1988

[To Carl Weissner]
July 6, 1988

[ . . . ] The poems get in the way of the novel—others besides skin cancer wails—keep coming. Sometimes only the bottle and the poem will fit a situation, or a week of situations. Or weeks of.

Still up to page 173 on novel [Hollywood], pages no longer grip on clipboard. I think the writing is all right, although if and when the book comes out I may have further troubles. But our law courts are so stuffed here that sometimes before a case comes up it’s 5 or 6 years, during which counter papers fly about and papers and the lawyers get fat and rich while the clients go mad.

Gargoyle, yes, they have been around a long time although the work they print seems rather smooth and lacking in gamble and nerve. Jay D[ougherty] tells me, though, that you have come up with a roaring interview and I look forward to what Kool Karl from Mannheim comes forth with. I’ve always liked your angles on existence.

Roominghouse [Madrigals], yes, but I still like what I am doing now. A clarity closer to the bone. I think. As long as I’ve been fucking with the ribbon I ought to have a touch with this thing.

[To Carl Weissner]
November 6, 1988

[ . . . ] Yes, I finished Hollywood. I think it is all right. Some bellylaughs within. Actually, I like it as well as anything I have written. But a writer, of course, is the worst judge of his own work. But writing it was a tonic for me, an elixir, yah, because a lot of things were eating at me, gnawing at me, yelling at me and the typewriter and the page was a way out, clean out of the shitpond into a rather airy half-light even though what I was writing about was a horror story. Sometimes everything seems to fit when there seems no chance.

I’d much rather prefer to write from a happy state of mind and can do so when that rare and lucky bit arrives. I don’t believe in pain as a pusher of art. Pain is too often. We can breathe without it. If it will let us.

On Burroughs, I never had much luck with him. And I’m sorry that he has dimmed for you. That whole gang: Ginsberg, Corso, Burroughs, so forth, they long ago dimmed for me. When you write only to get famous you shit it away. I don’t want to make rules but if there is one it is: the only writers who write well are those who must write in order not to go mad.