Greece’s
favorite playboy and a beautiful young assistant district attorney,
chased by murderous policemen and a CIA assassin, narrowly escape from
an island.
When
one of their engineers is found hanged in his apartment it shakes
Telnet Communications in Athens to its base. Suicide or murder?
A rapidly emerging conspiracy implicates the CIA and anti-terrorism
software on government phones. Some of the most important people in the
city are upset, and the media jump on it.
Proposed: Billy Zane
George
Papas, the CEO of Telnet for Eastern Europe and the Middle East,
though living on an island, finds himself in the eye of the storm and
suspected of the murder of one of his engineers.
George
has the Balkans too—he’s as big as the prime minister—so rather than calling him into Athens for questioning the
Justice Department send someone to the island to take his
statement, someone no one will notice—
Proposed: Tess Spentzos
—Assistant
DA Constance Constantinou, a young employee with an American law degree on
her first assignment, to the island to question him. Why have they
assigned a novice to such an important case?
George
knows the game; he sees that he’s the next target. Pleasantly
surprised by Constance—she’s smart and efficient—he realizes he can use her
for cover.
The
smoothest of playboys, and a star personality in Greece, he works his
charm on her and introduces her to everyone he suspects could be
involved in this political maneuver. What more natural than taking a
beautiful woman to a party?
Proposed: Antigone Kouloukakis
Patritsia,
a call girl, a temptress and an assassin, has been hired by gay British
MP Archie Taylor to accompany him on the island and attract the boys,
but her real mission is to eliminate the key players. Lie down with her and you may never get up again, and she's after Constance in more ways than one.
Proposed: Nia Vardalos
Alison,
their hostess and George's former lover, is married to his partner, who
is using George's client list to run guns into Iran, and has a new
contract with the Chinese. Alison drops a flash drive with the
Chinese list on it into Constance's purse—"I'd rather have him in jail
than dead"—and everybody wants that drive.
Constance
now finds herself in a dangerous situation and doesn’t know who to
trust. She’s trapped here because of the seductive George but corpses
keep turning up and someone, very likely George, is doing murder. The
breath of assassins is on her neck.
And
George? It’s not clear whose side he’s on. He’s a wheeler and dealer
in the Middle East—how innocent can he be? Though she’s high on his
attention to her, she fears him. But they must help each other if they
want to get off the island alive.
A
murder in the morning, an afternoon interview, an evening party, a
night picking their way through a murderous labyrinth—let's see what happens at sunrise.
Originally published in paper as Home from the Party:
“In
Home from the Party MacLean has created a fast-paced, witty novel that
pushes the murder mystery in exciting new directions.”—Keith Maillard
“This is a most entertaining and satirical tale in which black humour and farce are brought together with real acuity.”—Reference West (Vancouver)
“Considering the price and scarcity of potable water on an island
suspiciously like Hydra, the discovery of a beautiful teenage corpse
floating in a cistern is no laughing matter. But almost everything else
is lively and fun in this mystery of political intrigue and sexual
abundance in the Argosaronic.”—The Athenian
“Home from the Party is a
slow-fused but explosive thriller set on an imaginary Greek island,
presented in all its artsy glamour and glittering corruption….if you
like epigrams, knowing insights into failed relationships, evocations of
la dolce vita, Hydra-style, this is for you. MacLean… has published a previous novel, Foreign Matter, with Atheneum Press, New York. Although Foreign Matter was very well received, Home from the Party
suggests that MacLean would be well-advised to undertake a series of
mystery novels, using ‘Captain Costa’ and the Greek setting he evokes
here with such skill and obvious joy.”—Edward Winston
“Featuring his usual comic touches, the book manages to skillfully
intertwine a murder, a greek investigator, showbiz celebrities, drug
dealers, artists, gigolos, the CIA and the junta, in a fast-paced,
entertaining web of entangled connections.”—Angelika Timms, Athens Week
“MacLean is able to develop an interesting combination of characters in
his novel. Each character is displayed with his/her own unique style
and Konstantinou’s adventures are different and very funny.”—Rosanne
