(from a 90’s literary zine, Reasons to Vomit)
Though Bart Wellesley Westen is from Southern California, he is adjusting to life in New York City. “Where are they? Are they after me yet?” he yells as he ducks behind a davenport in his million-dollar penthouse apartment. “I’ll smash your face if you come near me.”
Bart is fabulously popular. His novels are the rage, because they depict the more trendy if awkward aspects of modern upper class American life: rape, murder, and dismembering women, to name three. Many critics have given his work bad reviews, ignoring the intrinsic artistic merit to his sado-masochistic descriptions of blood and violence. “Reality, man!” he shouts while crawling among his plants. Then he pauses to urinate in them. This calms him down. “Man, look at these things,” he comments about the plants while zipping up his fly. “They’re all dying. I wonder why? And I paid thousands of dollars for them. Hey man, do you know anything about plants?”
Bart wears a dull gray suit, with tennis shoes and sunglasses, has neat, short hair, projects the image of a square young businessman on LSD, seems any moment able to flip out. The song “Holiday in Cambodia” by the Dead Kennedys plays in the background. Bart paces the room with Richard Nixon paranoia, muttering about plants, then sits down. He opens his mouth to speak, begins to reel off brand names in a stream of consciousness– “SAKS SONY SANYO SNUGGLES SEARS WOOLITE WENDY’S RIGHT GUARD TIDE DOWNY MASTERCARD MAZDA AMARETTO BAYER ALLSTATE WRIGLEY’S L.A. GEAR BUSCH BUD MOBIL EXXON MITSUBISHI IZOD REVLON MAALOX MILLER MR. CLEAN JOHNNIE WALKER J & B PEPTO BISMOL BIG MAC KENTUCKY FRIED CADILLAC”– anything he sees from behind his Ray-Ban sunglasses. Bart is the perfect product of commercial culture: his eye has been trained to so notice labels that now labels are all he can see. After several minutes of this bombardment of mindless madness I realize a TV plays on the other side of the room– red and blue flashing zig zag lines of light inside a distant box. This is where he receives the brand names. I walk over and turn the television off. Bart falls instantly silent. His hand begins to shake; the sunglasses move about as Bart waits frantically for more sensory input, like a heroin addict in need of a fix. I ask him a question.
“The reaction to your latest book, I Think I’m Crazy, was pretty strong. People were upset by your graphic descriptions and the theme of causeless irrationality.”
“It’s society man. It makes us do these crazy things. We can’t stop it. We’re out of control. That’s the price of being rich, man. They indulge you and give you everything you want and you’re this greedy glutton with no mind. Give us a Jag, and it’s not enough. A Corvette, man? Made in America? Get outta here! A Porsche, man. That’s not good enough. I can’t be seen with that. It’s old news. I gotta grab everything. Anything I can get my hands on. Mass consumption. Out of my way. I’ll run you down. I want all of it. Man, it’s tough to be rich. Try it some time.”
“The charge has been made that your generation of affluent writers is not interested in the rest of society, say, in the poor.”
“The what? Who? What are you talking about? Yeah, I see these people slumming around on the sidewalks. Who are these people? Where’s their cars? And the way these retro dudes dress, man. I just can’t relate to losers like that.”
“Did you have a difficult time coping with the sudden fame that fell upon you after the publication of your first book, Born to Be a Zero?”
“You got it, man. I wasn’t ready for that. I mean, someone sent me a letter, man! I can’t be bothered by this shit. I told him, Listen, dude– I’ll tear your fucking heart out– you got that, man? Sending me your letters, man. People calling me on the phone. I can’t be into this literature gig. That was supposed to be lyrics, man. For a record album– friends of mine. I sent it to the wrong fucking publisher and they publish it in this fucking book.”
Bart begins to cry, shaking his head in disbelief.
“And people bought it. And I became famous. I can’t take this crap. I never meant for this. I want to be on the outside. You get it? I want to be a regular human being driving around Malibu in my Lamborghini and getting in fights in clubs in L.A. And they got me in New York. Living like this. All the fucking maids, agents, lawyers, telephones, requests, contracts, leave me alone! I can’t take it. My mind’s about to fucking explode, I want out, I want to be free, I never asked for this shit!”
Bart becomes suddenly calm, leans back, lights a cigarette, takes off his sunglasses. His eyes are perfectly clear.
“Of course, when they send the checks I cash them,” he tells me in an offhand manner.
-Karl Wenclas
(Photo: John Simone.)
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