I Think You're Totally Wrong

I Think You're Totally Wrong Read Free Page A

Book: I Think You're Totally Wrong Read Free
Author: David Shields
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stands that have no substantive value. Sartre refused the Nobel Prize. How many lives did that save? Almond was teaching at Boston College—
    DAVID: Where he quit.
    CALEB: —when Condoleezza Rice was invited to give the commencement speech.
    DAVID: You wonder if there wasn’t another motivation on his part.
    CALEB: It got him on Fox News.
    DAVID: I saw something by him recently called “Twenty Tough Questions for Barack Obama.” A very, very stock liberal critique of Obama. I come close to sharing virtually all of Almond’s politics, but I don’t pretend to be a political scientist. He always winds up writing 1,500-word articles for
Slate
called “Steve Almond’s Solution to the Palestinian Crisis.”

    DAVID: Did you ever feel compelled to have a conventional profession?
    CALEB: No.
    DAVID: Did you actively seek out a bohemian life?
    CALEB: After college I worked construction and tried to be a musician. I never considered a career or saving for the future.
    DAVID: How did you tend to support yourself abroad?
    CALEB: Teaching ESL: English as—
    DAVID: I know what “ESL” stands for. Did Terry ever put any pressure on you to have a career?
    CALEB: No. She’s pretty good about it. It’s not like I’m a doctor and could walk into a six-figure job. And taking care of the children is a job. I could see myself teaching later.
    DAVID: Do you have genuine expertise as an ESL teacher?
    CALEB: No.

    DAVID: In any case, the point being, I wonder if we’ve married slightly more rational and commonsensical people than we are ourselves. You wife is in advertising?
    CALEB: Close enough. Technically, sales, but linked to marketing/advertising. And your wife’s at Fred Hutchinson—fund-raising?
    DAVID: She’s a project manager. They study things like whether night-shift workers are more likely to get prostate cancer. Did you ever go out with people in the arts?Writers? Does it surprise you that you married someone who’s not an artist?
    CALEB: Yeah.
    DAVID: Me, too.
    CALEB: When I was overseas, I never thought I’d marry an American. I thought I’d settle overseas. Probably Asia.
    DAVID: Then, in 2003—
    CALEB: Sorry to interrupt …
    DAVID: No, go ahead.
    CALEB: How much of your stuff does Laurie read? Does she criticize drafts? Does she read only the published book? Does she like your work?
    DAVID: I’d say it’s one of the sadnesses of my life. She reads my work and she semi-likes it sometimes—there’ll be passages she likes—but she’s not exactly riveted. She liked
The Thing About Life
okay, I think, and she liked
Dead Languages
, but that was a long time ago. She’s a huge David Foster Wallace fan; she’s always apotheosizing Wallace. Enough about Wallace!
    She’s a very smart person who’s not literary, so she’ll say, “I read
Reality Hunger
, and I kind of agree with it. I, too, am weary of fiction.” And that will be her whole comment. It’s a book I spent years writing, but it’s not in her to say, “It’s brilliant,” or on the other hand, “I liked this, but I quarreled with that.” In general, she’s not crazy about my work. How about Terry? Has she read all your essays and stories?
    CALEB: No. You remember my story set in Thailand—the one I gave you, published in
Post Road
? Terry still hasn’t read that story. It’s four pages. I told her I’d like her to read it,showed it to her, put it on her nightstand, and left it there. If she’s read it, she never told me. The only things she likes come from my
Notes of a Sexist Stay-at-Home Father
family blog. I write stuff like “What do you call a guy who hates giving women backrubs?”
    DAVID: Is this a joke?
    CALEB: A massage-ynist. But my serious stuff she hates or isn’t interested in. I have to twist her arm to read any of it. She usually finds it boring, calls me a

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