Papadopoulos, Greek News Weekly
“Home from the Party is a fast-paced murder mystery laced with humor.”—The Athens News
“The roller-coaster ride begins....”—Chris Maverick, Greek News Weekly
O there's nobody left to read, to read! There's nobody left to read! "Homer" May be as misnomer For several otherwise out-of-work guys Half his size. And can I take heart from a work by committee, The daily battle before the invested city? The smug gods dilute me till I'm gone, The pale eternal coffee break on the office lawn— I want more! It was all spacemen anyway. O there's nobody left to read, to read, There's nobody left to read! I keep the bible in the bathroom, Chapel grotto of my steadiest meditations Where, Bloody lamb of my intestine's perturbations I am likeliest reduced to prayer. Not that I'm getting anywhere. At least the gods were my moral inferiors, Not having to die. Here I am outdone even in this. O there's nobody left to read, and I'm tee-ed, There's nobody left to read! But if my ego is on a par with the Savior's By what rule of thumb shall I plot my behaviors? How shall my thoughts and my feelings agree? O how shall I structure my ee-ssential me? (I guess Arnold was right there, but that's all he gave me. There isn't a line in his poems that can save me.) Let's move up to Shakespeare, Reconsider that sneer At erotic esteem, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Not the romp it might seem, And the blind bastards we're. No anomalous fear. It's a bitch going steady. Or let us to the height Of the language, King Lear, And again get the shove, Feel the pain all we might Over betraying love, About which I felt awful already. "To be or not to be, that is the question," Just isn't poetry. It's indigestion. Sidney Wrote sonnet sequences, didn'he? Or was Astrophel and Stella By some other fella? Donne Had a wicked sense of fun Till he embraced principles he'd formerly disdained And got ordained. Herbert Was sweet as orange sherbert. Whenever he felt caustic He wrote an acrostic Marvell Refused to garvell Before Cromwell But wrote an ode of such strained ambiguity that it did just as well. Dryden Went glidin’ Down the Thames in a barge To hear the canons and his friends discharge. Pope Was no dope At razor-slash disfigurement but himself was misshapen and short And looked better in his wig when he wore't. Swift Had a gift For satirical wit And the savor of shit. Gibbon Wasn’t exactly fibbin, But he spent his life ransacking Europe’s libraries only to cram it
all Into a myth of the fall. Hume, One has to assume, Broke Kant’s dogmatic slumber And made him even dum-ber. Humanity is in a toilet stall Reading graffiti on the wall. A scrawl on the wall before anything critical. Google News gives me more than I need that's political. I've affected to hate art But it's dull when it ain't art— As long as from boredom it saves us! Religion and drugs I have put quite behind me. The Eastern techniques, God, don't even remind me. I'm hiding out here where my mother can't find me— What do I want with Robert Graves's? Just don't make it difficult, give me a break. Please, the E-Z Read version of Finnegan’s Wake. I've read one Beckett novel, that's all I can take— We don't need a chore that enslaves us! You can keep your new finds and your also-ran wit. A fie on the crowd but this much I'll admit, What floats to the top is the interesting lit— I guess that's what the power of raves is. The shelves at the bookstore are crowded, I know. My own name's not there, I've flipped through the whole row. Perhaps that's the reason I'm feeling so low. It's awful when nobody craves us. I slow down when I reach the pornography tier. If I'm extra discreet I can read it all here, But I linger and finger and slip into gear— I can dig anything that depraves us. Catullus Did it with fellas. His erotic passages are strong enough But not long enough. Anais's Stories have predictable literary biases But I can take a few modica Of her erotica. Papa was in less danger from the beast Than Uncle Henry was of getting venereally deceased. They're our two best bravados, though lots of people can't abide 'em And Hem was more in touch with the woman inside him. O there's nobody left to read, don't you see? There's just nobody left to read! Durrell I'm quite sure'll Be reborn in Tibet Before I'm halfway through the Avignon Quintet. Greene Writes a prose that's nice and lean And controls the point of view Which precious few of the women do. Virginia is full of the self-caressing female promise You get without the fuzzy stream of consciousness sidetracks in D.M.
