— What do you think of our mayor?
— Shrink or sink. He said that. He said: We have to shrink or sink. But think about it, I can’t shrink because when I do, I’m scared, I panic, and I sink. And the papers are quoting it: Shrink or sink. Is he kidding us. That’s our mayor. He is asking us to become clams, shrimp, in order not to sink. I sink if I shrink. But if I spread my arms and legs, and if I stretch out, I float, and if I try, try to speed my body along, paddling and flutterkicking as I go, I’d swim like a goldfish through the bowl. But, he is asking us to shrink. I don’t know how to swim, but I know his statement makes no sense at all. It defines him, he should shrink and sink that’s what I think.
— What do you think of Isabel Allende?
— Wonderful. I find her wonderful. What she is doing — killing García Márquez a little more each day the same way Michael Jackson’s sisters are killing Michael Jackson.
— So you don’t like Isabel Allende?
— Like I said, she’s doing a wonderful job.
— What do you think about a WASP like Glenn Close playing in House of the Spirits. She looks like she never left New Hampshire.
— Perfect casting considering it was written for WASPS. The best definition I’ve heard of Allende was given to me by my mother who said Allende is better than Márquez because she imitates him more clearly than himself so that when you’re done with the book, all your questions are answered, and there’s nothing left to the imagination. But, like my father says, my mother is above average in business and below average in literature.
— You underestimate your peers, particularly the live Latin ones. Márquez understands sexual politics and the human condition. Your mother could very well be la Mamá Grande.
— I don’t want my mother a la Márquez. I want Superman a la Nietszche. Do I have to be good to be a good writer? We’re already beyond good and evil. Look at Melville a misogynist, Pound, a fascist, Caravaggio, a murderer, and Burroughs, an evil genius.
— You’re as mad as a hatter, lady.
— Look, Foucault said: Politics is the continuation of war by other means. I say: Politics is the domestication of war. I don’t want to be a politician. I want to be a revolutionary.
— Who cares what Foucault said. Even Foucault didn’t care what Foucault said. I’m sure you’re taking him out of context anyway. You’re a danger to society. In a way, I’m concerned about being your friend. You don’t know anything about politics. Nothing at all. Yet you talk nonsense with such conviction, such hostility. You live in a fantasy world — protected by puppets — you’re afraid to mature.
— I’m not a puritan. I don’t believe that killing a man makes you less of an artist or that being loyal to your wife makes you a better politician. I don’t, I don’t. Look, there was a whore who offered her tits to the people in Italy — and she became a senator. I believe in her. I want a beggar in our house of senate, a garbage man, a plumber, a poet.
— That’s totally ignorant. Whoever she was, I’m sure she was not elected to the Italian senate because she was a whore, you misogynist traitor.
— You said Mick Jagger’s wife should be president of Nicaragua. Because, quote—she is as smart as a whip—end quote. What makes her less of a whore for power. How can she become president of Nicaragua if she does not even live there, and yet you respect her because she is famous.
— You’re so self-indulgent, smugly ignorant. You think you’re charming the world with your ignorance. You’re impeding knowledge.
— Look, I’m not trying to be perfect.
— I am.
— I want to be human, all too human.
— You want your art to be perfect. Why can’t you see that in other areas you should be just as demanding. Otherwise, when you talk, you really sound like, like a fascist, knowing nothing about anything — and feeling empowered by your ignorance. It invigorates you to fear the unknown — and so you paint your fears with silly superstitions — mascara and lipstick — feeling the blindness of your being. What do I get hearing you babble? How can you say that there’s nothing wrong with cheating?
— I come from a different culture.
— No culture accepts…
— I, I myself accept all kinds of flaws.
— I believe in conscientiousness.
— You also believe in fame.
— To achieve fame one has to be respected by one’s peers. Success cannot be argued.
— I don’t want my cake if I can’t eat it too.
— You’ll have your cake — at night with violins and chandeliers.
— This is the divorce of true minds. I cannot accept that because someone is famous he must be great.
— But you assume that it is noble and pure to be an outcast.
— Like Artaud, like Van Gogh, like Rimbaud.
— Take it from Mama Mona, they yearned for recognition. Do you think Emily Dickinson was happy bound in a nutshell of near oblivion — in the shadowed corners of yellowing pages — waiting to be drawn away and forever by four-eyed inky scholars who haven’t got a clue to this very day because they themselves have never experienced the whammobammo of drums and the jazzy last bip of the bipping rap of the world. Surely Emily Dickinson craved it obsessively. If you should ever have your day in the sun — knock on wood — God forbid a chorus of green faces will accuse you of selling out. See how Cenci told you that you got Yale because you pulled strings.
— What strings do I have? I’ve got more “we regret to inform you”s than John Kennedy Toole and his mother. And now that Jonathan Brent happens to pick my work out of a pile of dusty manuscripts, Cenci, my dear friend and mentor, who has always supported my work, tells me that it’s only because I have contacts.
— All your friends are crooks.
— Who?
— The sadomasochist whore
— She’s no whore. She books appointments.
— Innocence should be suffocated if it fools itself. You wish you were Buñuel, but you’re Viridiana, a fool like Viridiana. You dream of palaces for beggars but you wouldn’t toss them a dime in the streets, yet you offer to help crooks like that dominitrix who works at the Dungeon, feeding off human frailty! What happens in the bedroom affects the whole world. Sexuality and life are one in the same. If you keep believing in your fantasy world, someday you’ll wake up and it will be too late.
— Cuando las autoridades te apoyan — I doubt. A Pessoa ninguna autoridad lo apoyó. Women — I always say — when I read Simone de Beauvoir — I think — she’s a good writer but she would have a been a much better — much better mother. That’s what I think of you, a good writer, but you would have been a much better — much better mother. You could have given birth to a great man. Erraste tu carrera. Debiste haber sido madre.
— Y tú, tú debiste ser mujer.
— I won’t deny it. I would have loved to be a mother.
— Tú eres un envidioso.
— Envy is a splendid sensation, but I would never envy you. Envy involves someone greater than oneself. I would have never published con la chusma.
— That was a reprint. It can be reprinted a thousand times.
— I am an elitist. But I tell you, don’t brag that your book was published by Yale because Foucault recommended it. Nobody believes it anyway.
— No me digas what I should say.
— I don’t care about authorities, institutions.
— I don’t care about institutions.
— Yes, you care. Institutions don’t care about you. But, yes, you care. They throw you a bone, they publish your book, or they publish my journal. But those are stark naked bones that wouldn’t draw a maggot.