean when you see them.

I hope this is of some help. These are perilous linguistic times.




Republican: 

A condition of wanting to punch something, even one's own face if necessary.


Independent:  

A Republican or Democrat prone to occasional fits of a desire to escape, but who does not think of using a shovel and just claws ineffectually at the dirt.


Liberal: 

Willing to take a step to the right under the theory this will create future opportunities to take a step to the left.


Centrist: 

An interest in equilibrium even if it means running towards fascists with your fulcrum.

 
Democrat:

Now with even more wiggle room!



Libertarian: 

An Anarchist who is afraid of everything except rich people.



 Progressive: 

The single element in all American politics that everyone else admires and yet finds a way to work together to stop. 

Useful adage

In the last segment of my bike trip to the University and to my car there is a tricky bit where my path feeds directly onto a walking path. This is not a combined path. It specifically forbids bikes on this section. But to avoid it I have to take my bike off a curb, veer sharply left, follow a road, turn right, and find some way back up onto the sidewalk to cut across to the next short section of my route. It's a considerable inconvenience. Because that convenient but illegal short walkway is wide and irresistible to me I have begun to give in and ride carefully along it. I don't think this really puts too many people out, but I felt I should be prepared in case someone says something to me.

I have found, in moments of surprise and stress it can be difficult to come up with the right thing to say. Being prepared gives me confidence. So I have prepared and now, if someone were to say to me "Hey, this is a walking path here. No bikes!" I have decided that I will respond "Once I have gotten over my initial hostility towards your comment I will take that under consideration."

And I will. 

But until that comment I will go with the private thought: "There is no need to grease a wheel that hasn't squeaked"

This is what I do here

I was in the backroom when they paged him. "Christian Berger, please come to the service desk. Christian Berger, please come to the service desk."

So I went out to the front desk. "The thing I hate about Christian Burger places" I said. "Is you get all that proselytizing when you just want some lunch."

Later in the day I was working on a complicated little crafts project making undershelf labels for a colleague's project with our CD collection. After plugging away at it throughout the day, usually while trying to watch soccer, I got them to an acceptable standard to go forward with. First up were a bunch of labels that read "oversized". Working on them at the front desk I held one up to her. We agreed it was good enough. "You know what they say." I said. "The perfect is the enemy of the completely mediocre."

And we'll just leave it there for the day.

The civil society

In preparation for a theoretical visit to our library a patron called and wanted to know about the issues and fines on her account. Great, I just needed her library card.

"My library card?" She replied. "I don't know where that is."

"I'm sorry, unfortunately over the phone, due to data privacy rules, I need a library card to give you information about items on your record."

She was exasperated. "Can't I just give you my social or something?"

I then proceeded to give her a long speech explaining data privacy, the limitations of what we can do on the phone without a card, and a brief history and theoretical study of the issues involved. But after a mere five or ten minutes, just when I was getting going, it occurred to me there might be no one on the other end of the line. I was right. I was all alone on the phone. Now that I thought about it I had heard a soft click of disconnection about five minutes ago but had blown past it in my passion for the subject matter.

Ah, it was just as well, all those concluding pleasantries can go on forever.

The audience

I was just reading an article Groucho wrote for The Saturday Evening Post back in 1931. He was reminiscing about miserable early career failures and other youthful performing disasters that he treasured. In one he discusses a Marx Brothers production called Mr. Green's Reception. He says:

"I think of that mournful afternoon in Battle Creek, Michigan, when we gave our entire show with only four patrons in the audience, in a theater that seated close to three thousand."

I'm glad he was able to look back and enjoy the bitter memory. Why not? After all, I say this writing to you now on the Internet, where nearly two hundred million people are currently roaming, but you alone, in all the world, are reading it. 

Library envy and retribution

My library is the undisputed King of our library system. Not only does our traffic dwarf that of any of our other branches, but we are year after year the busiest library in the whole State. This has engendered occasional bad feeling throughout our system. Sometimes the smaller branches feel ignored and passed over. And even though we, the big branch, get dumped on occasionally, we rarely feel it, insulated in our power, grandiosity, and bulging staff, collection, and equipment. Over the years these resentments can build. 

