. . .
2 “So you’re suggesting that Bill Shakespeare is sleeping off a bender on someone’s davenport. We just need to give him a few more hours to resurface.”
1 “Bill is dead. And alive. In a way. Mortal and immortal. Not breathing but still singing.”
. . .
2 “So you say that a jour-nalist doesn’t quite achieve immortality, yet a jour-nalist adds, like, seven years to the actuarials.”
1 “As long as they don’t drink and smoke. Jour-nalists contribute too.”
2 “Could they just drink or just smoke? They are jour-nalists, they do need a smoke or an adult beverage or two. Or at least a bad habit or two.”
. . .
2 “What if you write for a weekly or a monthly? What if you are more than a jour-nalist yet less that a novelist?”
. . .
1 “The grim reaper has been on the back swing since we skidded across the maternity room floor. Yet, the good song can reverberate long after we sign off and move on.”
. . .
Bumper stickers of the week:
“After publication of [Magnum Opus], [Celebrated Writer] achieved immortality for all time and died seventeen years later.”
“Unknown during his life, [Writer’s] three unpublished manuscripts found among his papers three years after his death establish his immortality among his peers.”
Mortality does stink; immortality would stink.
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