nobody asked, but...

Harpers magazine is a joke, right?

Fri, 18 May 2007 23:10:13 GMT

Earlier this year, I subcribed to Harper's, mostly on a whim. It was surprisingly inexpensive, and I had always been curious, so I went ahead and subscribed. I've not received five issues, three of which I have actually read, and I've come to the conclusion that the magazine is a big joke. It's a satire, right?

It finally became clear to me after I spent *every* commute this week struggling to get through an article titled "The Mirror of Life" and subtitled "How Shakespeare Conquered the World." I finally got to the end of the article and you want to know how Shakespeare conquered the world? According to the article, he did two things - one, he was a really good writer and two, he put funny bits in his sad plays and sad bits in his funny plays. I wasted a week on this! However, I chalked it up to one bad article, and kept in mind that I'd been pretty tired this week - maybe I had read it wrong.

I moved on to the next article. But wait - that's not an article. It's a fifteen page comic strip detailing how much it sucks for Iraqi men in the Iraqi National Guard, especially because the American military officers training them yell a lot. Seriously. I don't know what more I can say about that, other than to note that I'm never getting back the ten minutes of my life it took from me.

What put me over the edge, though, was an ad for European berets. It's not even an ad for this particular haberdashery - just for their European berets. It feels so much better to be in on the joke.

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 21:33:06 GMT

Today is a good day to think about change.

Today, 229 years ago, fifty-six men signed a document which forever changed the course of human events. They declared certain unalienable rights which belong to everyone, always, and more importantly, they declared that whenever government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it. Politely, on paper, they declared revolution.

It's easy to forget that this *is* a country of revolutionaries and that, as Americans, we have both the right and the responsibility to uphold the high standards set for us by fifty-six men with parchment and quills. In our ultra-connected global village, revolution is not the same as it was then, it's not the same as it was fifty years ago. Protests don't work and neither will storming the capitol, arms in hand. But as we reimagine the ideas of revolution in the political sphere, we can conduct our own tiny revolutions in the personal sphere.

I accepted delivery of a new mattress in my new apartment today, and built a new bed frame, and when I was done, I was dying for an itty-bitty Amanda flag to stake through my bed, declaring it mine, declaring my space mine and claiming ownership of the hundred square feet around me. It's not much, moving out of an unhealthy living situation, but for me, it's changed everything. I've made small steps - I smile more, at everything and everyone. I let myself wander around New York like a tourist because I just can't ignore the beauty of the skyline. I make friends, I take risks and I find myself tearing up with pure wonderment on a daily basis. I love, again, everything, and now that I've declared myself independent, I never again want to suffer a situation just because it's sufferable.

The political *is* personal. Revolt, in whatever way you can.

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 08:22:17 GMT

i can't help myself:

from tony kushner's a bright room called day (the afterword):

i am of the Left because my experience of the world is that things are horribly wrong; being progressive is about being willing to admit that things are horribly wrong, is about being unable to afford to be silent; coservatives and reactionaries declare that the word's biggest problem is that poor, disenfranchised, oppressed people compain excessively.

Sat, 21 Aug 2004 07:46:09 GMT

there's been less writing lately; there's been a little less of everything lately.

sometimes i think that this is the way to do it; fall asleep on the couch, wake up, confused, dazed, lie down in bed and write, filter-less. write when i'm honest, not when i can sleep inside a turn of phrase.

i always feel a little panicky when i wake up in the middle of the night from sleeping on the couch. these are the nights that make me paranoid, the nights where i sit up, waiting for a violation an invasion a trespassing. maybe trusting is harder through the sleepy honesty. or maybe it's got something to do with the tv running through my brain as i sleep. or maybe i should be paranoid because ghosts and demons and robbers are all waiting outside my door to hear me breathing the slow even sleeping breath, ready to pounce the minute i relax.

i'll sleep well again in a week, in a bright green room just over the county line, in brooklyn, that will belong to me, to us. i'll be able to lean over the bed and touch the floor, and i won't be afraid of falling, and i'll sleep all through the night again. if i can't, i'll climb up the rusty ladder, push open the hatch and stare at a skyline from my roof. i'll look at the city that becomes less right as it becomes more mine and that makes me cry myself to sleep sometimes.

Tue, 17 Aug 2004 05:37:07 GMT

want.

Mon, 19 Jul 2004 04:41:06 GMT

Keep me up until five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason.

It is, I believe, entirely possible to fall, quite palpably, in love with a fictional character. I've been reading Salinger's Raise High the Roof Beams, Carpenter and Seymour, an Introduction, and have fallen madly, desperately in love with man who wrote the line above. I recognize, of course, that J.D. Salinger wrote the line, except he didn't. Seymour Glass wrote it, and I am most beautifully in love with him for doing so.

Keep me up until five only because all your stars are out, and for no other reason. ...do you know what you will be asked when you died?...you'll get asked only two questions. Were most of your stars out? Were you busy writing your heart out?

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! My stars *will* be out, they have been out, they will come out again, they *are* coming out again. I've been reminded, of late, of what I used to be like, before, before bills and rent and jobs and all of that, when my stars were out all the time, even during the day and when I would keep everyone up all night long, only because my stars were out and they needed to be shown to anyone who could sit still long enough to look.

Somehow, sometime, they all disappeared and it was all city skies, the clear black of a place too full of its own light to see mine. And, out of nowhere, just as inexplicably, my sky lit up again, just a scant few brilliant stars, catalyzed by a spark, my spark, that came out of hibernation for no particular reason, but thank God it did, and the days are becoming more and more full with stars that sparkle and twinkle just as paradoxically as fireworks through a blizzard.

Seymour Glass, if you would marry me, I will keep you up long past five for the rest of our lives only because those amazing, uncountable stars are out and simply must be attended to.

