Mere Anarchy Read Online Free PDF Page B

know,” I said, descending from Venusburg. “You read my book, you’re taken with how visual my prose is, and you’d like me to create a scenario. Of course you realize even if we got copacetic on the math, I would have to insist on total artistic control.”
    “Sure, sure,” Biggs mumbled, waving aside my ultimatum. “You know what a novelization is?” he asked, popping a Tums.
    “Not really,” I replied.
    “It’s when a movie does good numbers. The producer hires some zombie to make a book out of it. Y’know, an exploitation paperback—strictly for lowbrows. You’ve seen the chozzerai you find in the racks at airports or shopping malls.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said, beginning to sense a lethal tightness making its deceptively benign introduction into my lumbar region.
    “But me, I’m to the manor born. I don’t hondle with mere craftsmen. I meld exclusively with bona fides. Hence I’m here to report your latest tome caught my baby blues last week at a little country store. Actually I’d never seen a book remaindered in the kindling section before. Not that I got through it, but the three pages I managed before narcolepsy set in told me I was in the presence of one of the most egregious wordsmiths since Papa Hemingway.”
    “To tell you the truth,” I said, “I’ve never heard of novelizations. My métier is serious literature. Joyce, Kafka, Proust. As for my first book, I’ll have you know the cultural editor of
The Barber’s Journal
—”
    “Sure, sure, meanwhile every Shakespeare’s gotta eat lest he croak ere he mints his magnum opus.”
    “Uh-huh,” I said. “I wonder if I might have just a little water. I’ve become rather dependent on these Xanax.”
    “Believe me, kid,” Biggs said, raising his voice and intoning slowly. “All the Nobel laureates work for me. It’s how they set their table.” Poised in the wings, his stacked amanuensis pushed her head in and trilled, “E. Coli, García Márquez is on the phone. Claims his larder is bereft of all provender. Wants to know if you can possibly throw any more novelizations his way.”
    “Tell Gabo I’ll get back to him, cupcake,” snapped the producer.
    “And just what movie are you asking me to novelize?” I piped, gagging on the word. “Are we talking about a love story? Gangsters? Or is it action-adventure? I’m known as a facile man with description, particularly bucolic material à la Turgenev.”
    “Tell me about the Russkies,” Biggs yelped. “I tried to make Stavrogin’s confession into a musical for Broadway last year, but all the backers suddenly got swine flu. Here’s the scam, tatellah. I happen to own the rights to a cinema classic starring the Three Stooges. Won it years ago playing tonk with Ray Stark at Cannes. It’s a real zany vehicle for our three most irrepressible meshoogs. I’ve fressed all the protein I can out of the print—movie houses, foreign and domestic TV—but I suspicion there’s still a little lagniappe to be bled from a novel.”
    “Of the Three Stooges?” I asked, incredulous, my voice glissandoing directly into a fife’s octave.
    “I don’t have to ask if you love ’em. They’re only an institution,” Biggs pitched.
    “When I was eight,” I said, rising from my chair and slapping at my pockets to locate my emergency Fiorinal.
    “Hold it, hold it. You didn’t hear the plot yet. It’s all about spending the night in a haunted house.”
    “It’s OK,” I said, dollying toward the door. “I’m a little late—some friends are raising a barn—”
    “I booked a projection room so I could screen it for you,” Biggs said, ignoring my resistance, which by now had morphed into sheer panic.
    “No thanks. I may be down to my last can of StarKist,” I sputtered as the great man cut me off.
    “Emmes, kid. If this is as lucrative as my proboscis signals, there’s copious zuzim to be stockpiled. Those three ditsy vilda chayas cut a million shorts. One e-mail could secure the