We here at shamebook would like you to share your most shameful moments.
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This is ******m. For shame.
And over the city we drew deep quiet breathes as the calm panting of that heavenly orchestra sketched meaning in distant silhouettes.
And in these, our sad temples to sad fathers and mothers and sons long lost, we sit in chairs half-contemplating, half-forgetting, both past and pasts’ future—all borne on the backs of glass and ice and lies and three draughts beyond our pay.
And this then is our oracle.
“It’s not the pasta dammit! It’s your incessant prattling about D.B. White for chrissakes!”
“E.B. E.B. White. And it’s not prattle. It’s the elements of fucking style.”
“Says who? I mean Jesus, you’re sitting there telling me about this and that and that and this and it doesn’t mean a fucking thing, Joel. Style is the only element of style.”
“Charlotte’s Web, man. Stuart fucking Little.”
“What about it?”
“Makes you a better writer, that’s all. Trim the flowers. Cut the fat.”
“Well I’m not about to approach my work with a pair of fucking garden shears, Anthony.”
“Well whatever. I was in court the other day and…and the, ugh, the Elements of Writing or whatever…they…well let’s just say I could castrate a young child with those arguments.”
“What does that even mean?”
“It means it makes you sharp, Joel. Double edged shit. On the edge. Sharp. Glistening in the glittery literary, oratorial sky! In style and of substance.”