Thomas. His price is historical distortion and pedantically wilful guilt, Which is a form of liberal-arts restraint that keeps our academic positions
from being otherwise filt. But Greene was wrong about God and women and Browning and America and hot countries and everything you would think might matta, And he never could do what down where the fever shook he knew, and it was
true, he hadda, Which was get out of Hemingway's shadda. Chandler 'S a smooth handler Of plot decoys And proof that American heroes are ten-year-old boys. Long time ago, way back before we'uns, Three Americans challenged the Europeans And made aristocracy a Stateside preserve. Wodehouse was getting on everybody's nerves. The Odyssean house in the woods was the base For Faulkner's chosen but woodpile-vulnerable race, And he walled in with outrage as well as he could Randy uncooperative southern womanhood. F. Scott threw Dick Diver at whatever Yerp could hit him with And it was home grown money and a movie star he finally undid him
with And if you could prefer an English gentleman after that book It had to be your Gatsbyesque parvenu outlook. Papa went to Paris and fished the Seine, Take that, And his colonel waded into Venice in the wake of less imposing men And he brought it all down to having balls at bottom, Even or perhaps especially when like Jake you ain't got 'em. But I'm not persuaded it's worth all the fuss To prove other folks is inferior to us, Not when it's so blamed obvy-uss. you remember Hemingway when Fitzgerald said the rich are different from us answered yes they have more money and told him he could increase his reach by putting a pillow under Zelda but did you hear when Fitzgerald said they're different from us the Europeans how he said yes in America they live happily ever after and in Europe they live happily ever now? in the garlic belt anyway I knew a guy who knew a guy who knew Hemingway and he said he said that doesn't really sound like him I'm fairly sure about the other stuff Norman Mailer and Robert Cohn Went walking out at sunset by the sea. Norman said to Robert, "I know you're only here on loan But the same guy who made you made me. He made John O'Hara and he made James Jones And Dashiell Hammett and Antonionee. He made more writers than Brando made actors But the last and best he made was me, See? The last and best he made was me." They walked on in silence and the waves washed in And Norman kicked along absently, Put his hands in his pockets and thought about things And looked about as glum as he could be. He said, "Brando won't speak to me, Marilyn wouldn't sleep with me, I'm short and ugly and my thing's too small
to see, And what I want to know, what I called you here to ask you is, Do you think he might have liked me?" Cohn looked at him sharply and Mailer brought his guard up, said "Well you punched him out, you should know!" "Norman," whispered Robert, "you're confusing fact and fiction. It was Jake with whom I came to blows." "Yah but Papa let you beat him, he could feel you in your
fists! Do you really mean to stand there and say That you didn't feel the victory engorge you like grace? You fought the bull, boy! And you lived another day!" But Cohn just whispered, "Papa don't care,
Papa don't care,
Papa don't care,
Papa don't care," And faded in the gloom and then was gone, And Norman hung his head and trudged back to his room And sat there staring at the gun. Emerson Said I shouldn't rely on anyone, And there are worse things than sitting around on a hot afternoon reading
sermons about the eternal Me, Especially at the Hellenic-American Union library where it’s
free. Poe’s caprice With Berenice I hope began With a dental plan. Rimbaud Is okay as kids go But derangement of the senses Is beyond my expenses. Thomas the Stern Had a lot to learn And more to teach But his grasp exceeded his reach. Ezra Said, "How sezya, Elyet, Kin ya spell yet?" Auden Discovered God in The Age of Anxiety And spent the rest of his life worrying about the legitimacy of Anglican
bishopry and notions of sexuo-spiritual propriety. Stephen Spender said "Phew, Wystan Hugh! You'd better go and hose yourself down in the loo!" Joyce Made a dubious choice When he had a headmaster cultivated enough to know Shakespeare, albeit
without a graduate degree from the University of Chicago, Quote Iago. (Which I suppose is less baloneyous Than quoting Polonius.) Eliot was a poet who preferred Winter to spring, England to America, Death to life, And religion to anything. It's an approach. But what have I to do with these iron men? O, for a book, for a book, for a book, For a book that's as frivolous as I'm, That won't frustrate my quest, Viz, to understand less, And will just help me while out the time. O, for a book to which I can come home When the company gets too oppressive— Nothing too heated So in case I do read it I won't get all tense and obsessive. O, for a book that will give me the look Of a scholar in truth-seeking to'ment, A prop in my lap While I'm taking my nap With society's respect for the moment. O, for a book I can hold in my hand At the end of my day when I'm weari-ed. Some animal feed I can sit up and read When my honey-babe's getting her period.
