"All writing is a betrayal."

Monday, cigarette #3
Outside Au Bon Pain, 11:35pm
MUSIC: "Be a Little Quieter," Porter Wagoner

When you left you said you would not be returning, nothing here you'd ever want to see again,
But each night you come to visit me in memories, so won't you be a little quieter if you can?
Last night I heard you walking in the hallway and your footsteps sounded like a marching band,
And I haven't slept in so long I can't remember, so won't you be a little quieter if you can?

A thoroughly unsurprising revelation: when I want to celebrate and the liquor stores are closed, I buy a book. This time it was an anthology of Paris Review interviews, and I came across this from Dorothy Parker's:

What, then, would you say is the source of most of your work?

Need of money, dear.

And besides that?

It's easier to write about those you hate -- just as it's easier to criticize a bad play or a bad book.

Can it be true that it's easiest to write about those we hate? Think of all those love poems! I am guilty of one or two myself!

But Then Again: when I write love poetry I fall into genre much more quickly, and I don't think I'm alone in this. Love letters say "Here are the ways in which you are like this ideal"; hate letters say "Here is what you are."

So maybe it is true that all good, honest, particular writing comes from hate or something like it. This becomes more interesting if it implies that to write about someone is to grow to hate them.