The Cry of the Sloth Read Online Free PDF

festival on an unmistakable note of defiance. Of course our local so-called movers and shakers would prefer a venerable warhorse like Norman Mailer or, even worse, a flash-in-the-pan mountebank like Quiller. I remember how you used to refer to the
NYT
’s best seller list as “the roster of shame” and how, encouraged by our shouts and laughter, you would climb up on a table in the cafeteria and read it aloud each Sunday, pronouncing the titles with that drawling faux-Oxford accent of yours, which would break everybody up, you made all the books sound perfectly ridiculous. So I rather doubt you’ve read
The Secret Life of Echoes
, Quiller’s latest concoction. Considering the well-known literary penchants of the accused, you’ll not be surprised to learn that it’s another farrago of soft porn and phony philosophical ruminations; they fuck and then they talk about the Meaning of History. He has Errol Flynn appear as a ghost to give advice on how to dress to the poor working-class slob who through good looks and brains has landed a job at Goldman Sachs. In the cubicle next to his dwells Neenah of the long legs, big boobs, and “moist pudendum” (his words). Need I say more? The armies are ranged for battle. Gird your loins, Willy, and join us in April.
    My very best,
    Andy Whittaker
    ¶
    Dear Dahlberg,
    I’ve spent the past day and a half on your MS. I wanted to read it all the way through before writing you, but I can’t go on. I really don’t know
what
to say except it’s not what I expected, which was something more in line with your earlier stuff. Reading this new material was like walking on a thick pile of soggy sheetrock. One thinks, after finishing one interminable sentence, with no verb or subject in the offing, and having finally reached the relative safety of a full stop, that one will just not have enough strength for the next sentence, not enough
willpower
to haul a clogged boot out of the sticky mess and heave it forward into yet more mess, until finally one
really can’t
, and doesn’t, at which point one lets the whole thing slide off one’s lap onto the floor.
    What happened to the tough little guy who told those tough little stories about his life as a hardware store clerk? “Good Luck at Smart Value” got more favorable comments than just about anything we’ve published in years. I think I told you that. Sure, we had predictable penny-ante backbiting from the tiresome yahoos at
The Art News
. I would never have sent you the clipping if it had occurred to me that you would take it as anything but a grand joke. When these people
like
your stuff, Dahl, that’s when you better start worrying. Believe me, your description of the owner’s wife heaving those fifty-pound sacks of Quikrete into the bed of a pickup was flat-out
amazing
. I mean,
that
was real writing. You could just as well have been describing a reciprocating single-action piston pump with pulse damper or a smoothly ratcheting mechanical windlass, the writing was that cold and dead, and yet it was also feverish. It had the brutal honesty we usually associate with instruction manuals. That you are not exactly a polished writer worked in your favor; it’s how Hemingway might have written had he never gone to high school. I confess, I envied your raw energy, the authenticity of that voice, and I thought how fun it would be to write like that. I am reluctantly returning your MS.
    Andy
    ¶
    I am just now becoming aware that an odd thing has been happening. Ordinary objects—chairs, tables, trees, my own hands—seem to have become closer than they were. The colors are brighter, the edges sharper. This is a process that has been going on, that has been increasing, over the past several weeks without my quite noticing. And with it has come a tremendous new confidence. Maybe I am finally getting over Jolie’s leaving. Looking back, I can see that I have probably been in a real clinical depression. Only now, in retrospect, am I able to