Sat, 22 May 2004 22:55:24 GMT

somewhere else, there's a conversation about why actors act and then, of course, by extension, why artists create.

i create because there's too much i haven't said, can't say and so many other people who've already said it. i create because my brain gets full. i create because i'm in love with actors, because i'm no good at acting myself and because i think the immediacy of acting makes it the bravest kind of art there is and i want to be near people who exude that kind of courage over and over again with barely a second thought. i create because i want to be noticed and thought of as special. i create in order to ensure that there are things that i understand (i.e., my creations) and to escape from real life when it's too big to wrap my brain around. i create so that when i'm dead i won't disappear. i create so that before i'm dead i won't disappear. i create to remind myself *not* to disappear. i create because without the sound of my voice the world would shrivel up and disintegrate into thousands of little bits. i create because the size of my art is the only thing i know that can rival the size of my ego. i create because i'm damn good at it, and if ninety-five percent of everything is crap, i create because i can create the other five percent and the world would be a less good place if i didn't create. i create because i've been privileged, because i've been afforded opportunities, personally, professionally and educationally that are beyond what i ever dreamed of, beyond what any person really deserves and i owe it to the world to not squander what's been handed to me on a silver platter, and i owe it to the world to question, publically and loudly, *why* such things were ever handed to me in the first place. i create because if i don't i can't sleep at night and i create because it makes my parents proud and i create because it's more fun than playing softball, it's more fun than getting boozy, it's more fun than fucking.

so, um, yeah. in a very roundabout way, the only honest answer *is* "i don't know."

that music meme

Sat, 22 May 2004 04:07:32 GMT

i'm sure there's nobody who isn't aware of what this is. fifteen songs, fifteen first lines. this is the first use for itunes' new party shuffle function that i've been able to find.

1. i spotted the glow over the mountain tonight
2. i met you through a common friend in the attic of my parents' house
3. call him drunken ira hayes he won't answer anymore
4. build your own television receiver staying home can't be that bad for me
5. and when i see you, i really see you upside down
6. i'm on a roll, i'm on a roll this time
7. you make me think you're a prize
8. he's pleased to meet you underneath the horse
9. today is going to be the day that they're gonna throw it back to you
10. time and all you gave i was the jerk who preferred the sea
11. see the meaning of driving and the driver insists that you buckle up
12. this is the definition of my life
13. do you remember the way it used to be?
14. last night i had the strangest dream
15. i used to hate the sun because it shone on everything i'd done

have a go.

Tue, 18 May 2004 01:10:18 GMT

with all the flux that's been surrounding me lately, i'd forgotten what home feels like. not home as in a place, but home as in a state of mind. i had that, though, the last week and a half, while jason was visiting. coming home after work to find him on my couch, studying or reading or watching television reminded me of how much i love coming home to someone. no, strike that. it reminded me of home much i love coming home to *him*. i love catching him unaware and seeing what he's like when i'm not around (it's strikingly similar to what he's like when i am around, for those who were curious.). it was wonderful to really feel like i was in a relationship for awhile, to not immediately start counting down the hours to the inevitable departure the moment he arrived. we spent days doing enormously fun things and we spent days doing absolutely nothing at all and i couldn't tell you which i enjoyed more. it was indescribably heavenly to have this person that i love so deeply right there, in front of me, at my side, within arm's reach for so many days so i could look and touch and say whatever came to mind whenever it came to mind. and sometimes what came to mind was Very Important, and sometimes what came to mind was distinctly silly, but it didn't matter and both sorts of speech were treated with equal weight. i'm starting to feel freer than i have in ages, and i'm so happy to have jason, and along with him, that freedom, back.

i guess what i'm getting to, in a very roundabout way, is it's nice to be in love.

Sun, 18 Apr 2004 06:40:14 GMT

new blurb up at melounge. not for much longer, as saturday is my day and saturday is technically over. but if you haven't stopped by in a while, check it out. there's been plenty of new content and some fantastic new conversations going on in the forum.

Sun, 11 Apr 2004 01:20:49 GMT

as if i didn't have fuel enough already, i've just discovered a new piece of jon stewart information which is fanning the flames of desire: he proposed to his wife in a new york times crossword puzzle.

reminder: start doing the crossword again. just in case.

Sat, 10 Apr 2004 05:17:25 GMT

if my recent self-exile is too much for you to handle, i'd like to invite you to take a look at melounge. i've written saturday's blurb, so check it out in the next twenty-four hours or you'll miss it forever.

Thu, 08 Apr 2004 04:13:18 GMT

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

He spoke a few words of English and, to John's relief, seemed pleased at the bargain his mentally incapacitated father had struck.
-Arthur Phillips

Tue, 06 Apr 2004 20:03:16 GMT

ha!

end of the first paragraph.

Fri, 02 Apr 2004 05:47:16 GMT

so, while i'm suffering through a bit of a hiatus here, i'd like, if i may, to direct you to a few places that are active.

melounge is undergoing a massive rehaul, so be sure to stop by on friday or saturday and see what we've been up to the past few months.

ben is awesome. his new site went live recently, but you should read the archives as well.

chris just came back from japan and wrote elegantly and tenderly about his trip. it's not to be missed (and hopefully, seeing as how my schedule has made contact with the outside world near impossible, he'll consider this link a substitute for "welcome back! tell me everything.").

jason writes well. he writes very well, and sometimes he says filthy things about sexy news ladies. if the front page isn't enough for you, i'd like to suggest his fiction, particularly summer story, which includes a mention of my favorite dress.

there. go. read. enjoy. and if anyone's got anything to add to my daily reading, please, share.

wonder when you'll miss me

Tue, 16 Mar 2004 06:46:27 GMT

i've been bad, i know this. i promised i'd be back in full-force in january, and well, i haven't. but here's the real deal--i'm about to go into a pretty serious rehearsal process which will last until the end of april. then, *then*, i will be back in a very intense way. so take this time, miss me, miss my presence on aim, miss my writing, miss whatever you want, but know that i will be back and it will be good. consider it a second coming.

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 17:16:35 GMT

i'd like, if i may, to direct my readers toward this discussion, at lowculture, regarding the proposed constitutional amendment that would deny americans the right to marry a member of their own gender.

now, i'm not going to start that the notion of gender bifurcation is ridiculous in and of itself, nor am i going to point out that i think it's odd (to say the least) that the government sees it appropriate to get involved in private, personal, domestic arrangements such as marriage. whatever one's feelings regarding the institution, low culture's point is, i think, an important one. one can not amend the constitution to serve one's personal tastes, beliefs, or faith. the constitution is Not To Be Trifled With, and it would behoove the president and his colleagues to be mindful of this, lest they be remembered by history with the same sort of respect that is currently reserved for the prohibition party.

Wed, 25 Feb 2004 05:40:46 GMT

so, i'm going to refer back to ben here, not only because what he's written is the most recent that i've read on the subject.

no, fuck it, i'll do the slightest bit of research and point your toward a few other discussions of nader's most recent media ejaculation.

personally, i don't think nader is going to matter in this election, particularly after seeing the liberal reaction to his entry into this race. for several months, i've maintained that there is not much of a doubt in my mind that bush will win this election in november. seeing damn near every left-ish person get their panties in all sorts of bundles and freak the fuck out over this new twist has only made me even more convinced that those of us on the left are way too fucking afraid and timid to ever take the leadership of this country.

