was, Dr. Pumphrey?"
âWhat?"
âI told him that this was the proof we needed. This was the proof that we really did change the world. And then I thanked him."
âYou thanked him? You thanked him for killing Seth?"
âOh, it was difficult to get those words out of my mouth. You've no idea how difficult. But look what happened.
"It worked."
The receiver on Peyton's end was replaced with a soft click, and Jonathan was left holding the phone, holding the whole damn story, and wondering just what Seth Grealy had really died for.
YES, I WOULD The author's afterword to Plastic Jesus
John Lennon was killed in New York when I was thirteen. I'd been aware of the Beatles before 1980, as if it were possible not to be. But the media coverage of John's death stoked my imagination, and obviously continues to do so today.
The first piece I published on this subject was the essay âWould You?â which you may have received as a free mini-chapbook if you bought the limited hardcover edition of this book. Though it has seen print before, I think it is a good companion to Plastic Jesus , and goes a long way toward explaining how this longer and more convoluted tale came to be.
21If you didn't get the mini-chapbook, all you really need (besides love) is to know that I've been obsessed with the Beatles, and particularly John, for quite a long time. After his death, I bought a few records, then bought a few more, and eventually plastered my room with Beatles posters and became a teenage hippie Beatlemaniacâquite an anomaly in a rural North Carolina high school in the early eighties. John was the latest and best in a long line of attitude-driven badasses I admired. He inspired me to start an underground newspaper, reconsider my own political and social beliefs, experiment with drugs (something I'm quite happy with, thanks), and generally become an in-your-face rebel quite a few years earlier then I might have done otherwise.
Today I have John's cartoony little self-portrait tattooed on my left bicep. People have wondered aloud whether I will get sick of it, but in twenty years I've never gotten sick of the Beatles, and so far it's only been comforting to have him around, even if he is just a few lines of black ink under the skin of my arm. More to the point, I have always believed the world would be a better place today if John and Paul had been lovers. Yes, I know they weren't gay. That has nothing to do with it. This is a fantasy .
A couple of years ago, Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press asked to publish a chapbook of my work. I didn't have anything new of sufficient length, but I had long been interested in publishing my untitled 1987 novella that eventually grew into Lost Souls . I didn't think it was a great work of literature, but I believed fans of the novel would be interested to see the genesis of the story and how it had evolved. Bill said OK, and this became The Seed of Lost Souls , illustrated to perfection by Dame Darcy of Meatcake comics fame. I enjoyed the whole experience so much that when Bill asked me to do another book, this one a ten-to fifteen-thousand word piece of original fiction, I said yes.
At that time, I'd been working on my fifth novel for about a year and getting increasingly frustrated with it. There were some things I loved about it, but there were a lot of things I hated about it. When I threw out all the things I hatedâentire characters, subplots, decadesâI realized that this particular story might work better as a novella. In fact, it might be perfect for that second Subterranean book. Gradually, the would-be fifth novel turned into the novella Plastic Jesus .
People love to ask writers where we get our ideas, but they don't seem to like it if the answer is too obvious. I've heard it said that my novel Exquisite Corpse is ânothing more than a blow-by-blow retelling of Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes.â (Funny, I must have missed the news of Dahmer hooking up with
âWhat?"
âI told him that this was the proof we needed. This was the proof that we really did change the world. And then I thanked him."
âYou thanked him? You thanked him for killing Seth?"
âOh, it was difficult to get those words out of my mouth. You've no idea how difficult. But look what happened.
"It worked."
The receiver on Peyton's end was replaced with a soft click, and Jonathan was left holding the phone, holding the whole damn story, and wondering just what Seth Grealy had really died for.
YES, I WOULD The author's afterword to Plastic Jesus
John Lennon was killed in New York when I was thirteen. I'd been aware of the Beatles before 1980, as if it were possible not to be. But the media coverage of John's death stoked my imagination, and obviously continues to do so today.
The first piece I published on this subject was the essay âWould You?â which you may have received as a free mini-chapbook if you bought the limited hardcover edition of this book. Though it has seen print before, I think it is a good companion to Plastic Jesus , and goes a long way toward explaining how this longer and more convoluted tale came to be.
21If you didn't get the mini-chapbook, all you really need (besides love) is to know that I've been obsessed with the Beatles, and particularly John, for quite a long time. After his death, I bought a few records, then bought a few more, and eventually plastered my room with Beatles posters and became a teenage hippie Beatlemaniacâquite an anomaly in a rural North Carolina high school in the early eighties. John was the latest and best in a long line of attitude-driven badasses I admired. He inspired me to start an underground newspaper, reconsider my own political and social beliefs, experiment with drugs (something I'm quite happy with, thanks), and generally become an in-your-face rebel quite a few years earlier then I might have done otherwise.
Today I have John's cartoony little self-portrait tattooed on my left bicep. People have wondered aloud whether I will get sick of it, but in twenty years I've never gotten sick of the Beatles, and so far it's only been comforting to have him around, even if he is just a few lines of black ink under the skin of my arm. More to the point, I have always believed the world would be a better place today if John and Paul had been lovers. Yes, I know they weren't gay. That has nothing to do with it. This is a fantasy .
A couple of years ago, Bill Schafer of Subterranean Press asked to publish a chapbook of my work. I didn't have anything new of sufficient length, but I had long been interested in publishing my untitled 1987 novella that eventually grew into Lost Souls . I didn't think it was a great work of literature, but I believed fans of the novel would be interested to see the genesis of the story and how it had evolved. Bill said OK, and this became The Seed of Lost Souls , illustrated to perfection by Dame Darcy of Meatcake comics fame. I enjoyed the whole experience so much that when Bill asked me to do another book, this one a ten-to fifteen-thousand word piece of original fiction, I said yes.
At that time, I'd been working on my fifth novel for about a year and getting increasingly frustrated with it. There were some things I loved about it, but there were a lot of things I hated about it. When I threw out all the things I hatedâentire characters, subplots, decadesâI realized that this particular story might work better as a novella. In fact, it might be perfect for that second Subterranean book. Gradually, the would-be fifth novel turned into the novella Plastic Jesus .
People love to ask writers where we get our ideas, but they don't seem to like it if the answer is too obvious. I've heard it said that my novel Exquisite Corpse is ânothing more than a blow-by-blow retelling of Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes.â (Funny, I must have missed the news of Dahmer hooking up with
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