Kenneth Koch: I guess you don’t want to mention any names. Why don’t you want to mention any names, by the way? Especially since I once heard you say that names are more expressive words than any others.

John Ashbery: Some people might get offended. I don’t see the point of that.

K.K.: Do you mean you’re afraid?

J.A.: No. Just bored in advance by the idea of having to defend myself.

(Via This Recording, which Meghan turned me on to yesterday and thank God, because I have been spending the whole day sitting here watching stuff compile — it’s kind of like watching paint dry, only not artsy — and boy howdy have I needed some new Internet to distract me. They also have awesome posts about ’40s pinups, medieval and early modern automata, Junot Diaz, John Updike, traveling with elderly step-relatives in Jordan and Israel, and dating while drunk, but you can find those yourself. I’d worry that I’m not cool enough to read these people, but who would I be kidding, claiming to even be cool enough to worry about that?)

Update: Having one’s chat logs read like this dialogue would be something to aspire to. I may have to get a t-shirt that says You speak after my own heart but you speak more as an aesthetician than as a man.

This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 at 1:29 pm and is filed under A&E, Madness, Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.