Asshole Writers Revisited

The Twisted One, my fellow blogspotdotcommer over to seantwist.blogspot.com, has an excellent post up about his pet peeve - writers who take themselves too seriously, believe their own hype and in general think far too highly of themselves - as opposed the rest of us mere mortals. "Writing to me is no more amazing than bricklaying or fixing a broken toilet," says Mr. Twist.

And Daddy, you are soooooo right! If there's one thing I can't stand it's writers who go on and on and on and on and on about how great they are. But needless to say, that goes without saying.

However, it does remind me of an incident from my youth. I was part of a crowd that hung out in a little bistro on the Rue DePraytance in Paris, France. It was normally frequented by ex-pat American writers and artists of dubious distinction. If memory serves, I believe it was called The Back Room of Max's Kansas City:the Euro Version. Great chick-pea salad incidently.

One of the regulars was F.Scott Fitzgerald. Chicks got to call him 'Scott,' but he insisted that everyone else call him 'F.' So we did. Only we lenthened it a bit to 'Effin.' Whenever he would walk in, the whole bar would yell out, "Hey, it's Effin Scott Fitzgerald!" It was like something out of 'Cheers.'

Anyway, on this one occassion, .F. Scott is holding court and proclaims that "You know, writers are different from everyone else." And Morley Callahan pipes up - "Yeah, they know more words."

Man, I swear Ernie Hemingway almost shit himself with laughing so hard. F.Scott of course, was not amused.