What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World by Kinky Friedman Page A
Book: What Would Kinky Do?: How to Unscrew a Screwed-Up World by Kinky Friedman
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Kinky Friedman
Ads: Link
what the public liked, and what the public liked was Poirot. In 1975 a year before her own death, Christie killed off Poirot in the novel Curtain: Poirot's Last Case. Poirot died from inevitable complications of a heart condition; by this point in his life he was wearing a wig and a false moustache, and also seemed to be afflicted by arthritis.
Captain America: The alter ego of Steve Rogers, he was a superhero in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Captain America was one of the most popular characters of Marvel Comics's predecessor, Timely Comics; he made his first appearance in December 1940, a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. With his sidekick, Bucky, Captain America faced Nazis, Japanese, and other threats to wartime America. He remained popular throughout the forties but by the early fifties, sales dropped off and Captain America eventually disappeared after 1954. He returned in 1964 when it was explained that in the final days of WWII, Captain America fell from an experimental drone plane into the North Atlantic Ocean and spent decades frozen in a state of suspended animation. During the 1970s, the hero found a new generation of readers as leader of the all-star superhero team the Avengers.
In April 2007, Captain America's alter ego Steve Rogers was shot by a sniper outside of a federal courthouse and later died at the hospital. The character's death was reported on major news outlets like CNN and the Associated Press. His death came as a blow to ninety-three-year-old cocreator Joe Simon, who said, "It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now."
TALENT
ike the tides, the seasons, and the Bandera branch of |the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Texas Book Festival is coming around again, allowing us to meet authors we love, hate, or very possibly, find a little ho-hum. I always look forward to the book festival because it provides me with the spiritual soapbox to give advice to other authors, an audience that, predictably, has never learned to listen. Conversely, I've never learned to pull my lips together, so the system works. My advice to authors, and the misguided multitudes who want to be authors, is a variation on a truthful if sometimes tedious theme. "Talent," I tell them in stentorian tones, "is its own reward. If you're unlucky enough to have it, don't expect anything else." These wise words, of course, come from a man who's spent his entire professional career trying to eclipse Leon Redbone.
My theory is that in all areas of creative human endeavor, the presence of true talent is almost always the kiss of death. It's no accident that three of the people who were tragically forced into bankruptcy at the end of their lives were Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Mark Twain. It's no fluke of fate that Schubert died shortly after giving the world the Unfinished Symphony. You probably wouldn't have finished it either if you had syphilis and twelve cents in your pocket. Or how would you like to have died at age twenty-nine in the backseat of a Cadillac? If you're Hank Williams, that's what talent got you. But what is talent? And why would anyone in his right mind want it? As Albert Einstein often said, "I don't know."
In fact, talent is such a difficult quality to identify or define that we frequently end up losing it in the lights, relegating it at last to the trash bin, the cheap motel, the highway, the gutter, or the cross. Indeed, if you look with an objective eye at the New York Times Best-Seller List, the Billboard music charts, and the highest-rated network TV offerings, the one thing they seem to have in common is an absence of original creative expression, i.e., talent.
My editor says I'm one of the most talented writers he knows. The problem is that even if I have talent, I don't know what it is—and if I did, I'd get rid of it immediately. Then I'd be on my way to vast commercial success. Talent, however, is a bit like God; you never see it, but there are
Captain America: The alter ego of Steve Rogers, he was a superhero in the Marvel Comics universe. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, Captain America was one of the most popular characters of Marvel Comics's predecessor, Timely Comics; he made his first appearance in December 1940, a year before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. With his sidekick, Bucky, Captain America faced Nazis, Japanese, and other threats to wartime America. He remained popular throughout the forties but by the early fifties, sales dropped off and Captain America eventually disappeared after 1954. He returned in 1964 when it was explained that in the final days of WWII, Captain America fell from an experimental drone plane into the North Atlantic Ocean and spent decades frozen in a state of suspended animation. During the 1970s, the hero found a new generation of readers as leader of the all-star superhero team the Avengers.
In April 2007, Captain America's alter ego Steve Rogers was shot by a sniper outside of a federal courthouse and later died at the hospital. The character's death was reported on major news outlets like CNN and the Associated Press. His death came as a blow to ninety-three-year-old cocreator Joe Simon, who said, "It's a hell of a time for him to go. We really need him now."
TALENT
ike the tides, the seasons, and the Bandera branch of |the Jehovah's Witnesses, the Texas Book Festival is coming around again, allowing us to meet authors we love, hate, or very possibly, find a little ho-hum. I always look forward to the book festival because it provides me with the spiritual soapbox to give advice to other authors, an audience that, predictably, has never learned to listen. Conversely, I've never learned to pull my lips together, so the system works. My advice to authors, and the misguided multitudes who want to be authors, is a variation on a truthful if sometimes tedious theme. "Talent," I tell them in stentorian tones, "is its own reward. If you're unlucky enough to have it, don't expect anything else." These wise words, of course, come from a man who's spent his entire professional career trying to eclipse Leon Redbone.
My theory is that in all areas of creative human endeavor, the presence of true talent is almost always the kiss of death. It's no accident that three of the people who were tragically forced into bankruptcy at the end of their lives were Edgar Allan Poe, Oscar Wilde, and Mark Twain. It's no fluke of fate that Schubert died shortly after giving the world the Unfinished Symphony. You probably wouldn't have finished it either if you had syphilis and twelve cents in your pocket. Or how would you like to have died at age twenty-nine in the backseat of a Cadillac? If you're Hank Williams, that's what talent got you. But what is talent? And why would anyone in his right mind want it? As Albert Einstein often said, "I don't know."
In fact, talent is such a difficult quality to identify or define that we frequently end up losing it in the lights, relegating it at last to the trash bin, the cheap motel, the highway, the gutter, or the cross. Indeed, if you look with an objective eye at the New York Times Best-Seller List, the Billboard music charts, and the highest-rated network TV offerings, the one thing they seem to have in common is an absence of original creative expression, i.e., talent.
My editor says I'm one of the most talented writers he knows. The problem is that even if I have talent, I don't know what it is—and if I did, I'd get rid of it immediately. Then I'd be on my way to vast commercial success. Talent, however, is a bit like God; you never see it, but there are
Similar Books
