“My issues with it are that simply in terms of my own work. It represents 30 years of output. And some of the things, some of the pieces I've used there, when I first wrote them, they seemed probably very menacing, and I hear them now, and they're just kind of pleasant, if that's the word.” IfsYearsFirstsKindUsedTermMy OwnIssuesPiecesPleasantWorking ItOutput Author:Richard Meltzer
“Basically, when I hear it now, I don't recognize myself directly in a lot of cases. I was expecting more menace. And the fact that it didn't seem menacing at first troubled me. Then I thought, What the hey, you know? I'm 66 years old, and I could just crack open a beer and listen to it, and it doesn't trouble me that it doesn't kill. Once upon a time, it probably would have.” KnowsYearsFirstsFactsSeemsCasesTroubleHeyBeerCracksExpectingMenaceOnce Upon A TimeHey YouExpecting More Author:Richard Meltzer
“If I'm very drunk, I can improvise. But generally speaking, no. Generally speaking, almost all of my work is material that was first done on the printed page. And the shorter ones that you might call poems, I had a stretch from '79, '80, for five or six years, where I wrote a lot of poetry as such. Simply because I was asked to.” IfsYearsFirstsI CanDoneMightFiveMaterialsSixPagesDrunkPrinted Author:Richard Meltzer
“The first five years as a writer, I didn't know how to write at all. I couldn't write my way out of a white paper bag. And yet, I did some remarkable things. And later on, there were periods where I got this mission to find an articulate voice with rewrites and all. There were periods where I was as dense as Faulkner.” KnowsWayWritingYearsFirstsVoiceWhiteKnow HowFivePeriodsPaperMissionsMy WayFive YearsBagsRemarkableDensePaper BagsWhite Paper Author:Richard Meltzer