Recently someone, probably in Administration, made an egregious error in our bi-monthly newsletter of events throughout our library system. They listed an extremely popular fix-it clinic as taking place at our library when it is really taking place at another branch. So, in the process of hand correcting someone else's mistake I have gotten a very good look at our next two months of events, lectures, clinics, storytimes, and occasions. At some point I realized that the powers that be are not currently looking favorably upon my own beloved branch. I believe a collective resentment has taken hold politically in the assignment of events throughout our library system.

First let me say that this bi-monthly newsletter is a handsomely glossy 16 page magazine full of all kinds of useful and interesting things happening throughout our library system. Other, far smaller branches, are featuring the above mentioned fix-it clinic where, apparently, heroic repair people fix things that patrons drag in from their homes. Every time something is fixed cheers of adulation and joy ring out through the library. Or so I've heard. I wouldn't know, as it doesn't happen at my library, even though it still says it does on more than half of our events guides. Practically every branch but ours is featuring an Opera Storytime where "a professional opera singer from the Minnesota Opera will combine music and storytelling for a fun interactive storytime experience." One branch is having an after hours teen party, another a "superhero training camp". I wouldn't mind learning how to be a superhero, I mean, depending on the superhero talents. I feel I have a natural talent for time travel, which isn't even really taken as a main superhero talent. I could be "Time Travel Man"! Meanwhile great films of world cinema is screening weekly at a branch not my own, as are a dance party, gardening classes, and a whole DNR hosted morning with frogs! Who doesn't love a frog?

And what do we have in the next two months at my branch, crown jewel of our library system?

Join us on two different Wednesdays for our criminal expungement clinic.

The returners

At my library there is a little door in a wall in the front lobby. It is just big enough to fit a large book. Above this door is a sign that says "Book Return". One places a book in front of the door and it automatically opens. One puts the book inside and a moving belt whisks it away on a Disneyland-like journey, or a Modern Times-like journey, or a Willy Wonka-like journey, up to near the ceiling, through hidden darkness, out across the roof of the work room, where it turns and then heads back down a steep, belt covered drop I like to think of as "The Waterfall". There the book continues into the main body of our check in machine where it is automatically checked in and sorted. This book return door is where all of our patrons in the library return their materials.

Except when they don't.

There are a lot of reasons for patrons not to return in that lobby door. I would describe most of those reasons as bad, a few, at best, as mediocre, and, grudgingly, a couple, as sensible.

The sensible or mediocre reasons include the door not opening, the patron personally wanting to show us a problem with the item, wanting to pay late charges on the item right away, or even a new user's confusion as to where to return things. Bad reasons include wanting to "make sure" the item is properly checked in, not wanting machines to take our jobs, or because someone was returning items in front of them and they got tired of waiting. 

Today, when I first went out to the front desk I was handed two CDs and given a new bad reason for returning to me at the desk that I'd never heard before. The woman said "I didn't want to put these items on the machine because they open."

I try to keep a level head and a certain amount of indulgence when it comes to what amounts to the minor peccadilloes of our library patrons. So, as I accepted these items, I only thought, and did not say "All of our items open. That is how one gets at what's inside."

April showers

I try to write these essays for my own satisfaction, but I keep an eye on history too. I am one percent convinced that these missives will one day be revered throughout the land, which, at that time, will likely be blighted and post apocalyptic. So I feel an imperative to bolster my body of work at every possible moment. The clock is always ticking. The Beatles worked pretty hard during their triumphant run, but after hearing it all a thousand times it's hard not to wish they had squeezed in just a few more quality recording sessions here or there.

But sometimes the work that is for the ages conflicts with what the people now want. And the people now really, really, really want me to talk about the weather. They just love it.

"Oh." I say. "God came down from the heavens and wanted me to share a few things with you, but I was having drinks with Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell and they said... What's that? 

Um, it was a bit chilly out that day, cloudy. Why do you want to know?

You'd like me to write about that?

Really?"

So, okay. If you prefer it.

