Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky Page A

extent that like, that I derive my self and satisfaction from the work, rather than whether Mr. Lipsky’s gonna come, and think what I have to say is important, is just—I’m gonna write better, I’m gonna be happier, I’m gonna be saner. You know what I mean? So like, why climb into the arena with this bull? Well. It’s good for Little, Brown, I owe Little, Brown something, so.
    And there’s a little part of me, of course, that likes this. But that little part of me does not get to steer.
    That little part can turn pretty ravenous though?
    That’s my big fear. If you see me like you know as a guest on a game show in the next couple of years, we will know.
    [Waitress comes: Heavy tray, big Midwestern spread.] “Four slices of
sausage
, one
cheese
, two salads, dipping sauce, and six breadsticks. Also cookies. And two Diet Cokes. When you all want your cookies, just come up and yell at me. OK?”
    Good heavens. Could we have a larger table, also, please? I’m just kidding.
    A friend of mine and I had this joke, that various things are pomo-erotic.
    That part of the brain can prove to be ravenous?
    You’ve had experience with it?
    No. But I know it can be
.
    You know what I’m talking about. At one point you were in grad school, one of the many hopefuls, and now you’ve had a couple of books published, and it awakens that part of you. And you can’t kill that part of you. But you
can
reach some sort of détente with it. Where you, where it doesn’t run you. And I’ve seen people that I think it runs, and it’s just, it eats you alive. Who would want to be that way?
    But many less-talented people than you get lots of attention. Which can be a little painful. Now you’re getting it, and you’re very good and you deserve it. This is an example of the system working
.
    I’m not sure I—I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve had that thought in the last few years. I mean, I’ve got my weird neuroses. Like I’m totally—I had this huge inferiority complex where William Vollmann’s concerned. Because he and I’s first books came out at the same time. And I even once read a Madison Smartt Bell essay, where he used me, and my
“slender
output,” and the inferiority of it, to talk about, you know, how great Vollmann is. And so I go around, “Oh no, Vollmann’s had another one out, now he’s got like five to my one.” I go around with that stuff. But I think, I’m trying to think of any example that …
    Bell himself is an outpourer
.
    I think just: I haven’t read a lot of the new stuff that’s come out over the last few years. Like Steve Erickson, and
Tours of the Black Clock—
it’s really fucking good. I thought Bret Ellis’s first book, I thought it was very, very powerful.
American Psycho
—I thought he was really ill-served by his agent and publisher even letting him publish it, and those are the only two things of his that I read. But that’s, I think this is another danger: you get lavishly rewarded for that first book, and it’s gonna be very difficult for him ever to do anything else. I mean there’s gonna be part of you that just wants to do that over and over and over again, so you continue to get the food pellets of praise. It’s one more way that all this stuff is toxic.
    Same risk for you?
    Sure. Because whatever I do, the next thing will be very different from this. And if it gets
reamed
, then I’ll think: “Oh no. Maybe
Infinite Jest II.”
In which case, somebody needs to come and just put a bullet in my head. To be merciful.
    David Leavitt noose quote: Reviewers will use my first book as a noose to hang my second
.
    I think it often is. Although the nice thing about having written an essentially shitty first book is that I’m exempt from that problem. There were a lot of people who really liked
Broom of the System
, but unfortunately they’re all about eleven.
    [He laughs, then a little composing wince.]
    Never that grinding feeling of watching someone who’s not