A reader writes:

You recently mentioned reading the whole of Ulysses in less than an hour, and you frequently allude to the novels you read while you’re imbibing a fifth martini. As someone who never seems to have enough time to read, I simply don’t believe you. I’d like to know two things: how you read so fast, and how you fast while reading.

The fact is, dear reader, that, in addition to the starving you reference, I do most of my reading on speed, bringing new meaning to the term “speed reader.” In fact, I can finish off a book of normal length and density while snorting up a line of good Colombian. It’s certainly a little faster than that Teachout fellow, but at least Teachout doesn’t have to resort to drugs to remain hyperliterate. His loss.

While Teachout wastes precious hours of his life (specifically, the uncertain period he refers to “between Friday night and Monday morning”) operating at regular speed reading levels, with the help of illegal substances, I’ve stumbled upon a life of hard drugs, fast women, and even faster reading. Every weekend, you’ll find me at Cabo San Lucas blading up a good bag with my homies, my head bobbing up for air from a nineteen year old girl from Topeka trying to extend her spring break year-round, with the latest Shirley Hazard and John Upike propped up on my lap. It’s quite the life, baby. More fun than those impacted weekends. And you better believe I’ve read more than Harold Bloom.

“At that time, 1962 and earlier, practically all screenwriters — I would say there were about eight exceptions — were full-out hacks, completely incompetent in any other form of writing, and, of course, disastrous in their own. You’ve got to understand that it is not easy to make a bad movie — it requires a very special combination of non-talents and anti-talents…and that was generally the case, and unfortunately all too often still is. It used to be that the people — they were not writers — who would get into the screenwriting would do so through talents much more appropriate to selling shoes than to writing…in other words, extroverted, hard-sell, bullshitting assholes. Agents…people like that. Hustlers…people who suddenly decided there was more money in selling ‘stories’ to the studio than in selling siding or used cars, and since they had a brother-in-law already in the biz, why not give it a whirl? Once they had a credit, of course, there was no stopping them. The studios had rather employ a screenwriter with eight disasters to his credit than a William Faulkner with none. In fact, when Faulkner — who had the greatest ear for regional dialogue of his time — was finally used in Hollywood, his work was invariably rewritten, by hacks, simply because producers and directors were suspicious of anyone who had not written for films before — as if there was something special about it, or about the crap they were turning out. In short, it used to be there was no way to get into screenwriting, except through a brother-in-law process. Now independent production has changed this — but not as much as one might think. In the majority of pictures with budgets of five hundred thou or more, studio participation is involved, and whenever thee is studio money, there is the dinosaur mentality and the apelike interference which are unfailintly part of the package.”

— Terry Southern, 1972

• NaNoWriMo starts in a few weeks. If you’re in the Cape Cod area, Laurie Higgins would like to hear from you.
• Gerald Hiken’s an actor in Palo Alto who performs as Proust, Auden, and Stein in his living room. The public is invited on Fridays and Saturdays.
• Alice Walker has received a Lifetime Literary Achievement Award from the Enoch Pratt library. Pratt could not attend, too busy passing the ball to Pratt, who kicked it back to Pratt, diving under Pratt and scoring, with Pratt held in low regard.
• This is a lame bulleted list of headlines. I apologize. The blog is vacated until next week.

‘Twere it possible to pluck
The grimy residue from recent oceans
Or to stand resolute with sturdy sea legs
Upon a foundation shaky in its firm conviction

Their woes were pedantic
They used their resilient muscles
To plant tumers that would not grow

Transparent tears stinging upon flesh
The hard work of nothingness
A void to ensnare defiant dreamers
Through the dull blue orb

But the yeoman
Surrounded by their poisonous tongues
Anthracite ventricles
Glutinous voices
Ended the vicious cycle
By striking the flint of his ambition

The yeoman walked alone
Through treacherous copses and corpses
Never abandoning the light
Just beyond the vale

Aging ungracefully
The yeoman steered his stead
To a cloudy clearing
Soaring rather than souring

Hunter S. Thompson weighs in on the current presidential race.