RIP Leonard Nimoy, 1931-2015
I was born in 1979 and there was always Star Trek—always Spock. The reruns on local TV (after them, episodes of The Twilight Zone in black and white). Later, The Next Generation—it was the only show we, that is, my family, were permitted to watch while we ate TV. We ate pizza in front of it. Ambassador Spock made an appearance in a two-parter! Leonard Nimoy directed my favorite of the Star Trek films, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home—you know, the one with the whales? The oh-so misunderstood one? Still love it. I remember watching it with my grandmother, she incredulous. Watching it again in college, laughing so hard. What a film. No Star Trek without Spock, no Spock without Nimoy…but he’s always there, his presence confirmed all the more by its absence. Live long &c.
“Publishing”
by
John Steinbeck
from his 1969 “interview” in The Paris Review
EDITOR
The book is out of balance. The reader expects one thing and you give him something else. You have written two books and stuck them together. The reader will not understand.
WRITER
No, sir. It goes together. I have written about one family and used stories about another family as—well, as counterpoint, as rest, as contrast in pace and color.
EDITOR
The reader won’t understand. What you call counterpoint only slows the book.
WRITER
It has to be slowed—else how would you know when it goes fast?
EDITOR
You have stopped the book and gone into discussions of God knows what.
WRITER
Yes, I have. I don’t know why. Just wanted to. Perhaps I was wrong.
SALES DEPARTMENT
The book’s too long. Costs are up. We’ll have to charge five dollars for it. People won’t pay five dollars. They won’t buy it.
WRITER
My last book was short. You said then that people won’t buy a short book.
PROOFREADER
The chronology is full of holes. The grammar has no relation to English. On page so and so you have a man look in the World Almanac for steamship rates. They aren’t there. I checked. You’ve got the Chinese New Year wrong. The characters aren’t consistent. You describe Liza Hamilton one way and then have her act a different way.
EDITOR
You make Cathy too black. The reader won’t believe her. You make Sam Hamilton too white. The reader won’t believe him. No Irishman ever talked like that.
WRITER
My grandfather did.
EDITOR
Who’ll believe it.
2ND EDITOR
No children ever talked like that.
WRITER (losing temper as a refuge from despair)
God damn it. This is my book. I’ll make the children talk any way I want. My book is about good and evil. Maybe the theme got into the execution. Do you want to publish it or not?
EDITORS
Let’s see if we can’t fix it up. It won’t be much work. You want it to be good, don’t you? For instance, the ending. The reader won’t understand it.
WRITER
Do you?
EDITOR
Yes, but the reader won’t.
PROOFREADER
My God, how you do dangle a participle. Turn to page so and so.
There you are, Pat. You came in with a box of glory and there you stand with an arm full of damp garbage.
And from this meeting a new character has emerged. He is called The Reader.
THE READER
He is so stupid you can’t trust him with an idea.
He is so clever he will catch you in the least error.
He will not buy short books.
He will not buy long books.
He is part moron, part genius and part ogre.
There is some doubt as to whether he can read.
Biblioklept 