November 24: Literary Critics, Fictional Character, Broken Tooth

Billy didn't get onto television in New York that night, but he did get onto a radio talk show.  There was a radio station right next to Billy's hotel.  He saw its call letters over the entrance of an office building, so he went in.  He went up to the studio on an automatic elevator, and there were other people up there, waiting to get in.  They were literary critics, and they thought Billy was one, too.  They were going to discuss whether the novel was dead or not.  So it goes.

Billy took his seat with the others around a golden oak table, with a microphone all his own.  The master of ceremonies asked him his name and what paper he was from.  Billy said he was from the Ilium Gazette.

He was nervous and happy.  "If you're ever to Cody, Wyoming," he told himself, "just ask for Wild Bob."

Billy, a character in Vonnegut's novel about the bombing of Dresden, is on a fictitious radio station program to discuss whether or not the novel is dead.  Slaughterhouse is a very self-aware book.  Vonnegut himself has already made a couple of appearances in its pages.  Now, Billy is surrounded by fictional literary critics meeting to have a fictional discussion as to whether or not the novel is dead.  Basically, these characters could talk themselves out of existence.

It's an interesting line of thought.  Perhaps I am a fictional character is someone's novel right now.  Sitting in my living, the day after Thanksgiving, writing a blog post about being a figment of some writer's imagination, I could be abducted by aliens, encounter the ghost of some miner who drowned in the Barnes-Hecker disaster of 1926, or transform into an albino deer.  It depends upon what kind of novel I am a character in.  Science fiction.  Horror.  Fantasy.  Historical.

I will tell you what the plot of my day has been so far.  I slept in until around eight o'clock this morning.  I am not a Black Friday shopper.  When I got up, I ate a banana smothered with peanut butter.  Then I drove my daughter to her boyfriend's house.  When I got home, I started cleaning.  I vacuumed and swept and mopped.  Straightened and dusted.  Scrubbed down the bathroom.  Made beds. Folded laundry.  As I was folding laundry, I decided to eat some Wheat Thins and cheese.

Here is the plot complication of my narrative:  a piece of my tooth came out as I was eating.  At first, I thought it was just a piece of dry cheese or fragment of cracker.  No such luck.  So, now I have a tooth with a ragged hole, and I have to deal with it for the rest of the weekend.

I really dislike whoever is writing the novel of my life right now.  I would have much preferred to receive a phone call from a literary agent who had stumbled across my blog and wanted to offer me a six-figure advance on a memoir of my life as a would-be saint.  That would be a much more enjoyable way to complicate my plot.

However, I am not in the kind of novel where fantastic things like that happen.  Instead, I will worry my tooth all weekend long with my tongue, and on Monday, I will hopefully have a dentist appointment to fix the problem.

Saint Marty is just thankful that he isn't in a Tolstoy book.  He doesn't want to throw himself under a speeding train.