*this* is why bush will win. we (we being anyone left of center) are running scared. we're discussing electability and we're terrified over an independent candidate who doesn't even have a platform yet. we are so frightened and so entrenched in the idea of anyone but bush that we're forgetting what it means to be progressive.

i don't like nader. i don't think he's a good candidate, nor do i think he would make a very good president and i don't plan on voting for him ever. however, it troubles me that the leftist community seems to have become so singularly focused on how we *don't* want to be governed that we've forgotten to think about how we *do* want to be governed; we've forgotten to continue pushing the boundaries of political thought and expanding the options and the freedoms we treasure so dearly.

maybe it's just because i've been reading an anthology of writing from the sixties and i'm re-learning optimism and idealism and political progress, but i'm finding myself, yet again, disappointed by the people who claim to be leftist. i'm tired of being scared. i want to be proud of my political community, and in that vein, i urge you to stop whispering, and to start shouting. write to your representatives. better yet, become your representatives. get married in san francisco. most importantly, we need to stop asking permission to be free and we need to start imagining the world we want to live in and then create it. the politics will follow. progress is inevitable, the world only spins forward. we need to vote *for* someone who represents us, not against someone we're afraid of.

Sun, 22 Feb 2004 20:52:32 GMT

i'd like to direct my Faithful Readers here. this made me laugh so very hard today.

Fri, 20 Feb 2004 02:35:20 GMT

i'd like to direct your attention here, if i may.

apparently, i'm now hosting the official livejournal "omg adam brody is so cute, i just want to like, marry him, you know when i'm done with highschool and stuff."

something has to be done there. i just don't know what.

Thu, 19 Feb 2004 18:25:11 GMT

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this is why somedays i think maybe i'm just not cut out for this country:

INTERVIEWER

Your first job was with the Manchester Guardian. What was it like?

MICHAEL FRAYN

It was wonderful, because the Guardian was a very informal place: They used to take two graduates a year, one from Oxford and one from Cambridge—we are going back to elitist times. They didn't give you any training, you just started writing. If you could do it you stayed, and if you couldn't you were chucked out. Of course you began by doing small jobs around the office, but very soon you were sent out to do what they called “color pieces”—usually a personal essay about some Northern folkway, the last hand-loom weaver in Bolton, or the last lock maker in Westhoughton. One of their favorite subjects was sheepdog trials. A friend of mine, Dick West, was sent out to cover his seventeenth sheepdog trial and he had the idea of writing it from the standpoint of the sheep. The Guardian took exception to it; they thought that all that they held most dear was being mocked, and they sacked him, or tried to. But he ignored the letter of dismissal and, the Guardian being the Guardian, nobody liked to raise the subject again.

the rest of the <a href="

Michael Frayn
The Art of Theater XV
Interviewed by Shusha Guppy
Issue 168
Winter, 2003

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Michael Frayn works in an office around the corner from his house in north London. It is an apartment on a modern block, light and airy. His quiet study overlooks a communal park, an old canal that has been drained and planted with trees and shrubs. It is sparsely furnished, with a huge desk, a couple of armchairs, and some bookshelves. Opposite the desk on a low shelf is a row of bronze statuettes, the prizes he has won for several of his plays—the Olivier, the Evening Standard, the Tony. Frayn and his wife, the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin, have just bought a large house by the river near Richmond, where there is enough room for both to have offices at home.
Frayn grew up in south London. His father, who was deaf, worked as an asbestos salesman and his mother was a violinist who gave up a promising professional future to supplement the family income as a shop assistant. She died when Frayn was twelve, and that early loss has left a deep scar that shows up in touches of bittersweet wistfulness, even in his most hilarious comedies. He was educated at Kingston Grammar School and Cambridge, where he read French and Russian and philosophy, and began to write. His first piece for the theater was a sketch for the student revue Footlights. After university he worked as a journalist at the Manchester Guardian and the Observer, then left for full-time writing.

Over the years Frayn has produced an oeuvre as substantial as it is varied—from Noises Off, one of the funniest English farces, to Copenhagen, a worldwide hit about the meeting in 1941 between two giants of atomic physics; through a dozen plays, among them Alphabetical Order, Make and Break, and Benefactors; and as many novels, including The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, and Headlong; a collection of philosophical aphorisms, Constructions; selections of his journalism, and translations of Chekhov's major plays. Frayn's deep intelligence, comic genius, and humane values have made him one of Britain's best-loved authors. Despite a certain aloofness, he is warm, generous, and always of impeccable courtesy.

INTERVIEWER

There are authors who go on mining the same terrain book after book, while every work of yours is a new departure. Take the recent novels: Headlong is based on the discovery of a Brueghel painting that has been missing for centuries and contains a good deal of research and art history, while A Landing on the Sun is almost a spy thriller, and The Trick of It is about the nature of creativity and writing. In between you write plays, which are equally varied. Do you deliberately set out to surprise and be new every time?

MICHAEL FRAYN

Let me say for a start that I don't think it is a very good idea to write different sorts of things. If I were to give serious practical advice to a young writer about how to succeed I would say: "Write the same book, or the same play, over and over again, just very slightly different, so that people get used to it. It takes some time, but if you do it often enough, finally people will get the hang of it, and get familiar with it, and they'll like it. Then you go on producing a consistent product and you'll have a market for it." Because the consumer of books or plays, including myself, very reasonably wants to know or have some idea in advance what the book or the play is going to be like. It is the same as buying breakfast cereal: If you buy a packet of cornflakes, you want to be sure it will contain cornflakes and not muesli. It is very irritating if the packet doesn't contain what you expected it to contain. Similarly it is a reasonable demand from the theatergoer or novel reader that he should get a constant product, which is identified by the author's brand name.

If I could have done this, I would have. But I don't have much control over what I produce. All I can do is to write the stories that come to me. And what a story is, is in part the way of telling it. A story is not an event in the outside world—it consists in the telling. It is only when you think that you have found a way of telling the story that you can start writing it. Different stories naturally suggest different ways of telling them. If I had been better organized as a writer, I would have gone beyond the stories' dictates and imposed my own central imprint on everything.

INTERVIEWER

But everything does bear your imprint. It's the form that changes.

