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S: I’m going to stop referring to it as “the Unknown Anthology,” because it is—it is The Unknown. D: Just The Unknown, and whatever ridiculous subtitle we want to attach to it, fine. S: Yeah, maybe we should just go with The Unknown. And just stick to that. W: Does anybody know what, ah, Ronald Johnson died from? S: Ronald Johnson had a, uh, inoperable brain lesion. I think, uh— W: Inoperable Brain Lesion. D: Okay, The Unknown, colon, Inoperable Brain Lesion. S: Nonononono. Nonono. I don’t want any garbage on there. I just want The Unknown. D: Okay, I’ll go with Scott, and just keep it The Unknown. W: Uh. S: You know. Titles— D: Your section of The Unknown can be called Inoperable Brain Lesion. S: Titles, you gotta tend towards simplicity in titles, I think. D: Well, The Unknown is about as simple as you can get. And as comprehensive. S: I mean, The Unknown deals with A LOT. At the same time as it’s— D: I realize that. S: And I mean, we do gotta take a minute here to acknowledge here that, um, this whole project is really, uh, sort of, in a way, obscenely, ah . . . D: Self-promotional? S: self-promotional and ah . . . in some ways, evidence of the pathetic nature of American publishing. W: Yeah, but that’s not what we’re about. D: And the pathetic nature of American academia. S: Yeah, well. The pathetic nature of American academia, the pathetic nature of American publishing. W: We’re all about that. I mean. We’re not, um, trying to make a comment on it, we’re just taking advantage of it. S: Well, yeah, exactly, I mean, hmmm, well, okay, so we shouldn’t, um, comm—? W: Hmmm? D: No. It’s self-promotional. But I think there’s self-promotion then there’s self-promotion. S: I mean this is self-promotion in the interests of, uh, well, for one thing, a good time. D: I’ll tell ya— S: But not just a good time, but a good, ah, you know I mean, this stuff is good. D: Here’s my theory— S: William’s writing, Dirk’s writing, ah, I’m amazed that, you know, Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New Yorker. I’m amazed that it’s not filled with the stuff. At this point. D: Well, maybe that’s because I haven’t sent much to Harper’s, The New Yorker— S: I know, but these people should be seeking out good writing, you know? D: Here’s my feeling on the whole situation: I like to do criticism about writing that I like—but why do I have to wait until it’s been recognized by some publishing entity before I feel it’s time to write criticism about work that exists? Because the work exists, in some published form, whether it’s mass published or, more privately, from a typewriter, or word processing— S: Or in the private series of books that William’s been secretly distributing for years— D: Or in a series of books that’ve been distributed in a vagary of ways—A vagary? Is even a way to use that? Edit that out, William, that bad use of vagary I think that was really . . . S: Vagary? D: A violation to its definition. S: What is vagary? D: I don’t know, actually. S: Vagary? D: Do we have a dictionary? S: We do have a— W: I don’t know. S: Uh, vagary is— |
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