Capitalism

Capitalism is the astounding belief that the most wickedest of men will do the most wickedest of things for the greatest good of everyone.

—John Maynard Keynes

Have you ever held any of these jobs, and how quickly were you fired from each of them—

McDonald’s parking lot attendant?

Stock clerk at a fabric store?

Stock boy at a car stereo outlet?

Didn’t you once nearly die when you fell from the rafters?

Dawn custodian in women’s freshman dorm?

Afternoon custodian in grad center?

Ever swept out the Augean stables?

Locksmith’s apprentice?

Proofreader at greedhead law firm?

Transcriber of a Revolutionary War general’s diaries?

Were you credited at all in the acknowledgments?

Teaching assistant to someone named Girlie Meta?

Teaching assistant for someone named Florence del Presta?

Bookstore buyer?

To what degree if any do you blame the publishing industry for our culture’s need to find and fit ever smoother pegs into ever rounder holes?

Have you ever paid, implicitly or explicitly, for “sexual services”?

What does that mean?

What do you think of the market-driven memoirists who dot the American literary landscape?

Are you in artistic league with them?

Have you ever been thrown out of an NPR affiliate in Brattleboro, Vermont?

Have you ever been thrown out of an indie bookstore in Bolinas, California?

Why?

That was the question you asked at both places?

Whatever happened to Dave Eggers?

You used to be friendly with him, right?

Now would you say he’s well on his way to becoming as tirelessly, tediously, and uselessly earnest as Wendell Berry?

All this by way of prelude to asking you whether McSweeney’s is solidly in the black, and if not, why did you go with them for that book you wrote or co-wrote about porn or sexual abuse or whatever it was?

How much money have you made from all your books?

That former student of yours got a million-dollar advance for that book of hers. Have you read it?

How did you like it?

How jealous are you of it and her?

Oh, $2.5 million—really?

Any good?

In any case, have you made that much in your entire life from all your books?

If your books aren’t really selling anymore—which more or less means that you no longer have a readership—then why, exactly, are you still writing them?

I honestly don’t mean to goad you; I mean this simply as inquiry: Do you flatter yourself that your work is altering the culture in some subtle, incremental way?

That it’s “high art” or avant-garde praxis or theoretical intervention or whatever, and over time it may alter somewhat the aesthetic of the next generation?

That’s the age-old hope, isn’t it?

I can see how a visual artist such as Rothko might think this way, but how does it apply to writers?

Your attempts to surmount or supplant what literature is and always has been—a more or less linear narrative about recognizable human beings—are perhaps well intentioned and energetic but also sort of irrefutably wrong. Can you push back against me here at all?

Where does poetry fit in all this?

Dickinson?

Kafka?

Melville?

André Gide turned down Swann’s Way, did he not?

T.S. Eliot turned down Animal Farm, did he not?

How much money does the Federal Reserve destroy each year—any guess?

Why does it do that—any clue?

Are you good at math?

You enter a convenience store and hand the clerk a twenty to pay for fifteen dollars’ worth of gas. The clerk hands back to you three fives. You don’t discover the mistake until you’re driving off. What do you do?

Or: You have two objects. One is worth a dollar more than the other, and they are worth $1.10 total. How much is each object worth?

You stand in front of doors A, B, and C. Behind two of the doors are goats, and behind one is a car. You pick door A. The announcer goes to door B and opens it: it’s a goat. He asks you if you want to take door C or keep door A. Should you switch doors?

You’re not very logical, are you?

Is your net worth substantially more than a million dollars?

Are you worth more dead than alive, Jesse James?

I never got why Franzen was so ambivalent, or pretended to be so ambivalent, about Oprah’s benediction, did you?

If she called me, I’d answer on the first ring, wouldn’t you?

I mean, I suppose she no longer has her book club anymore; is there a current equivalent? I suppose not.

I guess what I’m getting at is, is there is a way to see your work as, in a sense, self-help-adjacent?

Life, death, reconciliation, the peace that passeth understanding, etc.?

Just think of some of their titles—very emo, as we said earlier. Do you ever think of downshifting, ever so slightly and subtly, as a way to enter a much more commercial realm?

I mean, didn’t someone or other compare one of your books to Kahlil Gibran’s?

You’re there, but you’re not?

Tantalizingly close?

My father-in-law has two tickets to the Super Bowl. Excellent seats. Lower bowl. Forty-yard line. All expenses paid. Invited me. Where are you watching the game?