[lit-ideas] Re: On Nip Thievery
- From: David Ritchie <ritchierd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 4 Jun 2008 09:51:48 -0700
On Jun 4, 2008, at 8:29 AM, Lawrence Helm wrote:
And this is a case in point despite Paul’s not having joined in my
search for literature. Look here, did someone really steal David's
nip? Why would someone doubt it you might ask? Didn't he say they
did? Well, I say in response, he's in the habit of writing what I
might call literature and he might have done it again.
Lawrence, though right about most things, doesn't remember, or
doesn't know about the Penguin, the retro-geezer swordly warpath and
my book on swords, which is still in that New York fellow's files,
neither accepted nor rejected, serving penance presumably, for being
too weird... What a lot of commas... Now and then the Penguin and I
have another phone conversation. Each year when summer comes I have
a kind of a hogmannay II, "the Return of Resolve," and I try to do
something about the situation. Last summer the plan was to finish
the novel, and the other book, get an agent, have the agent reclaim
the sword manuscript and publish the lot. Or was that the summer
before last? This summer I think I'll just clean up my office, drink
nips and sing "Loch Lomond" slowly.
For the nips are not, in fact, gone across the water. In the middle
of the night, it came to me where they might yet be. And Lo! this
very morn I found them where I'd moved them. Daft git. So now,
having solved the mind/body problem simply by reuniting the two, in a
mood of immense sweetness and general generosity, I can write that
when you come over to have your European--I don't "do" Oriental--
swords evaluated, there may yet be quite old whisky waiting.
Carry on.
David Ritchie,
enjoying the mouth-feel of words in
Portland, Oregon
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