The Late Night Library of Malcontents
( A bedtime story about deciding who to read before I go to sleep)
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Richard Ford is blowing smoke from the living room window; flicking ash on a young couple below. Raymond Carver has said enough and fallen asleep on the couch clutching a savage Chekhov. Charles Bukowski is in the kitchen relighting his cigar from the stove, and puffing demonstrably to celebrate winning an argument with Richard Yates—who thinks that everyone still cares—except, of course, Dorothy Parker, who has just walked in with a large bottle of unopened gin, humored by the news that Robert Frost is locked in the bathroom and refuses to come out until Robert Graves apologizes for something he didn’t say, but should have said; at which point William Boyd staggers in wearing a white suit, and waving a gun in the air. You lost me after Any Human Heart, I said. And, with that, I thanked them each for coming and bid them all a goodnight.
