Wallace: Well, I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the extent that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I'm hanging out with you, I can't even tell whether I like you or not, because I'm too worried about whether you like me. It's stressful and unpleasant.

And yet at the same time it's sort of like agoraphobic kleptomaniacs. Somebody who's writing, has part of their motivation to sort of impress themselves and their consciousness on others. There's an unbelievable arrogance even trying to write something--much less, you know, expecting that someone else will pay money to read it.

But there's also, the shyness that feeds into some of the stuff that you need as a fiction writer. Like: part of the shyness for me is, it's very easy for me to play this game of, What do you want? What will the effect of this be on you? You know? It's this kind of mental chess. Which in personal intercourse? Makes things very difficult. But in writing, you've got to be able to plausibly project what an alien consciousness will make of it. So that there's a kind of split consciousness that I think makes it difficult to deal with people in the real world. For a writer.

End quote. Incidentally these are all taken from the Lipsky book, and are from his conversation verbatim via a tape recorder. Thus, all the pauses and such, and the occasional moments of unelevated diction. I've recently discovered that I'm a fan of putting un in front of things and making new words like unelevated and unattenuated. Anyhow, here is the continuation to my story. How unbelievably arrogant? At least I'm offering it for free.

Fiction (Cont).

Sorry. I feel the need to extrapolate on the earlier question. I don’t have any sort of Superman or hero complex. I’ve no desire to be perceived as a savior or otherworldly being to the woman I love. So no, I did not feel any irritation at the sight of one of the gardener’s stroking her hair and speaking softly to her in Spanish.

Fuzzy trace theory is based on the idea that memory is stored in two different ways. Simply, that we store “verbatim” and “gist” accounts of any event. The “gist” account gives the overall feeling of an event while the “verbatim” is exact. Because of this people may mistakenly recall a memory that only goes along with a vague “gist” of what happened, rather than the exact course of events.

I should mention now that the doctors worked miracles. Literal miracles. My father is a plastic surgeon of some renown in the Hollywood Hills area. Katie not only retained her good looks after a couple of minor surgeries, she was perhaps improved by them, the surgeries. The operation, in which her left cheek was put back together with a skin graft from her right hip, gave her face an alluring asymmetry. Such that, after the accident, she was distinguishable in a room full of pretty girls because of the slight tilt of her left cheek, which gave a new prominence to her already alluring eyes.

Are those comfortable for walking on the streets? The shoes. What is the tread like? How do they function in a light to moderate rain?

We dated for several months following the event. The two of us acknowledged the role my fall played in her disfigurement once. It ended with me casting aspersion on that particular brand of shoe, which to this day I have not purchased any more of. And, quite honestly, can hardly bear the sight of, even pre repressed memory.