FRAYN

That is like saying that a criminal commits different sorts of crimes—sometimes he does bank robberies, sometimes he murders people, sometimes he forges pension books—but on all of them he leaves the same fingerprints. He can't help it. I don't think there is anything deeper in it than that. That is what consistency is—you have these intellectual fingerprints, and you can't help leaving them on things.

INTERVIEWER

You once said that you started writing novels because your first attempt at theater, a revue for Footlights at Cambridge, was a complete flop. Then you went back to writing for the theater when you lost your voice as novelist, and now you alternate between the two. What dictates the form?

FRAYN

First of all, I don't think it is strange to be both novelist and playwright. I wonder why others don't do both. I think the great difference is that in a novel it is possible for the writer to be inside the head of at least one of the characters. He doesn't have to be, but if you think of most of the novels you've read, the author has known what all the characters' thoughts and feelings and intentions were. If you read: "She felt bitter resentment about what he had said"; "He intended to set off for Birmingham, but he changed his mind"; "She realized that he had not understood what she had said, " et cetera—all these things seem absolutely natural, you don't even notice that is the way most novels are written. In fact it is quite odd, because it implies that the author has absolute knowledge of what's going on inside the head of his characters. Sometimes the author chooses not to exercise that right, and sometimes he exercises it in the case of one or two characters but not all. But it is the natural mode for the storyteller to know what's happening inside his characters' heads.

By contrast, in the play it is impossible to indicate directly what is going on inside people's heads. All we know when we watch a play is what the characters are saying and what they are doing. Of course characters can say: "I'm thinking so and so," or "I'm feeling such and such," but this is not the same as knowing directly. You have to trust that the character is speaking truthfully, that he can understand himself—because characters often don't.

Now, some stories require that you know what people are thinking, and some stories require that you don't. In Copenhagen the whole point of the play is trying to find out what Heisenberg was thinking, and what his intentions were, in going to Copenhagen to see Niels Bohr. If I tried to write it as a novel the whole story would be told in one paragraph. I'd say: "Heisenberg decided to go to Copenhagen in 1941 in order to talk to Niels Bohr about such and such, because he hoped that Bohr would say so and so . . . " But I wanted to look at the difficulty of knowing that exists in life. So it seemed natural to be outside Heisenberg's head and have to work out what was going on inside it.

INTERVIEWER

When you got the story, did you know at once it would be a play rather than a novel?

FRAYN

Yes. Because that was what it was about—the difficulty of understanding people's intentions, even one's own intentions.

INTERVIEWER

So it is the story that chooses the form, not you, the author?

FRAYN

Absolutely. In Headlong, for instance, it seemed that we needed to know all the time what Martin Clay—the art historian protagonist—was thinking and feeling, because a lot of the story depends on his misunderstanding the situation, and misunderstanding his own feelings and intentions. We need to know what he thinks he is up to, then stand back as readers to say: “Hold on! He is not being honest with himself here. His motives are much more mixed than he is saying.”

INTERVIEWER

How do the stories come to you? Headlong, for example.

FRAYN

Well, the stories come in different ways. I can't remember exactly where most of them came from, I can only remember them growing in my head. But I can recall the precise moment when I thought of the idea of Headlong. I was in Vienna with Claire, and we had gone to visit Georg Eisler, a painter friend who was ill in hospital, and also to see an exhibition of his work. He was too ill to see us for long and we had time on our hands, and of course we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I had often been there before, and every time I go I look at the Brueghels—they have about a third of the world's extant Brueghels.

As always I spent a long time gazing at The Hunters in the Snow, which I think is one of the most wonderful paintings in the world. Then I looked at the picture next to it, The Return of the Herd, and then the next one after that, The Gloomy Day, and for some reason I read the sign on the wall. Now, I'd never read the sign on the wall in all the years that I had been to the museum and looked at those pictures, never read what it actually said, which is: “These three pictures are part of a series of six that Brueghel painted to illustrate the seasons; three are in Vienna, one is in Prague, one is in the Metropolitan in New York, and one is missing.” Even as I read the sign I thought: Well, if you thought you'd found the missing picture, what would you do? It would present a lot of difficulties, because plainly it wouldn't be identified as Brueghel or it wouldn't be missing, and it wouldn't be in a museum, some art historian would have looked at it and identified it. So it would have to be in a place where art historians don't much go, probably belonging to somebody who didn't know what it was, and the difficulty would arise as to what you would say to the owner. Would you simply say: “I think you've got the missing Brueghel on the wall there”? What if you thought that the owner was an unscrupulous man in desperate need of money, who would certainly sell the picture to the highest bidder? The highest bidder is unlikely to be the National Gallery in London, because it doesn't have any money. So it is quite likely that the buyer would be an investment trust, which buys the picture purely as investment, does not put it on display but locks it up in some vault, and no one would ever see it. So you might say you have a public duty for altruistic reasons to be a little devious, and to acquire the picture first, and then identify it as the missing Brueghel. But of course if you do that, you also make your reputation as an art historian, as well as lots of money. So you have mixed motives, and mixed motives are always interesting.

INTERVIEWER

Do you invent your characters as you go along? Or is the cast all there when you begin?

FRAYN

They come into your head slowly. When I start I like to know in advance where the story is going, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the story before I begin writing it. Some writers claim that they start not knowing where the story is going to go. Muriel Spark says that she starts with nothing in her head except the title. This is very dramatic—and she has very good titles. One of my predecessors as a reporter at the Manchester Guardian was Howard Spring, not remembered now but an immensely successful popular novelist in his day. Well, he says in his memoirs that his book, called Shabby Tiger, began simply with the first sentence: “The woman flamed along the road like a macaw.” So he wrote it down, and then other sentences followed and so on to the end of the novel. I can't work like that. I do have to know where I think the story is going to go. However, then complications arise. It is like an industrialist setting up a new industry: He has this idea for a wonderful new product he wants to produce and it's going to be of great value to the world, and all he has to do is build a factory, take on the staff and things will be fine. Then as soon as he starts to build the building, and as soon as he starts taking on the staff, problems arise: They make difficulties, they bring in the union, and so on. As soon as you involve other people in your schemes you get into difficulties. It's like that with the characters. It sounds a bit whimsical but it does feel like that; as soon as characters come into the story, they begin to take on a life of their own, and they don't always want to work the plot that you've so laboriously provided for them. It irritates me that they are so ungrateful! One has given them life, existence, and they won't fall in with one's plans. And just as in life the factory owner has to negotiate with the striker, and say, Alright I'll pay you more if you do this or change your practices on that, so you have to negotiate with your characters, go along with some of their ideas hoping that they'll go along with some of yours. And the whole story begins to change.

