Fame

Grace, 6, asks me at dinner if I write books and then asks, "are you famous?"

Yes and no.

We are in Portland where she lives having dinner at the hotel where I am staying.

She's drawing in the coloring book the restaurant gives little kids who dine with their parents and grandparents and I'm about to order a Pinot Noir from the Williamette Valley when she asks me the questions.

I tell her I've written a new novel under the name Thomas Fuller and before that I'd written several books of poems under my real name, Brooks Roddan.

What's a novel? Grace asked, already knowing what a poem is.

It's the fully living, fully aware state of being, I say to Grace, at least that's how I define what a novel is in my own novel, Monsieur Ambivalence.

The wine comes to the table the moment after Grace asks me why I wrote the novel under the name Thomas Fuller and not under my real name and since I'm supposed to taste the wine since I'm the one who ordered it, I do and it's good enough to drink, though not as good as I'd imagined, not as good as the northern California pinot's I like, like Patz & Hall, so I never do answer Grace's question.

We all have a nice dinner, and then say goodnight. Grace and her little sister Emerson have to get home to sleep and their parents, Ashley and Drew, have to drive them home. It's about 8 p.m. by this time.

Lea Ann and I decide to walk to Powell's Bookstore on Burnside. It's only 8 blocks from the hotel.

A light rain is falling, fallen leaves cross the street like they're being chased by the police. Seen one block away, the bookstore looks like it's lit for a new painting by Edward Hopper. Inside it seems like the same old story.

I remember in the old days when I was as open as a poet, I loved walking around inside Powell's. Wherever I was in Powell's I'd always find something I wasn't looking for. But I'm older now and nothing's what it used to be.

I'm a writer most comfortable in literature so I walk to literature right away to see if there's the book by Renata Adler I think I want to read, Speedboat, and there it is, and then I walk over to Gertrude Stein and there she is, and then to Greek history upstairs for the new book I'm writing about the classical world and there Greek history is.

There's something really ancient about the way I walk around Powell's now, it doesn't work anymore the way it once worked, I feel like I've read it all, that all the books in here are all for others to read, that now I have to be the one writing the book I really want to read and that only I can write that book.

Standing in the aisle at Powell's, surrounded by books that I'm grateful exist but have no desire to read, I have an idea that's new to me--that literature is history and history is literature. I have no idea how this new idea works with the new book I'm writing, but I'm interested enough to find out.