De Sade Might have been perfectly glad To have had as his hassock Masoch. The Marquis was in some ways the pride of his species. I just hope he flossed after gobbling those feces. Scott To my mind was not. His endings are sufficiently maudlin But he wrote a whole historical romance about the Highland Uprising
and he didn't even put Cullodin in! Blake Is jake But I have to cross my eyes When he prophesies. (To Wm. Blake, Engraver, a senryu in re “Did he who made the lamb make
thee?”: Yah, same guy. When I Look into my own heart there Are lambs and tygers.) Wordsworth Felt among flocks and herds mirth, But his pastoral song went on and on so long he didn't even get the
beginning finished, which is okay with me, And I could wish he were a tree. Browning I always picture frowning, Whether because he married Elizabeth Barrett, Or because he was squeezing Shelley into a style of
modernist difficulty and the shoe fit but he couldn't quite wear it. O I much prefer Shelley to Keats! Keats is so damnably neat! He left his fond heart For us pickled in Art But his atmosphere's sick-room effete. O I much prefer Shelley to Keats! When he can't find the word, Shelley cheats! I mean, scarcely mature, Mais mon Dieu! Quelle hauteur! Keats only measured five feet! O don't give me Keats, give me Shelley! I like him so well I can't tell'ee! His fuck-you effulgence Wins old men's indulgence— Who cares? He indulged himself silly! O I much prefer Shelley to Keats! Put your scarf on, John! Isn't he sweet? But Shelley is careless Where Keats is so airless; Shelley is attitude, Keats runs to platitude; Keats did write prettily, I'm glad he saw Italy— O if either had lived Think what he might have gived! No but let us leave Keats At the Goddess's teats For I much prefer, much prefer, much prefer, much prefer, Much prefer Shelley to Keats! And I much prefer Pinter to Beckett! Beckett's a positive Hecate! Just reading the dude Puts a damp on my mood And when I feel the impulse I check it. I've been told Beckett's better than Pinter. It's the grope in the dark Beckett's inter. He can draw you a map Specifying the trap But he won't get your soul through the winter. Yes I much prefer Pinter to Beckett. Pinter's just that much more neckett. He love/hates women Where Sam love/hates Him and So sparely you'd scarcely expeck it. O I much prefer Pinter to Beckett! And although you may say what the heck it Just doesn't much matter, The former, the latter, Still one is a scheme And the other is dream; Beckett's reduceable, Pinter's seduceable, Sure, both are depressive But Beckett's excessive— Took Joyce's maximal, Found it all axeable— No I much prefer, much prefer, much prefer, much prefer, Much prefer Pinter to Beckett. (A park in Paris. April. Sunshine, birds, levity of nature. Enter SAMUEL
BECKETT and X, crossing left. BECKETT’S hands are in his overcoat pockets. X
extends his arms laterally, palms up, and bends back his head.) X: Ah, it's good to be alive! BECKETT: Well, I wouldn't go that far. (Exeunt.) He lived for our sins And didn't disdain To list them. Of course he always wins But the holy Irish smell of a rigged game Helps me resist him. He knows where the world stops and he begins (Not a bad definition of pain), In exquisite trivia and a closed system. Samuel Beckett, The writer as skimp. Ernest Hemingway, The writer as simp. Scott Fitzgerald, The writer as primp. W.H. Auden, The writer as wimp. Gertrude Stein, The writer as blimp. Henry Miller, The writer as imp. Arthur Miller, The writer as pimp. Susan Sontag, The writer as lymph.