INTERVIEWER

Your latest novel, Spies, is about two children during the war who get entangled in the complicated world of adults. It is the only one of your works that has a whiff of autobiography about it. How did that story come about?

FRAYN

I find it difficult to remember when it started. I had been thinking about that part of my childhood for twenty-five years, thinking about the way children see the world, the way they see it through the stories they tell about it, the stories they've heard about it. This is true of adults too—we all make sense of the world by seeing it in terms of the stories we've heard. It is easier for us adults to see this happening in children, because they're distanced from us. I thought about it in this way and in that way and couldn't see how to do it. And then one day about fifteen years ago we were staying in the south of France and we went for a walk in the woods around Vence. I remembered that I had a great friend when I was a child who was a very dominant personality. He was the leader in all the games we played. If we were playing cowboys and Indians, he was the chief cowboy, and if we were playing something with policemen he was the chief constable. It was fair, because he always invented the games, he had the imagination and I didn't have any imagination at all as a child. So he was always thinking up new fantasies that we became part of, and he took the leading role. As I thought about this I remembered that at some point—and this would be in the middle of the Second World War—he said to me out of the blue, "My mother is a German spy." I didn't say, "I don't believe you, I don't think she is a German spy, have you got any evidence for it?" I thought it was an exciting idea, and I believe we followed her around for a couple of hours; she didn't try to break into an ammunition factory or get in touch with the German High Command though, so we got bored and gave up. Now, walking in the woods above Vence, I thought: What if we had been persistent and had followed her around for a couple of weeks, what would we have made of her life? If we, as children, had seriously looked at an adult's life, what would we have understood of it? Well, we would probably have seen it in terms of the stories we were familiar with, the stories we invented and acted out, and sooner or later we would have discovered some anomaly. Although she was charming and straightforward, an honest and honorable member of the community, I imagine there would have been some anomalies in her life, because everybody has some anomalies in their lives, not criminal activities but things that don't quite fit in with the rest of their personality and that normally we pass over in silence. So that was the point of departure for Spies. After that it was all fiction.

INTERVIEWER

When did you start writing?

FRAYN

Some of the earliest things I wrote were for my own puppet theater. I needed some material for the puppets to perform. I can't remember anything about them now—I don't believe any great masterpieces have been lost. When I was a child I read children's stories. I passionately enjoyed Arthur Ransome and the Just William stories. It wasn't until I was fifteen or sixteen that I began to read serious literature, but then it was above all poetry, particularly the Romantics, Shelley and Keats. I was passionate about Shelley, I suppose because of his radicalism. I still think Shelley is an underestimated poet. I wrote reams of poetry myself, devoid of any virtues whatsoever. I didn't consciously give up poetry, I just gradually wrote more and more prose.

INTERVIEWER

Who else did you read who might have been influential?

FRAYN

Goethe as soon as my German was good enough. Vanity Fair, Thomas Love Peacock, Evelyn Waugh, of course, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Henry Green. As soon as my French was good enough, Mauriac, Gide, Sartre—particularly Les Chemins de la liberté, Malraux—and a wonderful romantic novel of Provençal life which probably isn't considered by anyone now, but which had a great and lasting effect on me: Henri Bosco's Le Mas théotime. The obvious classics I didn't get round to until later, when I was a student, insofar as I ever read them at all, and my Russian wasn't good enough to read anything in Russian until then.

INTERVIEWER

You started studying French and Russian at Cambridge, but after a year switched to philosophy. Why?

FRAYN

I learned French at school and Russian in the army. I switched to philosophy because the language course consisted of a lot of academic work and a certain amount of literature. I enjoyed the language course very much but I was baffled by the literature, didn't have the faintest idea how to answer literary questions. In part two of the tripos it was all literature, and I couldn't face the prospect of spending two years writing essays about literary topics.

INTERVIEWER

This was in the mid-fifties. What was the philosophy course like then at Cambridge? Was it not dominated by Wittgenstein?

FRAYN

Absolutely. He died in 1951 and I arrived in 1954, but he had been a professor at Cambridge. He was one of the world's greatest philosophers but he was also a terrible human being, an appalling bully, who terrified everyone on the faculty, in the way that some scholars do. Almost everyone was in awe of him. I was passionately interested in Wittgenstein, and I had the great good fortune to be taught in my last year by almost the only person who was not. He was a young New Zealander called Jonathan Bennett, who had just arrived and who, at that stage, had no interest in Wittgenstein at all and resisted all his ideas. Jonathan Bennett loved arguing. He would not accept anything I said about Wittgenstein and I had to argue every step of the way. It was exhausting but a very good way of learning philosophy.

INTERVIEWER

Were you very radical in your youth?

FRAYN

Oh yes! I described myself as a communist.

INTERVIEWER

When did you stop being a communist?

FRAYN

Oh, very quickly. By the time I left school. If I had any lingering sympathies for the Soviet Union they vanished in 1956, when I and four friends at Cambridge who all spoke Russian organized an unofficial exchange with the Soviet Union, and that was an eye-opener.

INTERVIEWER

Let's move on to the beginning of your career, as a budding reporter. You once told me that any good writer should have a stint as a journalist. Chekhov thought it was a dreadful profession. Evelyn Waugh, too, said that journalism is inimical to creative writing. By contrast Graham Greene needed reporting for his novels. Can you say why you recommend journalism?

FRAYN

I always wanted to be a journalist, from the age of eight onwards. Wanting to be a journalist was the public expression of wanting to be a writer. But I did also want to be a journalist for its own sake. I had a girlfriend at Cambridge and I told her that my ambition was to be the editor of the Observer at thirty. That was a misunderstanding of the nature of the newspaper industry. I didn't realize that the Observer was owned by its editor, David Astor, and that to be the editor of the Observer you had to be very rich. I also misunderstood the nature of my own talents—I could never be an editor. But journalism is like everything else; there is good journalism and bad journalism. Trying to describe what is in front of your eyes, trying to understand a real situation, is very difficult and very demanding, and when it is done well it is just as important and good as any fiction.

INTERVIEWER

Who were the journalists you particularly admired?

FRAYN

I suppose when I was young I idolized reporters who were cool. At Cambridge being cool, being relaxed, being detached and apparently undisturbed by the world was the admired attitude.

