And some things Lucy wrote to me...

I'd just moved to Mississippi and she'd just moved to the artist's club on Gramercy Park. After writing that I should and could write and sell a book about the Delta...

"In preparation, let me tell you that what any agent or publisher wants to see is a coherent them, something that would 'explain' the book in the amount of space normally accorded jacket copy. This is just a big joke, really, if you ask me--and it's important to maintain a sense of humor in this business so as not to become demoralized by the sheer nihilistic reductive nature of it all--because most people wouldn't recognize a coherent theme if it bit them, leaving the enviable task of proposing said theme up to the writer herself. A little 'Ministry of Truth' like, to be sure, but my goal here is to allay any fears you may have about the whole process. Simply keep writing well, and the rest is cake.

"I've moved into my new digs, though it feels more like I've piled into my new digs. How long did it take you to unpack? I've been here a week and am only about a third of the way done. I guess, really, that I've only spent the equivalent of a day and a half unpacking in the time, but I feel somewhat inferior because I've been wearing the same clothes for a week now (I did get to wash them once, but the suitcase with the clothes is not yet reachable beneath all the boxes of books.) Where I live is a strange place; before I moved thee I was saying I was moving into a Henry James novel, but now I say, to describe the place: imagine David Lynch made a movie of a Henry James novel. Some mighty peculiar people live there. My favorites are these two gay men (very gay), who are also identical twins (very identical) who live together (I don't want to know) and who do nothing but fight; the first time I saw them they were actually chasing each other down the street...


"H, what semester are you in? Are you supposed to be writing me a critical paper or anything like that? I'm so terrible at keeping track of such things, and have the bad habit of assuming other's will keep track for me, a habit which leads to a lot of bounced checks in my past..."

The next month was my last letter from her. I'm not sure what happened to all the earlier ones.

"It's hard to be mad at a student for not producing volumes of work when a) it alleviates the implicated teacher of a certain amount of work, b) said teacher knows the aforementioned student is actually quite talented anyway and she just moved and took on a new job, and c) said teacher is in a state of panic about her own lack of production.

"I'm more or less fitted into my small apartment, each thing in its exactly fitted place. I'm happy here; it has a good vibe, and I love the whole eccentricity of the building. But with the drama of the move, of unpacking, and of the months of drama with lawyers and landlords that precipitated the move, I'm currently in a state of panic about getting my book in on time. It wasn't that much different with my first book; I'd be having dinner or talking with someone, when an urge and deep fear would come over me in mid-sentence. The rudeness of it would escape me: all I knew was that I very suddenly had to excuse myself from whomever I was with; I'd stand up in the middle of a conversation and wlk out the door, saying as I left, Excuse me, I have to go write a book now. Similar symptoms are appearing now. I forgot to get an innoculation....

"I still want to push you to seriously consider a book proposal about the Delta. The Eggleston piece might just, if you push and pull it in certain directions I'm not entirely sure of just yet, pass as an introduction for this book. And part of the annotation for 'From the Mississippi Delta' could work as the text part of the propososal; especially the ending, where you talk about he possibility of evil: editors and agents love that brazen I-know-exactly-what-this-book-is-about sort of talk. For the record, this is how I envision said book: Contents wise, the book is half historical, half current. Thematically, the books is half social (what the south means to the U.S.) and half personal, which is itself divided: what the south means to you as a white person, and you as a woman, and you as a writer also.

"A good way to approach this proposal thing is to simply fantasize about a book you would have liked to have written, and then simply describe that book. I'll tell you from personal experience that book proposals are, to a large degree, a bit of a trick; it's so very rare that books actually turn out to be the books that were proposed. I'm saying this not to expose the lassitude of the publishing industry, but to try and give you a sense that you can actually do this, tht it is a possibility. I have great faith in you....

"I spent the morning watching the Japanese remake of Godzilla at an electronics chain store. I was buying a new stereo (mine was too banged up in the move) and I happened to look at what was being played on the display VCR, which was the American remake of Godzilla, and I said to the guy serving me, Was this the worst movie you ever saw in your whole life or what? It turned out he was a HUGE Godzilla fan, he hated the American remake too, and then he disappeared into the store room. He came back with a home made tape of the Japanese remake (from the nineties, and not available in the US) and it was fascinating. Very much like the original, which I remember fondly because I had something of a crush on Godzilla when I was about eight. No high tech garbage here: Godzilla was just a big puppet and the electricity that came from his big gob was obviously drawn onto the film, yet I just loved it. Its low tech-ess was part of the appeal; the special effects didn't try and make me believe this was other than a big puppet; it supported the illusion, meaning it kept the idea that this was an illusion in the foreground, feeing the myth to retain the power that belongs to myth. The American version, and like all the high tech films now, attempts to make it "believable," and so completely forgets about the power of illusion as illusion; people now can only value illusion that is actually deception.

"Well, that's my rant for this letter.... I look forward to seeing you in January.

"Lucy"