THAT BARTON FINK FEEL… — by Steve Nadis
In the Coen brothers’ classic, “Barton Fink,” the movie studio boss (played by Michael Lerner) wants Fink (played by John Turturro) to write the script for a wrestling picture with “that Barton Fink feel.” Near the end, when Lerner is disappointed with script, to say the least, he turns to Turturro and shouts: “YOU THINK YOU’RE THE ONLY WRITER IN TOWN WHO CAN GIVE ME THAT BARTON FINK FEEL?”
Now I’m starting to think I’m not the only writer in town who can deliver that Call Me Snake feel. No less an authority than Zardoz claimed my last post–which was Celebrity Guest-written by Gatemouth and an anonymous person named “Fletch”–was one of the best ever to appear in this space. The good news is that it was, in his opinion, a superior bit of writing. The bad news is that it was written by surrogates, which means I’m entirely replaceable. The good news there is that I could take a rest and no one would notice. The bad news is that no one would notice. Or maybe they would notice and tell me not to hurry back. “Take your time,” I can imagine them saying. “Everything’s fine. In fact, better than fine. In fact, better than ever.”
Posted by in 22:22:42
First of all, the notion that the man who gave us the inner game of volleyball could be replaceable is simply absurd.
Second of all, without casting any aspersions on Zardoz, whose comments are always interesting and often illuminating, I think it’s quite possible that he sometimes (okay, all the time) writes in an altered state of mind. Therefore, I think he probably thought my comments were coming from you.
Third of all, my comments are always plagiarized. I won’t tell you where I get them from, but I can assure you that the person who writes them is far wittier than I. Luckily, he/she is a dolt and never goes on the Internet, so there’s virtually no chance that he/she will ever discover my crime. Wa-ha-ha-ha! (Evil laugh.)
So, I hope we’ll have no more of this Hamlet-like self-examination. To blog or not to blog is not the question. Yours is just to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous commentary.
Thank you Gatemouth, though you are obviously far too modest. I’d like to publish the above as yet another “Celebrity Guest Comment,” but that would obviously be far too immodest…
Dear he who is known as Snake,
The same thing happened to me! I ended up losing my job to a team of ghostwriters, and my Brazilian wife to the bearer of my pen name. The only good news is now I speak Hungarian fluently. You may have read about it in a book I claim to have written by the name of “Budapest.” No need to read it, I just gave away the ending.
-CB
Thanks Chico, that’s quite a tale. And a novel way to learn Hungarian. But I am confused: Did you write the book, or was it written by the bearer of your pen name? Sorry to be so thick. Of course, if I weren’t so thick, I’d probably be writing a novel rather than a blog.