September 13: Kilgore Trout, Books Make Good Friends, Sharon Olds

Nothing happened that night.  It was the next night that about one hundred and thirty thousand people in Dresden would die.  So it goes.  Billy dozed in the meat locker.  He found himself engaged again, word for word, gesture for gesture, in the argument with his daughter with which this tale began.  

"Father," she said.  "What are we going to do with you?"  And so on.  "You know who I could just kill?" she asked.

"Who could you kill?" said Billy.

"That Kilgore Trout."

Kilgore Trout was and is a science-fiction writer, of course.  Billy had not only read dozens of books by Trout--he has also become Trout's friend, to the extent that anyone can become a friend of Trout, who is a bitter man.

Billy read Trout's books when he was in the hospital after his nervous breakdown.  The guy in the bed next to him had almost everything written by Trout.  So, before he became actual friends with the author, Billy became friends with his books. 

I have become friends with an author through his/her books many times.  For instance, I'm really good friends with Charles Dickens.  I've read most of his novels, some of his letters, and a 1200-page biography about him.  I KNOW Charles Dickens.  I've done the same thing for Sharon Olds, Phil Levine, Stephen King (although it's hard to keep up with King's writing), and John Irving.  Books make good friends.

Out of that list, I've actually met only one of those writers:  Sharon Olds.  I was lucky enough to take a week-long writing workshop with her in Big Sur, California.  It was a sun-filled six days of journal scribbling and being in her presence, listening to her talk about poetry.  I was pretty damn lucky.

Of course, we have not kept up a correspondence.  Olds didn't come to my son's baptism, and I don't send her yearly Christmas cards.  Our friendship remains page-bound now, although I still have those sun-drenched memories of Big Sur .

Perhaps there is somebody reading this blog post right now who doesn't really know me and wants to be my friend.  If you are that person, I want to say that I'm pretty social.  As long as you compliment my writing or give me chocolate, I'm all yours.  I'm a pretty cheap date, as writers go.

Saint Marty is thankful tonight for all the friends he has on his bookshelves.