Harlow? That is an excellent joke, sir.

Lois called me into her office one day and told me about a student she had had whose writing was allusive and subtle and she told the student, “I want you to take this story and rewrite it so it’s so obvious it makes you want to puke. Then I want you to rewrite the story again halfway between the two versions.” The student came back with the new version and Lois asked if it had been hard to do. “Yes.” “Was it worth doing?” “Yes.”

She said, “I’m going to give you the same assignment.”

About a dozen years later Benson Parkinson told me the same thing. I was writing an appreciation of Cathy Wilson’s poetry for Irreantum 2:1, Spring 2000, and Benson told me the piece I was writing was nearly as subtle and compact as the poetry I was writing about, which defeats the purpose of writing an appreciation designed to invite people into a group of poems to browse around rather than puzzling over every syllable and iamb.

I rewrote the piece fairly quickly and it is much better, but I still prefer being a little playful.

Last summer I came across Tom Hollander’s narration of A Clockwork Orange. I have avoided reading it because all I have is the censored (or mutilated) American orange paperback. 30-odd years ago when I was building up a collection of the original run of Short Story International my brother asked me to look out for one number which had a story by Anthony Burgess. “It’s a new ending for A Clockwork Orange. Actually, it’s the original ending that was left out of the American edition.”

I found that number and sent it off to him in Seattle so I still don’t have the original ending, but I figured I’d listen to Hollander’s reading then make my way over to the BYU library some day and search through Short Story International for the ending. Well, the recording starts with an essay called “A Clockwork Orange Resucked,” wherein Burgess explains why the American edition was published without its last chapter, and why this new edition includes it.

He wrote the novel in 3 sections of 7 chapters each, or 21 chapters, but the American publisher didn’t like the 21st chapter because Alex grows up and we Americans prefer our dystopias to remain dystopic. We aren’t always comfortable with the idea that the world may not stay as bad as it is now, that people may change and grow.

“21 is the symbol of human maturity, or used to be, since at 21 you got the vote and assumed adult responsibility. Whatever its symbology, the number 21 was the number I started out with. Novelists of my stamp are interested in what is called arithmology, meaning that number has to mean something in human terms when they handle it.” (A Clockwork Orange, New York: W.W. Norton & Co. 1086, p. vi)

I have always been interested in arithmology, numbers or names in my work always mean something in human terms, which may be why it is still difficult for me to just be very plain–I always want to include more that I lay out, but I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just playful.

Ah. Now it all makes sense!

Um… what’s your favorite error?