INTERVIEWER

Your first job was with the Manchester Guardian. What was it like?

FRAYN

It was wonderful, because the Guardian was a very informal place: They used to take two graduates a year, one from Oxford and one from Cambridge—we are going back to elitist times. They didn't give you any training, you just started writing. If you could do it you stayed, and if you couldn't you were chucked out. Of course you began by doing small jobs around the office, but very soon you were sent out to do what they called “color pieces”—usually a personal essay about some Northern folkway, the last hand-loom weaver in Bolton, or the last lock maker in Westhoughton. One of their favorite subjects was sheepdog trials. A friend of mine, Dick West, was sent out to cover his seventeenth sheepdog trial and he had the idea of writing it from the standpoint of the sheep. The Guardian took exception to it; they thought that all that they held most dear was being mocked, and they sacked him, or tried to. But he ignored the letter of dismissal and, the Guardian being the Guardian, nobody liked to raise the subject again.

<a href="

Michael Frayn
The Art of Theater XV
Interviewed by Shusha Guppy
Issue 168
Winter, 2003

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Michael Frayn works in an office around the corner from his house in north London. It is an apartment on a modern block, light and airy. His quiet study overlooks a communal park, an old canal that has been drained and planted with trees and shrubs. It is sparsely furnished, with a huge desk, a couple of armchairs, and some bookshelves. Opposite the desk on a low shelf is a row of bronze statuettes, the prizes he has won for several of his plays—the Olivier, the Evening Standard, the Tony. Frayn and his wife, the biographer and critic Claire Tomalin, have just bought a large house by the river near Richmond, where there is enough room for both to have offices at home.
Frayn grew up in south London. His father, who was deaf, worked as an asbestos salesman and his mother was a violinist who gave up a promising professional future to supplement the family income as a shop assistant. She died when Frayn was twelve, and that early loss has left a deep scar that shows up in touches of bittersweet wistfulness, even in his most hilarious comedies. He was educated at Kingston Grammar School and Cambridge, where he read French and Russian and philosophy, and began to write. His first piece for the theater was a sketch for the student revue Footlights. After university he worked as a journalist at the Manchester Guardian and the Observer, then left for full-time writing.

Over the years Frayn has produced an oeuvre as substantial as it is varied—from Noises Off, one of the funniest English farces, to Copenhagen, a worldwide hit about the meeting in 1941 between two giants of atomic physics; through a dozen plays, among them Alphabetical Order, Make and Break, and Benefactors; and as many novels, including The Tin Men, Towards the End of the Morning, and Headlong; a collection of philosophical aphorisms, Constructions; selections of his journalism, and translations of Chekhov's major plays. Frayn's deep intelligence, comic genius, and humane values have made him one of Britain's best-loved authors. Despite a certain aloofness, he is warm, generous, and always of impeccable courtesy.

INTERVIEWER

There are authors who go on mining the same terrain book after book, while every work of yours is a new departure. Take the recent novels: Headlong is based on the discovery of a Brueghel painting that has been missing for centuries and contains a good deal of research and art history, while A Landing on the Sun is almost a spy thriller, and The Trick of It is about the nature of creativity and writing. In between you write plays, which are equally varied. Do you deliberately set out to surprise and be new every time?

MICHAEL FRAYN

Let me say for a start that I don't think it is a very good idea to write different sorts of things. If I were to give serious practical advice to a young writer about how to succeed I would say: "Write the same book, or the same play, over and over again, just very slightly different, so that people get used to it. It takes some time, but if you do it often enough, finally people will get the hang of it, and get familiar with it, and they'll like it. Then you go on producing a consistent product and you'll have a market for it." Because the consumer of books or plays, including myself, very reasonably wants to know or have some idea in advance what the book or the play is going to be like. It is the same as buying breakfast cereal: If you buy a packet of cornflakes, you want to be sure it will contain cornflakes and not muesli. It is very irritating if the packet doesn't contain what you expected it to contain. Similarly it is a reasonable demand from the theatergoer or novel reader that he should get a constant product, which is identified by the author's brand name.

If I could have done this, I would have. But I don't have much control over what I produce. All I can do is to write the stories that come to me. And what a story is, is in part the way of telling it. A story is not an event in the outside world—it consists in the telling. It is only when you think that you have found a way of telling the story that you can start writing it. Different stories naturally suggest different ways of telling them. If I had been better organized as a writer, I would have gone beyond the stories' dictates and imposed my own central imprint on everything.

INTERVIEWER

But everything does bear your imprint. It's the form that changes.

FRAYN

That is like saying that a criminal commits different sorts of crimes—sometimes he does bank robberies, sometimes he murders people, sometimes he forges pension books—but on all of them he leaves the same fingerprints. He can't help it. I don't think there is anything deeper in it than that. That is what consistency is—you have these intellectual fingerprints, and you can't help leaving them on things.

INTERVIEWER

You once said that you started writing novels because your first attempt at theater, a revue for Footlights at Cambridge, was a complete flop. Then you went back to writing for the theater when you lost your voice as novelist, and now you alternate between the two. What dictates the form?

FRAYN

First of all, I don't think it is strange to be both novelist and playwright. I wonder why others don't do both. I think the great difference is that in a novel it is possible for the writer to be inside the head of at least one of the characters. He doesn't have to be, but if you think of most of the novels you've read, the author has known what all the characters' thoughts and feelings and intentions were. If you read: "She felt bitter resentment about what he had said"; "He intended to set off for Birmingham, but he changed his mind"; "She realized that he had not understood what she had said, " et cetera—all these things seem absolutely natural, you don't even notice that is the way most novels are written. In fact it is quite odd, because it implies that the author has absolute knowledge of what's going on inside the head of his characters. Sometimes the author chooses not to exercise that right, and sometimes he exercises it in the case of one or two characters but not all. But it is the natural mode for the storyteller to know what's happening inside his characters' heads.

By contrast, in the play it is impossible to indicate directly what is going on inside people's heads. All we know when we watch a play is what the characters are saying and what they are doing. Of course characters can say: "I'm thinking so and so," or "I'm feeling such and such," but this is not the same as knowing directly. You have to trust that the character is speaking truthfully, that he can understand himself—because characters often don't.

Now, some stories require that you know what people are thinking, and some stories require that you don't. In Copenhagen the whole point of the play is trying to find out what Heisenberg was thinking, and what his intentions were, in going to Copenhagen to see Niels Bohr. If I tried to write it as a novel the whole story would be told in one paragraph. I'd say: "Heisenberg decided to go to Copenhagen in 1941 in order to talk to Niels Bohr about such and such, because he hoped that Bohr would say so and so . . . " But I wanted to look at the difficulty of knowing that exists in life. So it seemed natural to be outside Heisenberg's head and have to work out what was going on inside it.