D.M. Thomas, The writer as nymph. Truman Capote, The writer as limp. The Sixth Lord Byron, The writer as gimp. Ezra Pound, The writer as chimp. Norman Mailer, The writer as shrimp. O there's nobody left to read, M'ma, There's nobody left to read. But they all give me something, Stand me in new winds, Rearrange my hair. Restless spirit trying to incarnate, Feeling my way, Winning through to silence, Betrayed by boredom. The whole thing here is forgetting. The snag with Vladimir Nabokov was A dyspepsia almost as noisome as Waugh's. Life offered neither A very long breather From constant unbearable irks. Now I've wrung my enjoyment from both of these men I need not be exposed to them ever again But I suffer the scourge Of a lingering urge To pour Bromo all over their works! Nabokov was annoyed By Freud, Called James A few names, Considered Eliot Beneath yelling at, And Dalà Too benighted to rallÃ. Waugh regarded Eliot As brelliot But thought Picasso Was an asso. Had Nabokov proceeded to his Ph.D. Would he have to shake his polymathic rattles at me? Had Woody Allen only finished his B.A. Where'd his undergradjut exercises be today? The best novellas Are written by fellas With a yen For men. Billy Budd In his captain’s blood Is the bluest emotion On Melville’s ocean Malarial Daisy, So nobly lazy, Was better Than the guy who’d forget her. Marlow Carries a lady’s emotional cargo But it’s for Kurtz That he hurts. Aschenbach Gave his conscience the sach To keep Tadzio On his radzio. Flaubert Shaved his short hair And reclined in the raw. “Madame Bovary, c’est mwaw!” Camus Liked it cru. He got his workingman's heart out of hock Rolling his rock. Sartre Let an enormous fartre And sighed, "Descartes be damned. I stink, therefore I am." Robbe-Grillet Sat all day In thrall To the elusive wall. Zola Has the flaw That the earthy passages over which one should drool Make me want to fish my jeans out of his pool. I used to be a semiologist But now I’m not Saussure. O help me, o help me Swim on as I used! As hard as I strike out I can't get through Proust!
O keep me, o keep me From being too frank! I see in Bill Burroughs The neighborhood crank! O save me, o save me My friends, don't disown me! I can't fight the feeling That Yeats is a phony! And Waugh begat Greene, and Greene begat Burgess, Sequential ejaculations of Catholic urges, But Tony felt Irish so there had to be Joyce, And the result is the most cloyingly pedantic voice, Diction so puffed up it parodies Pride, And baldness of purpose no sidesweep can hide. Whenever I don't forget I like to say "serviette." It has the agreeable effectum Of placing my index finger in Nancy Mitford's rectum. O there's nobody left to read, tra-la, There's nobody left to read. The very outset Of the Raj Quartet, “Imagine, then,” Did me in. Gore Vidal and Tom Wolfe Two Were out together dancing cheek to cheek one night When Gore pulled back to get the younger man's attention And to watch his pupils tighten in the light. He said, "I hope you realize that you and I are yoked in tandem To a grave responsibility: We revise the lower-middle American mind and hand 'em All those facile reconstructions of their history. You've got painting and the recent architecture and the moon And I redecorate the politics in my own way— In fact it's not too much to say, and this is more than just
conjecture, We've become the rear-view mirrors of the country today! Of course you dress like a clown and you know zip about the rich But there are more considerations than vulgarity; At least your instincts are sound, and you can maunder like a bitch And there aren't many pop historians as shallow as me!" Then he gave Tom a push and whirled him underneath his arm And snapped him back again so they were dancing nose to nose Until Tom began to fidget and to worry about the harm That all this clutching might be doing to his clothes. So he worked himself away and sort of leaned back with the beat And said, "Well, Gore, you know, the trouble is, you worry me. Sometimes I gaze into your eyes until I get the creepy feeling That there's no one really in there looking back at me!" But Gore just smiled the well-bred smile Of one whose mind is so refined it has become, well, air, And said, "I'm Gore Vidal, and I was Kennedy's pal, And what you take for mere vapidity is savoir-faire. But if you want the real me, if you want to probe me deeply, I suggest that you address the service I perform. You know we're both kind of picky, we both find the country hicky, And we’re doing what we can to elevate the norm: Now, my historical researches have gone quite a way to purchase us A destiny and something like a tone of class, And where could we have anchored any real sense of our past Without my speculations on the size of Washington's ass?" Tom just nodded and tried to keep in step And stared off at the distance as Gore steered along. He had the strange but grown-up feeling he was finally getting hep— He had a sense now who he was and where he belonged. O the whole thing's gone to seed, to seed, There's nobody left now to read! Joyce said yes, Beckett said no, It's a draw. James confessed
He didn't know—
Subtle law.