The last half of April was fantastic for being able to quote the famous proverb. The one that rhymes and concerns the progression of Spring weather. I myself rather fancied, throughout the chronic raininess, saying things like "There's something about April Showers bringing something." or "I'm pretty sure there's like, a poem that goes specifically with this weather." And it was all good fun. But when you go around constantly talking about May flowers, even half in jest, and you use a super famous catchy phrase to do it with, you can't help to start to believe it.

So in Minnesota we breathlessly awaited May. Through the rain of late April the tulips inched forward. And the early trees blossomed nicely, in the rain, in a respectful, early way that seemed to say "Don't worry, we're just setting the stage." And then it rained some more and it rained so much everyone stopped paying any attention to flowers around here. We focused on May. And it came.

On May first I was upstairs in the library I work at. It was just after noon. A huge wall of windows there looked longingly towards the west. I presented myself at them and gazed out. Snow was pouring heavily from of the sky. Heavy, white, wild snow. Great mad sheets of plummeting snow. Snow, falling, falling snow. It was wonderful. We all feigned horror and artlessly roleplayed seasonal confusion, every last one of us Minnesotans. But it was glorious, and in our hearts we knew it. The flowers can wait. Stand back flowers. In May, on the first, at least for one last uncanny afternoon, beyond all expectation, let the snow try and bury Minnesota one last time.

The Sphinx

I am straining to find the best qualities of one of my newer co-workers. I hope to come through with some feelings of sympathy and respect, but as yet it is all touch and go. And this co-worker gives so little to go on, disinclined as he is to interaction, discussion, or facial expressions. However, working at the front desk with him today, I did feel a flash of pity for him as I witnessed his encounter with a patron looking for her lost thermos.

She lost her thermos here yesterday. It was blue. After some time looking in our back lost and found area, through our copious collection of thermoses, my co-worker returned with the only possible choice.

"Could this be your thermos?" My co-worker inquired, holding up a blue-green thermos.

Disgusted the patron cried out "No. Of course that's not it! Mine was blue. That one's green." She said "that one's green" Like he was a complete idiot.

"Sorry." My co-worker mumbled. "This was the closest I could find so I thought I'd see."

"So then you don't have it?" She interrogated.

"I guess not."

The patron walked off in a huff, shaking her head. My co-worker settled back down sadly to work, not even knowing enough to look at me for a bit of human support. I caught my co-worker's eye anyway, with effort. 

"It was blue-green." I said firmly and quietly.

Did I see a tear well up a little in my co-worker's eye? Or did my co-worker not care at all? That's the thing, he's so hard to read.

More of the same

It is possible to name the world but once you begin there is no ending.

-Shakespeare, or me, or someone who's really good at quotes







As you know I traditionally endeavor to hide the wisdom of clerkmanifesto under a torrent of folly. And the folly is about how clerkmanifesto is a torrent of wisdom. This is called a double blind. It's very advanced. I'm doing it even as we speak. That's how advanced this blog you read is!

Sometimes though, one can play the fool to present wisdom that is secretly foolish. This is a triple blind, and I occasionally employ it just to keep limber and for the challenge of it.

And, in case you ask, there is a quadruple blind as well. But so far every time I've given that an attempt I end up walking into something and whacking my shin.


 

Wodehouse, the oldest member, and I

P. G. Wodehouse is funny. But I don't laugh all the time reading his books. In fact I can easily go a novel and a half with ol' P. G. and I'm mostly just smirking a lot. Nevertheless behind the scenes it's all collecting in me, a drip here, a drip there, and then suddenly in the book they're having a grave discussion over Jeeves's unexpressed dissatisfaction with a purple tie and I'm overcome. The accumulated smirks have created a flood and I am guffawing. Laughter overcomes my respiratory system and I am choking to death, hyperventilating with hysteria until I am collapsed on the floor, tears pouring from my eyes. As it fades enough for a single breath it only rises back up in me, the terrible lunacy. I am pounding the floor weakly, uncontrollably writhing with my fits of laughter. Finally, after ten minutes, I manage to gather myself. Where was I? I read the passage that convulsed me again. I can quietly see that it's mildly amusing, in a distant sort of way. I continue reading on silently for another hundred pages.

