Twelve Characters in Search of a Union

Many writers describe a process by which characters seem to become independent of their author and start to speak for themselves, but [Michael] Frayn's relationship with his characters is, even by these standards, respectful rather than intimate ..."Writing fiction is like industrial management. You've got this plan for this work you want done, and you've got a workforce that just wants to get through the job and go home and get on with their lives. Somehow you've got to persuade them, cajole them, bully them, bribe them, or something, to do at least part of what you want."

-- Michael Frayn, quoted in "A Dry Soul is Best," by Larissa MacFarquhar, in *The New Yorker,* 10/25/04.

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The events described in the following passage took place during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war that occurred in the 1980s after the 1979 revolution. During the war, Iraq bombed Tehran many times.

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"You don't know what we have suffered," she said at last. "Last week they dropped a bomb near our house. It fell on an apartment building. The neighbors said that in one of the flats there was a birthday party and some twenty-odd children were killed.

"Immediately after the bombs fell and before the ambulances came, six or seven motorcycles arrived from nowhere and started circling the area. The riders all wore black, with red headbands across their foreheads. They started shouting slogans: *Death to America! Death to Saddam! Death to Khomeini!* People were very quiet. They just watched them with hatred. Some tried to go forward to help the wounded, but the thugs wouldn't let anyone go near the place. They kept shouting, "War! War! Until victory!" How do you think we all felt as we stood there watching them?"

This was a ritual: after the bombings, these emissaries of death would prevent any sign of mourning or protest. When two of my cousins were killed by the Islamic regime, some of my relatives who were now on the side of the government called my uncle to congratulate him on the death of his son and daughter-in-law.

--*Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books,* by Azar Nafisi, p. 211.

And Papa Never Had to Sit Through *Cats*

It was fashionable among his friends to disparage Conrad, [Hemingway] said ... [m]ost of the people he knew agreed that Conrad was a bad writer and T. S. Eliot a good one, but he disagreed: "If I knew that by grinding Mr. Eliot into a fine dry powder and sprinkling that powder over Mr. Conrad's grave Mr. Conrad would shortly appear ... I would leave for London early tomorrow morning with a sausage grinder."

--From Hemingway: a Life without Consequences, by James R. Mellow

I Don't Care How Many Doors Away You Live, I'm NOT Eating That Chicken

"I have to tell you that the Ayatollah [Khomeini] was no novice in sexual matters," Nassrin went on. "I've been translating his magnum opus, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, and he has some interesting points to make ... Did you know that one way to cure a man's sexual appetites is by having sex with animals? And then there's the problem of sex with chickens. You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken's meat, but it's okay for a neighbor who lives two doors away. My father would rather I spent my time on such texts than on Jane Austen or Nabokov?"

--Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi, p. 71.

I'd Miss, Too

Mary [Hemingway] was an erratic shot: she could kill a small kudu deer with a single bullet through the throat at a distance of 375 yards, but she was also capable of missing “Jesus Christ sitting on William Faulkner’s lap, even with the light at her back”.

--from *Ernest Hemingway Rediscovered,* by Norberto Fuentes, p. 105.