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"This might be a good time
to take the stage with my "Six Good People" monologue. Where is the
stage? And what have they done with the audience?"
"Most pertinent now are issues
and situations that arise and are unresolved between one person and
another."
"Like what?"
"I can't think of anything
at the moment."
"Most pertinent now are .
. . persons? What? What? How?"
"If it wasn't resolved, look
out for now it will be!"
"People could never just
agree, and admit they gave that issue no thought. They have to infernally
pretend that they have given everything ample thought, and give an
opinion. Which requires ignoring what they just heard, which, it they
admitted it, proves they never . . ."
"The reason she, or he, doesn't
readily agree with you is that would expose the fact she, or he, has
never given the subject any thought. He, or she, verily has to pretend
to have thought about it, and when confronted with conclusions, the
very conclusions thought would of course have to reach, she, or he---the
whole lot of them! has to dispute them, to, as I said, preserve the--"
"I get it!"
"Does he or she know he is
right?"
"If he sounds like he knows
what he's talking about, in panic of being exposed she, or he, must
risk flatly denying."
"This becomes more important
than anything else."
"What was the subject?"
"Tell us the subject, before
that horrible vagueness begins, like some invisible poison pumped
into the air through the radiators, floor vents, ceiling fans--"
"How to create characters
in a play. Charlie Rose asks Tom Stoppard, you see, how he writes
his plays. He says, what to you do, Tom, think of the character and
then give them the lines?"
"Tom says, no Charlie, that
is precisely wrong."
"What I do Charlie, is think
up the dialogue and once that gets going I know something about the
character--by what he is already saying. Get it!"
"One: Thomas Jefferson did
sire children from the slave Sally Hemmings. DNA tests have finally
proved it, such tests not being in existence back when . . . Two:
Daniel Wegman's master thesis in college was titled: "The Future of
Retail Food Marketing. Today he is getting an award from the National
Grocers Association or some god-damned group like that for, guess
what? innovation! And three: the body of George Mallory at the top
of Mt. Everest has been found and if the camera is found it might
be determined whether he got to the top first. Frozen film on route
to lab at Kodak."
"These are your three themes?"
"With ramifications."
"Examples involving complicated
retroactiveness."
"These are the three themes?"
"It will be the ramifications,
that will transcend the initial theme, but we don't know the ramifications
until we bury ourselves in the themes. And with such faith we shall
persevere."