Swann obsessed, Flits to and fro What he saw. Hamlet stressed: Might father’s bro Be p’pa? Mother's breast, Oedipus so Had it raw. Hero's test, Take any blow— Pick a straw. Banquet guest, Go with the flow, Shout hurrah! You can never quite land on Henry James except with the feet of a
bird, And the vast contextualization of sentences qualifies even a word. Ironic detachment is so complete it is understood rather than heard, And when he does come to earth it's so touching, its slightness seems
somehow absurd. James Aims At the pretty disguises of need But he takes forever to read. Henry James, Henry James, American good just ain’t the same’s Europe’s beauty, So at odds with doing one’s duty. In the end, as it were, You do prefer Goodness, Not indeed for its vulgar shouldness, Dreary onus of the dutiful. But because it’s beautiful. Hart Crane Had beautiful pain For his verse to refine, But I only get every fifth line. Vonnegut Oughta get A white suit and cane If he wants to be Twain. Deacon John Wrote great Bech but his novels are a yawn, Infected as they are by the Dickensian dream of a clean kitchen floor And a respectable golf score. He should move back to Boston And marry Jane Austen. Austen I get deliciously lost in, But is not the pinched and priggish old foil, for whom her disdain is more
unrelieved than it could otherwise possibly be, She? Byron I have to confess to admirin. He makes me ache To be a rake. Whereas Styron Is twice again as tirin As the first Tom Wolfe Whom he seems to regard as some earlier version of himsolfe. O there's nobody left to read, to read, There's nobody much left to read. an old poet called e.e. cumming s met a centerfold out one night slumming ** when he got her unstapled he found himself aprilled… and afterwards walked her home humming The trouble with reading Dorian Gray Is you stare at yourself in the mirror all day. Frost Got lost On the road taken And was attacked and brutally buggered by a painting by Francis
Bacon. Lorca Is an absolute corka. He wrote a most incredibly sensuous poem about water But more plays than he hadda oughter. Yeats Grates. The way he went is So portentous. Lawrence Got more attention than he warrants. He transcended his class, which the English could not but think was
peach-uh, But if I want blood rites and domination I'll read Nietszch-uh.
Kafka Is good when he provokes lafta But he wouldn't be terribly buoyed To know that the foremost expressionist writer was Freud. Nash Had dash And where would this slapdash composition be Sans lui? My sister gave me the three-volume cardboard bookcase set of Lord of the
Rings. God, how I hate to look at that thing. Criticism is death said Nijinsky But who can resist death Especially one this easeful? Let us factor Faulkner thus: Joyce plus Scott Times stream-of-Jim-Beam-consciousnuss. Scott caused the Civil War Said Twain Much less civil Waged by Bill. Bigot Snob Sentimentalist Portentalist Winner of the Nobel Prize Vocational dandy Oscar Wilde in planter drag Scarecrow posed In the Emperor's new clothes Duddy of all fuddies And how his own equation? One dream-wandering old lady Is worth any number of backwater family trees However urned. Let him kill his own darlings Is my wish. I like my phonies Irish. Yeats Skates On sewer grates, Creates States He often hates And waits For dates With other fates. Rupert Brooke Mistook A south-seas vacation For romantic elation. Robert Lowell Despairs of his soul. His shifting glimmers of consciousness just End in disgust. John Barth Is a pain in the arth. You write like that when you're Courting tenure. Walker Percy, Grant us mercy: Emotion just wilts on the bough and rots While you arrange your thoughts. Tennessee Williams and Malcolm Lowry Each in his own way's a trifle flowery: Preoccupied with being aesthetic; Like modern Greek poets, too poetic. Each's sine qua non is self-pity— Tennessee because he wasn't pretty, Malcolm because his cock was pathetic. But Tennessee does break through into health; Lowry's labyrinth recoils on itself. Lenny Bruce Had juice But his sanctimonious tone of rebuke Made both of us puke. Paul Theroux Squeezed through But knocking around in the world too long Made the boy sullen, bad-tempered and wrong. O the garden is all full of weeds, just weeds, There's nobody left now to read! Bellow Apparently thought he was quite a handsome fellow, And it must be admitted that his looks Are more symmetrical than his books.
