judy prince wrote:

> I may be referring to the same part that Joanna just did---don't 
> know---but I feel that your "asshole writing" lines say far less well 
> what your last 5 lines say with quiet intensity.  I tremble to say 
> this, but I suggest you delete your "asshole."

See, that is problem No. 1.  That's not ME, that's supposed to be 
Lynndie.  It's a fiction of course that Lynndie is anyone but me 
pretending to be Lynndie, and that she steps out of the frame and calls 
me an "asshole."  I believe to the proverbial depths this is a word 
Lynndie would use but "she" is point at me or I am point at me while 
assuming her character.  This is not Browning, this is verging close to 
Pirandello or whoever took off from him.  It's almost a monologue 
written by Chicago's patron demon David Mamet.

It sets up a weird problem: "This guy is my puppetmaster but I'm not a 
puppet." 

Entirely taking out the reference to the author is worth a try, but I 
suspect it will undercut SOMEthing I cannot yet define about Pvt. 
England's character.

> Further, "invulnerability" oughta be struck back to "vulnerability."  
> All Power and Authority are undermined by the sexual expression 
> Lynndie "chose."

Not here.  From inside her brain, sex in this boring, scary prison is 
all there is, for the few seconds she's out there, she sees herself as 
beyond being hurt, bored, shot, fearful.  Of course that same moment is 
also her moment of victimization by self and other.  I believe in her 
comment about the vibrator and the cuke that she acknowledges that her 
pursuit of The Big Moment with Charles Graner was her ruin.

> You've given the woman tentative voice about her choice.  That's a 
> good thing.
>
> And now, bcuz you and Fred are skirting dangerously close to My 
> Territory, playwrighting, I'll give you some quotes relevant to the 
> highest spoken art form, poetic drama, from this month's PERFORMINK, 
> Chicago's theatre trade newspaper.

I was writing them in 1963.  I just took some time off for bad behavior:-).

> You usually manage this magic, and that's nice, very nice.

Cool.  Territory?  This town's big enough fer the two (three?) of us.  
Someday I'll dig up my dramatic monologue in the voice of Harry K. Thaw 
(WHO?) or that sickassed guy who torched his son out on the West Coast 
in the late 1980s to "settle" a custody fight.  The latter I punked out 
on...the story is SO repellent that I was starting to be afraid that if 
I got into the guy's head, I'd never be able to get out.

ken

-- 
Kenneth Wolman
Proposal Development Department
Room SW334
Sarnoff Corporation
609-734-2538