These Dreams of You

~ ~ ~

Zan receives an invitation from the University of London to lecture on the Novel as a Literary Form Facing Obsolescence in the Twenty-First Century. While Zan finds giving or hearing such a lecture too odious to contemplate, the £3,500 that the university offers lends itself to contemplation. At the radio station he reads the letter again.

Dear Alexander Nordhoc, it says, we really really do think you’re a writer. Actually the invitation doesn’t say that. When Viv and the kids come by, Zan shows it to her. “I’d do it,” he tells her, “if they invited me to talk about music.”

“What do you mean you would do it if?” says Viv. “It’s a trip to London.”

“They don’t understand,” Zan explains, shaking the letter at her, “that I haven’t taught in two years, or been a novelist in fourteen. . ”

“You’re always a novelist, you’ve written four novels. That makes you a novelist.”

“The last was fourteen years ago.”

“The last was written fourteen years ago. But it may have been read by someone, you know,” she shrugs, “fourteen days ago.”

“It’s from James,” Zan points at the invitation.

Viv sighs, “I noticed.”

Who knows what that sigh means? Wistful, regretful, oh-please-let’s-not weary? “You sighed,” he says.

“Uh,” says Viv.

“Yeah,” he says.

She shrugs.

“Wistful? Regretful.”

“More,” she says, “oh-please-let’s-not weary.”

“I was getting to that one,” says Zan. “James” is J. Willkie Brown, as his byline reads, chosen presumably because he doesn’t want to be mistaken for the Godfather of Soul or, if he even were to consider the more vulgar “Jim,” star football players who used to beat up their women, in more innocent times before star football players murdered them — as if either point of confusion is likely, given that J. Willkie Brown is a Brit of distinctly Anglo complexion.