THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: You better work your stuff. Deadline’s quick and coming.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: I’ve got it!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: We’re in this together, kid, I know.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: No, no, this illiterate tendency of yours, with regards to the whole Faust thing.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Careful there. Sounds as if you might be groping.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: You deny the new books under your arm?
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: I deny them until I have read them. Then I will acknowledge that they exist.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: I’ve got it. Taking a cue…
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: As I’ve said, careful. Timing is everything, and to grope onto my sum of experience, whether it be that fabulous lady we were talking with on Saturday night, who let us bank that side pocket shot.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, she was cute. But, no, it’s all valid.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Valid at the risk of turning into some egregious self-chronicler. Some autobiographical humdrum.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: We’re doing this already. The blog, the journal, the stories that sometimes drift close to the bone, and now…
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: CAREFUL! Jesus, just because I have these magical musty books underneath my arm doesn’t mean you should pilfer from them too. For instance, this prologue involving a manager, merryman, and poet.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yes!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: No. Invention. The necessary skills, bro.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Yes, but Picasso and great artists! I’m losing pages paring it down.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: I know.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: And the temptation to latch onto anything.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Your aim is to keep things moving.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Ice floe!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Down the stream, and your plot will freeze should you pilfer yet again. They don’t buy these pomo tricks anymore.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: They do!
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Is your aim to persuade me? Because you’re doing a crummy job.
THE PLAYWRIGHT: Please understand. I’m resorting to jokes involving cleansing products.
THE VOICE OF EXPERIENCE: Well, the choice is yours. Then again, good stuff doesn’t happen without a little bit of risk.

Jen Chung reminded me that today is Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day.

Apparently, everybody’s been hopping about for the Bill Clinton memoir. 1.5 million copies will be printed in June. The release is timed to avoid competing with John Kerry. But I have to ask: What’s to get excited about? Here are some reasons why I probably won’t read the Clinton memoir:

A LAMEASS TITLE: My Life? Jesus, Bill, why not call it What I Did Last Summer (And A Few Things I Did During My Eight Years in the White House)?

CLINTON DOESN’T SUFFER FROM HYPERGRAPHIA: Apparently, Clinton now works “late in the evening,” leaving rep Robert Barnett to cover his ass. This suggests a rushed work, one almost immediately schlepped from the word processor to the printing press. Will we see long, clause-laden sentences that will put us to sleep or something anticlimactic like Hilary’s “shocked” moment from Living History?

THE $10 MILLION ADVANCE: If you’re getting $10 million to spill your soul, you better dish some dirt. I don’t think we’ll ever get a solid explanation for the presidential cigar. (Remember that?) Nor will Bill confess to us why he’s fond of big-haired women. Since he owes us at least that much, and won’t deliver, no quid pro quo here, Bubba.

CLINTON ON A BOOK TOUR: Orating to a handful of people in a Barnes & Noble in Peoria seems a sad step down from a man who once packed halls for a few thousand a pop.

Like Mark, I can’t pass a plug, particularly one that involves a bad pun. If you’re in New York City tonight, go hear Maud read.

From Publisher’s Lunch:

Though he stepped carefully around specifics, Tannenhaus confirmed that the process of changing the review has already begun and will build to a full “relaunch” and redesign this fall. He confidently declared, “You’ll see a much different book review.”

Most potential changes were positioned as things “we are looking at,” but the roster included turning more full-page 1,400-word reviews into more 600 to 700-word reviews, pushing reviewers to do their work more quickly, finding new and regular ways of covering commercial fiction (by “taking it own its own merits and trying to find what it is that readers are responding to”) and tweaking the “in brief” reviews in a way “that we hope will spotlight them a little bit more.” Tannenhaus made it clear that he will start reviewing authors who have “consistently been on the bestseller list” but not generally gotten reviewed in the newspaper. In the reviews he would “like a little stronger opinion as well.” Plus, authors with a “legitimate grievance” about how they are reviewed should find their letters getting printed more frequently. “If an author think he hasn’t gotten a fair shake, then the letter runs and the reviewer gets the chance to respond.”

So, Mr. Tanenhaus, can we expect some sidebars on how many times Zadie Smith upsets her neighbors? And that quick-on-the-draw approach will work great with heavier novels like Cloud Atlas or The Confusion.