So I like P. G. Wodehouse. His tone makes me gleeful, and I recently mentioned here how I am usually trying to copy him without any success or any concern that I'm not successful, as success was never the point. But outside occasional moments of raving hysteria I never made what I felt to be the full connection with P. G. Wodehouse until I stumbled upon his golf stories. A couple months ago I picked up Heart of a Goof. These consist of about half of Wodehouse's golf stories. Oh these are the thing! They revolve around a quiet, lunatic obsession with golf and its virtues much in the way, say, Lord of the Rings revolves around the troubles and virtues of a lovely, half wild land called Middle Earth. The thing that really won me hard in these stories though was the oldest member. Each story involves someone having a hard time with something either on The Links, or tangentially related to The Links, usually all golf and love. The oldest member, a person who seems to be hanging out in the clubhouse at all times, is sort of a shoulder to cry on, mostly because he's the only one around at that moment, and he invariably shares a golf story relevant to the situation at hand.

Now these stories are fantastic, but my favorite part is, as he commences to tell these stories to his troubled visitors, they generally realize they are in for a long account full of implicit advice and they try to make a run for it. But pleading excuses, lack of time, or some other pressing engagement is nothing to the oldest member, who ignores their entreaties and, clutching perhaps the hem of their jacket in a surprisingly powerful grip, he implacably launches off into his germane tale. The victim groans, accepts his fate, and settles in reluctantly for the story.

So humor, a light and brilliant tone, and dazzlingly deft little romantic comedy plots won me over to P. G. Wodehouse, but the oldest member did me in. Finally, out in the world of the arts, I recognized, finally and absolutely, myself. It's all the Ancient Mariner with a twinkle in his eye and something at least halfway from a curse to confidence. As much "I need to say" as "You need to hear what I have to say."

Oh yeah, you need to hear what I have to say.

Like Wodehouse

It is said that to succeed in the arts one should strive to be oneself. That may be good advice for people with classical talents, people who draw something or play something or write something at age 17 and everyone is like, whoa, that looks professional, let me give you a scholarship and a fabulous and satisfying career in the arts. For people with unusual talents, like me, just for instance, who write or paint or play something at age 17, or really at anywhere from age 17 through 52, for instance again, and they're pretty sure its kind of good and everyone is like, I like that, it's so... unique, and then they lose interest quickly and give a scholarship or thumbs up or lavish publishing contract to someone with a classical talent, for people like that, there's rarely any need to strive to be oneself. For people like that being oneself will eat away at all our best attempts at slavish imitation.

For instance, I am pretty sure I have all along here been trying to write exactly like P. G. Wodehouse. Why? I don't know. I didn't even know I was doing it until I started reading his golf stories at which point I thought "Oh, so that's what I've been trying to do all along!" Now if I were a classical talent and I were trying to write like P. G. Wodehouse, you and my 200,000 other regular readers would be like "I can see the resemblence. I think of you as Wodehousian. But I read you for yourself and I think you would only be a greater writer if you strove more to be yourself! Nevertheless I adore your work and would like to offer you a lavish publishing contract." However as me, with my unusual talent, writing like P. G. Wodehouse comes out like this. And what you and my 16 other readers are thinking is, well, I don't know what you're thinking, but it's probably not "Oh my god, I totally see it, this is totally like P. G. Wodehouse! I bet you could imitate anyone's writing style at will." But, leaving you out of it because you've clearly got enough on your plate today as it is, what say we put this before a big time editor and imagine what they would say. They would read this and say "I don't know what ever gave you the faintest idea this is anything like P. G. Wodehouse. But it does have its own, odd, amusing..." At which point their phone would ring, or someone would ask them an unrelated question, and their attention would turn elsewhere, and they would forget they ever read anything by me.

So in this long, bitter screed about not being a classical talent, and not having publishers pounding at my door, and not having thousands of readers, and not being able to copy P. G. Wodehouse worth beans, what am I really saying?

It's sunnier than you think. I am saying that I can look upon all the rules of writing and every shread of writerly or artistic advice ever written and laugh. What is it to me? It doesn't matter in the least what I do here, it all comes out right in the end.