Shotgun Shells Leave a Bad Aftertaste

Time passes and the seasons change and you look so beautiful right now on your clay earth, and you are waiting for your time to come. Soon, friend, soon it will come and you will be up here with me, with me and the great Dimaggio, who has not been able to stop chasing Marilyn since he arrived here last year.

I miss the hunting and the fishing and the bullfights. Those were all very, very good. Once I killed a lion with my bare hands, and it was good because I was alive, and I felt alive on that day.

But bad times had to come as they always do, and even though the sun also rises, it also sets, as I learned in the year of 1961. I was very, very tired and the fishing and the writing were not so good. Sometimes the sun rises, and sometimes it sets, sometimes I repeat myself, and sometimes you can choose when it is time to go.

I made many books. Once I wrote a book about a man who was hurt in the war. It was a terrible war and the man suffered an injury of the worst kind, and he was hurt on the inside as well as the outside. He could not love anymore, and yet he loved a beautiful lady. He lived in Paris and drank much liquor, and he drank and drank but his thirst was never quenched. And the lady loved him and they loved each other but it was no good. They went to Spain and saw the bullfights, and there was a very boring man with them who was good at boxing and also loved the same lady. And there was much tension but they drank their liquor and saw their bullfights, and even in their tragedy they found magnificence. Which is what they had been seeking all along. All that happened in the 1920s in Paris and in Spain.

I once was walking with Gertrude Stein and we were looking for Scotty and Zelda, but they were lost somewhere in the streets of Paris. And Gertrude turned to me and said, "Yours is a lost generation." I always remembered that and I wrote this book in part because of it. But also because the war hurt me in many ways and I had to fight the nada that was always behind me like a shadow in the evening.

And finally the nada caught up with me. I became too old to run from it and it caught me one day. And I took my shotgun. I touched the cold steel of the barrel of the shotgun. It was like caressing a woman. And I took a shotgun shell and loaded it into the shotgun. Then I walked outside. And the earth moved.

Once I wrote stories that were about simple things and simple people who tried to live. I confused a lot of college students who still struggle to look beneath the surface of my words and know their meaning. And now they call me brilliant. All I ever wanted to do was write declarative sentences.

And now I am copied by worthless hacks who imitate my style and make a mockery of it, and I am portrayed in movies by men such as Chris O'Donnell, who never could have killed a lion like I did. And these movies are very bad.

Go back to your Shakespeare and your Salinger, and let me live in peace up here and talk to my friend Dimaggio. When you arrive you can tell me about Key West and I will tell you about the writing and the bullfights. And we will meet very soon.