I’m still kinda bummed out about that bad drinking story from Friday night. I was physically fine, but it really is the first time I let drinking mess up something like this. On Saturday, I went into NYC to pick up my wallet from the home of Samuel R. Delany, an author and friend. By Sunday night, I realized that you can love a person and hate him at the same time. Love him as a friend, hate him as a procrastinating, dyslexic author.
I’ve worked with Delany (known as Chip) on a movie and several books, including a chapbook that nearly destroyed my life. I once proofread galleys of his essay collection Shorter Views in four days. No easy task, but he’s one of “my” authors, and I help him out when I can. Also, in the five years that we’ve known each other, we’ve become pretty good friends (which, if I had more time this morning, would lead to a tangent about how Chip’s probably the first friend I have who’s utterly outside of my age range–about 30 years older than me–and how odd that fact struck me; next entry, I guess).
On Saturday, we shot the breeze for a little while after I got my wallet back (which, all of a sudden, makes me think of the second scene from my favorite movie, when Tom wakes up in a bar, hung over and missing his hat. He asks the bartender how he did at cards last night. The bartender replies: “What do you think? You are a millionaire, you are going to remember your friends?” Anyway), and Chip mentioned that he had still yet to read over the galleys for The Fall of the Towers.
“I finished this book [a series of three short novels] before I turned 22, Gil. I just can’t read it again…”
“When do they have to be back at Vintage?”
“Monday morning.”
“It’s not written like Dhalgren, right?”
“No. It’s very… simple prose.”
“How many pages?”
“450.”
“Hand it over, Chip. I’ll be back tomorrow night.”
So Saturday night (7:30pm-11:30pm) and Sunday (10am-6:45pm) was spent reading 450 pages of science fiction written by a very intelligent 20-to-22-year-old. Chip phoned when I was five pages from the end.
I told him I’d be done in a few minutes, and he had the temerity to ask, “So, um, I was just wondering: Does the story work for you?”
You can love someone and hate him at the same time.