INTERVIEWER

When you got the story, did you know at once it would be a play rather than a novel?

FRAYN

Yes. Because that was what it was about—the difficulty of understanding people's intentions, even one's own intentions.

INTERVIEWER

So it is the story that chooses the form, not you, the author?

FRAYN

Absolutely. In Headlong, for instance, it seemed that we needed to know all the time what Martin Clay—the art historian protagonist—was thinking and feeling, because a lot of the story depends on his misunderstanding the situation, and misunderstanding his own feelings and intentions. We need to know what he thinks he is up to, then stand back as readers to say: “Hold on! He is not being honest with himself here. His motives are much more mixed than he is saying.”

INTERVIEWER

How do the stories come to you? Headlong, for example.

FRAYN

Well, the stories come in different ways. I can't remember exactly where most of them came from, I can only remember them growing in my head. But I can recall the precise moment when I thought of the idea of Headlong. I was in Vienna with Claire, and we had gone to visit Georg Eisler, a painter friend who was ill in hospital, and also to see an exhibition of his work. He was too ill to see us for long and we had time on our hands, and of course we went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum. I had often been there before, and every time I go I look at the Brueghels—they have about a third of the world's extant Brueghels.

As always I spent a long time gazing at The Hunters in the Snow, which I think is one of the most wonderful paintings in the world. Then I looked at the picture next to it, The Return of the Herd, and then the next one after that, The Gloomy Day, and for some reason I read the sign on the wall. Now, I'd never read the sign on the wall in all the years that I had been to the museum and looked at those pictures, never read what it actually said, which is: “These three pictures are part of a series of six that Brueghel painted to illustrate the seasons; three are in Vienna, one is in Prague, one is in the Metropolitan in New York, and one is missing.” Even as I read the sign I thought: Well, if you thought you'd found the missing picture, what would you do? It would present a lot of difficulties, because plainly it wouldn't be identified as Brueghel or it wouldn't be missing, and it wouldn't be in a museum, some art historian would have looked at it and identified it. So it would have to be in a place where art historians don't much go, probably belonging to somebody who didn't know what it was, and the difficulty would arise as to what you would say to the owner. Would you simply say: “I think you've got the missing Brueghel on the wall there”? What if you thought that the owner was an unscrupulous man in desperate need of money, who would certainly sell the picture to the highest bidder? The highest bidder is unlikely to be the National Gallery in London, because it doesn't have any money. So it is quite likely that the buyer would be an investment trust, which buys the picture purely as investment, does not put it on display but locks it up in some vault, and no one would ever see it. So you might say you have a public duty for altruistic reasons to be a little devious, and to acquire the picture first, and then identify it as the missing Brueghel. But of course if you do that, you also make your reputation as an art historian, as well as lots of money. So you have mixed motives, and mixed motives are always interesting.

INTERVIEWER

Do you invent your characters as you go along? Or is the cast all there when you begin?

FRAYN

They come into your head slowly. When I start I like to know in advance where the story is going, and I spend a lot of time thinking about the story before I begin writing it. Some writers claim that they start not knowing where the story is going to go. Muriel Spark says that she starts with nothing in her head except the title. This is very dramatic—and she has very good titles. One of my predecessors as a reporter at the Manchester Guardian was Howard Spring, not remembered now but an immensely successful popular novelist in his day. Well, he says in his memoirs that his book, called Shabby Tiger, began simply with the first sentence: “The woman flamed along the road like a macaw.” So he wrote it down, and then other sentences followed and so on to the end of the novel. I can't work like that. I do have to know where I think the story is going to go. However, then complications arise. It is like an industrialist setting up a new industry: He has this idea for a wonderful new product he wants to produce and it's going to be of great value to the world, and all he has to do is build a factory, take on the staff and things will be fine. Then as soon as he starts to build the building, and as soon as he starts taking on the staff, problems arise: They make difficulties, they bring in the union, and so on. As soon as you involve other people in your schemes you get into difficulties. It's like that with the characters. It sounds a bit whimsical but it does feel like that; as soon as characters come into the story, they begin to take on a life of their own, and they don't always want to work the plot that you've so laboriously provided for them. It irritates me that they are so ungrateful! One has given them life, existence, and they won't fall in with one's plans. And just as in life the factory owner has to negotiate with the striker, and say, Alright I'll pay you more if you do this or change your practices on that, so you have to negotiate with your characters, go along with some of their ideas hoping that they'll go along with some of yours. And the whole story begins to change.

INTERVIEWER

Your latest novel, Spies, is about two children during the war who get entangled in the complicated world of adults. It is the only one of your works that has a whiff of autobiography about it. How did that story come about?

FRAYN

I find it difficult to remember when it started. I had been thinking about that part of my childhood for twenty-five years, thinking about the way children see the world, the way they see it through the stories they tell about it, the stories they've heard about it. This is true of adults too—we all make sense of the world by seeing it in terms of the stories we've heard. It is easier for us adults to see this happening in children, because they're distanced from us. I thought about it in this way and in that way and couldn't see how to do it. And then one day about fifteen years ago we were staying in the south of France and we went for a walk in the woods around Vence. I remembered that I had a great friend when I was a child who was a very dominant personality. He was the leader in all the games we played. If we were playing cowboys and Indians, he was the chief cowboy, and if we were playing something with policemen he was the chief constable. It was fair, because he always invented the games, he had the imagination and I didn't have any imagination at all as a child. So he was always thinking up new fantasies that we became part of, and he took the leading role. As I thought about this I remembered that at some point—and this would be in the middle of the Second World War—he said to me out of the blue, "My mother is a German spy." I didn't say, "I don't believe you, I don't think she is a German spy, have you got any evidence for it?" I thought it was an exciting idea, and I believe we followed her around for a couple of hours; she didn't try to break into an ammunition factory or get in touch with the German High Command though, so we got bored and gave up. Now, walking in the woods above Vence, I thought: What if we had been persistent and had followed her around for a couple of weeks, what would we have made of her life? If we, as children, had seriously looked at an adult's life, what would we have understood of it? Well, we would probably have seen it in terms of the stories we were familiar with, the stories we invented and acted out, and sooner or later we would have discovered some anomaly. Although she was charming and straightforward, an honest and honorable member of the community, I imagine there would have been some anomalies in her life, because everybody has some anomalies in their lives, not criminal activities but things that don't quite fit in with the rest of their personality and that normally we pass over in silence. So that was the point of departure for Spies. After that it was all fiction.

