Everybody always asks me these questions, the writer was saying. Hah, like I know! For me, it’s all about the desperate questions, you know? Like, what’s the matter?
But then, he said, everything is like that, my whole life––you gotta stay close to hell, and also to joy. And somehow manage not to melt. Maybe that’s what it is for me, why I also stay so close to water. People are always asking me about the water, he said. I guess it’s the eternal quality about it, and that savage beauty, where everything is eating each other.
We were eating beer and catfish at a party in his honor. Someone asked him how he kept things fresh. He laughed and said, people don’t know how interesting they are! Then he invoked Beckett, who said nothing was funnier than unhappiness.
At this point, we were interrupted by a mutual friend, younger. How’s the work now? The friend was asking and the writer made a face. It’s going, he said, but who knows where?