Thomas Fuller

I talked to Tom Fuller yesterday, hadn't seen him since the book parties for his
new book (Monsieur Ambivalence, IF SF, 2013) in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.

Now he's in Kansas and I'm in upstate Wyoming.

Tom's great, always more interested in my stuff than his stuff, a good listener, he's a real writer that way though most of the real writers I know aren't that way at all, they like talking about themselves most of all, like most people who aren't writers.

Well Tom, I said, I'm reading a great deal--Christopher Bollas, Werner Jaeger, a Time-Life book about classical Greece, "The Recognitions" by William Gaddis, Renate Stendahl's book on G.Stein...

Whoa partner, Tom said. That's a literary rodeo.

Well it's quiet here, I'm 30 miles from town, it's what I do, read and think, think and read, have a drink or two when the sun goes down...

The good life, he said.

It's pretty simple, I said. Not much to it. I watched some trees change color yesterday, walked down to the river and back, made sure there was plenty of wood for the fireplace...it's getting cold up here, snowed yesterday, it's a straw-bale cabin...

O that's right, Tom said. Your son built it, right?

Yep.

We talked about a few other things. I told I thought The Weather Channel was the best thing on tv and Fox News the worst, and how all the tv's at the gym in Cody were tuned to Fox News so naturally most people were right-wing...

Sounds like Kansas, Tom said.

I get Netflix, I said. Last night I watched Visconti's "La Terra Trema." What a great movie! I'll probably watch it again...then I googled Visconti and found an interview he did with Maria Callas in 1969...they're speaking French, it's hilarious, imagine Maria Callas as Johnny Carson...

Tom laughed.

I told Tom I was re-reading "Monsieur Ambivalence" and how much I liked it the second time through, how I was seeing so many things I hadn't seen before, the time shifts, the unself-consciousness of the language, the primal but evolved relationship between the man and the woman...

There was a long pause, I thought we'd lost connection.

Then Tom Fuller said thanks and told me he'd started writing a new novel about being lost in the classical world.