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from: Benjamin Cheever

Fat Cuss

Posted Monday, Nov. 9, 1998, at 3:32 PM ET

I am not signed on when I write. Therefore the machine doesn't need to scold me for wasting its time. But that's all right. I don't need a machine to tell me I'm a fat, lazy cuss. I already know.

I can't argue with you about colonialism. I just don't feel that strongly about colonialism anymore. I don't have any colonies. The place in New Hampshire doesn't count, does it?

I did once read an entire boring book in order to get one quote about colonialism. I thought the quote was worth it. The African says to the colonial, We had Africa, you had the Bible. Now we have the Bible, you have Africa.

Yes, I suppose Yeats did drink. But see I don't think the line between good and evil is drawn between alcoholism and sobriety. I know you suspect as much. Also you suspect that most of the wickedness in the world is done by men. This is a highly popular position, especially in publishing, on account of the marketeers having figured out that men don't read and therefore don't buy books, so we can say whatever we want about them. What are the men going to do, cancel their subscription? Har, har.

The line between good and evil doesn't lie between the classes, nor between men and women, nor between dry and wet. That line is drawn right through the human heart. I'm quoting Alexander Solzhenitsyn, and quoting him imperfectly. Before I got AOL v. 4.0, I used to be able to open my word processor and look up quotes in my quote file. Can't do that anymore. Not enough RAM.

Remember what a great hero Solzhenitsyn was? Boy did he hate those horrid Communists? We at the Reader's Digest couldn't get enough of him. Then they invited him to Harvard, gave him a swell snood, and it turned out he didn't think Americans were so hot either. Godless materialists, he called us.

Walter R Ernest, the general manager of the New York metropolitan division of Amtrak, appears in the Sunday Times saying Pennsylvania Station wasn't so hot either. "It was a kind of cold, vast place." As compared to what, Mr. Ernest, and hadn't you better go to work for an airline?

I understand you've got a book coming out. Are you going to let men read it? Are you going to give it to them free? I mean for their education?

Mean enough now?

the breakfast table
entries
123456789101112131415161718192021
from: Benjamin Cheever

Fat Cuss

Posted Monday, Nov. 9, 1998, at 3:32 PM ET
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Benjamin Cheever is a novelist and author of the forthcoming Famous After Death. Susan Cheever is a teacher, columnist, and writer. Her memoir, Note Found in a Bottle: My Life as a Drinker, is forthcoming. They are siblings.
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