Philip Roth Is all in a froth, In fact a positive fever, To be Cheever. Brett Easton Ellis Seems to want to tell us That face-lifts and sodomy Are more popular than they ought to be. Margaret Atwood Hoped her hat would Stretch her frown Upside down. Robertson Davies is hard not to hate, He seems so determined to be second-rate. Tom Sharpe Had the wit to harp On a worthy cause. That's all it was. Muriel Spark Is whistling in the dark. She thinks everyone in a lurch Is an allegory of the Church. Pantagruel Passed a minimalist comb through his seven-league ponytail And out hopped—don't tell me! Donald Barthelme! Salmon Rushdie Hasn't been treated all that unjustie. His confinement couldn't have been more boring Than his outpouring. Sontag's Opinions in the learned rags Were final
But her fiction smells like vinyl. This is my plaster statue Of Leonard Conen, Best thing groanin. His spirit is off Being true to itself Or possibly trying to renew itself While here in the silence I bow my head in homage To what I have briefly become To see what I could use, And muse. Monk in the whorehouse, I love your contradictions. So purely you burn For fifteen-old girls (How can I live in the world with your exploits?), So neatly fold yourself Into your disciplines. Everything is a discipline, It's a bit much, And I’m overstocked on purity. Doubting psalmist, Failed saint, Rabbinical Jesuit Hearing your own confession (There can little interfere Between your mouth and your ear), Behind each a clinical depression. Fearer and trembler, Comforter of puberty, The bride still unravished, The song less new. Hitler groupie (Who else believed you?), Israeli warrior, Partisan hater, Meditator, Priest of pop liturgy Praying for power and The Arab veil, The preferred fate for your sister. Chemistry-set tradition-monger, Star without capped teeth. Interesting, if fetal. Aspirant slave Who would bribe exaltation, The soul's, the body's, With prostration— It falls off me. I prefer not to grovel Unless at gunpoint Or its equivalent. No doubt I'll learn. Retreat meanwhile To an uncandled niche In the cathedral, Bleed in the dark Like my mother, Quietly reproach my arrogance When some whim Draws me in From the glaring street For cool incensed air And a friendly ceiling, A ten-minute tourist of your pain. Say wo-ya. Say wo-ya. Well I got Barthelme's brother, Forget his name now. Well I got Martin Amis and I Find him pretty lame now. I got Charles Bukowski, don't like to Think about his teeth And I got Evelyn Waugh dead sittin on his toilet seat, now! Say wo-ya. Say wo-ya. Well I got post-war German novels I Wouldn't wipe your butt with, I got long-winded Latinos Too dull to cut with, I got forty years of Pusillanimous verse And I got Philip Larkin, he's like Drivin in reverse, now baby. Say WO-ya! Say WO-ya! I tell ya, I got books marked "Humor," Don't make me laugh, I got E.M. Forster, you could Cut him down by half. I got Marguerite Du-ras, sometimes I Read her in the bath And if I want heavy P.M.S. I got: SYL-VIA PLATH, all right now. I said I got the blues, I got the nobody-left-to-read-now blues, You know I do. Well I got Kenneth Patchen, he's too Hard t'unnerstan, I got Sommerset Maugham now, He's exotic but he's bland, I got V.S. Naipal but What he says ain't always true And I got new African writin comin OUT THE FUCKIN WAZOO, now. Wo yes, you got it too. Well I'm packin my bags up, baby, Movin outa this zoo. Be talkin to you.