INTERVIEWER

When did you start writing?

FRAYN

Some of the earliest things I wrote were for my own puppet theater. I needed some material for the puppets to perform. I can't remember anything about them now—I don't believe any great masterpieces have been lost. When I was a child I read children's stories. I passionately enjoyed Arthur Ransome and the Just William stories. It wasn't until I was fifteen or sixteen that I began to read serious literature, but then it was above all poetry, particularly the Romantics, Shelley and Keats. I was passionate about Shelley, I suppose because of his radicalism. I still think Shelley is an underestimated poet. I wrote reams of poetry myself, devoid of any virtues whatsoever. I didn't consciously give up poetry, I just gradually wrote more and more prose.

INTERVIEWER

Who else did you read who might have been influential?

FRAYN

Goethe as soon as my German was good enough. Vanity Fair, Thomas Love Peacock, Evelyn Waugh, of course, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, Henry Green. As soon as my French was good enough, Mauriac, Gide, Sartre—particularly Les Chemins de la liberté, Malraux—and a wonderful romantic novel of Provençal life which probably isn't considered by anyone now, but which had a great and lasting effect on me: Henri Bosco's Le Mas théotime. The obvious classics I didn't get round to until later, when I was a student, insofar as I ever read them at all, and my Russian wasn't good enough to read anything in Russian until then.

INTERVIEWER

You started studying French and Russian at Cambridge, but after a year switched to philosophy. Why?

FRAYN

I learned French at school and Russian in the army. I switched to philosophy because the language course consisted of a lot of academic work and a certain amount of literature. I enjoyed the language course very much but I was baffled by the literature, didn't have the faintest idea how to answer literary questions. In part two of the tripos it was all literature, and I couldn't face the prospect of spending two years writing essays about literary topics.

INTERVIEWER

This was in the mid-fifties. What was the philosophy course like then at Cambridge? Was it not dominated by Wittgenstein?

FRAYN

Absolutely. He died in 1951 and I arrived in 1954, but he had been a professor at Cambridge. He was one of the world's greatest philosophers but he was also a terrible human being, an appalling bully, who terrified everyone on the faculty, in the way that some scholars do. Almost everyone was in awe of him. I was passionately interested in Wittgenstein, and I had the great good fortune to be taught in my last year by almost the only person who was not. He was a young New Zealander called Jonathan Bennett, who had just arrived and who, at that stage, had no interest in Wittgenstein at all and resisted all his ideas. Jonathan Bennett loved arguing. He would not accept anything I said about Wittgenstein and I had to argue every step of the way. It was exhausting but a very good way of learning philosophy.

INTERVIEWER

Were you very radical in your youth?

FRAYN

Oh yes! I described myself as a communist.

INTERVIEWER

When did you stop being a communist?

FRAYN

Oh, very quickly. By the time I left school. If I had any lingering sympathies for the Soviet Union they vanished in 1956, when I and four friends at Cambridge who all spoke Russian organized an unofficial exchange with the Soviet Union, and that was an eye-opener.

INTERVIEWER

Let's move on to the beginning of your career, as a budding reporter. You once told me that any good writer should have a stint as a journalist. Chekhov thought it was a dreadful profession. Evelyn Waugh, too, said that journalism is inimical to creative writing. By contrast Graham Greene needed reporting for his novels. Can you say why you recommend journalism?

FRAYN

I always wanted to be a journalist, from the age of eight onwards. Wanting to be a journalist was the public expression of wanting to be a writer. But I did also want to be a journalist for its own sake. I had a girlfriend at Cambridge and I told her that my ambition was to be the editor of the Observer at thirty. That was a misunderstanding of the nature of the newspaper industry. I didn't realize that the Observer was owned by its editor, David Astor, and that to be the editor of the Observer you had to be very rich. I also misunderstood the nature of my own talents—I could never be an editor. But journalism is like everything else; there is good journalism and bad journalism. Trying to describe what is in front of your eyes, trying to understand a real situation, is very difficult and very demanding, and when it is done well it is just as important and good as any fiction.

INTERVIEWER

Who were the journalists you particularly admired?

FRAYN

I suppose when I was young I idolized reporters who were cool. At Cambridge being cool, being relaxed, being detached and apparently undisturbed by the world was the admired attitude.

INTERVIEWER

Your first job was with the Manchester Guardian. What was it like?

FRAYN

It was wonderful, because the Guardian was a very informal place: They used to take two graduates a year, one from Oxford and one from Cambridge—we are going back to elitist times. They didn't give you any training, you just started writing. If you could do it you stayed, and if you couldn't you were chucked out. Of course you began by doing small jobs around the office, but very soon you were sent out to do what they called “color pieces”—usually a personal essay about some Northern folkway, the last hand-loom weaver in Bolton, or the last lock maker in Westhoughton. One of their favorite subjects was sheepdog trials. A friend of mine, Dick West, was sent out to cover his seventeenth sheepdog trial and he had the idea of writing it from the standpoint of the sheep. The Guardian took exception to it; they thought that all that they held most dear was being mocked, and they sacked him, or tried to. But he ignored the letter of dismissal and, the Guardian being the Guardian, nobody liked to raise the subject again.

<a href="http://www.theparisreview.com/tpr168/frayn.html">the rest of the article</a>

Tue, 17 Feb 2004 22:06:51 GMT

tomorrow *is* my birthday, and if anyone was looking for a little something special to brighten up my day, aside from things i've listed before, the mice in space tee would make me grin like a little girl. just so you know.

shipping address availiable upon request.

Thu, 12 Feb 2004 06:39:50 GMT

i think my horoscope might be lying to me:

Schedules are for those that can't handle spontaneity. You might appear to be a flake, but you're really multitasking at levels that most people don't notice. You'll clear your name. The proof is in the product.

Wed, 11 Feb 2004 03:08:19 GMT

oh, dear. when it rains it pours, no?

it never hurts to ask...

Mon, 26 Jan 2004 17:22:31 GMT

here's some stuff i want. not that i would ever drop hints or anything.

http://catandgirl.com/store.html#shirt_iceland

and

http://catandgirl.com/store.html#shirt_hipster

and

http://catandgirl.com/store.html#slogan