Uncorrected Transcript of Interview from Sexy Whopping Apples, Part 2.

(continuing--see just below for Part 1)

SWA: Feel better?

RM: Yes, thank you.

SWA: You have just a smush of ketchup on your nose there.

RM: Oh. I like to do that with French fries.
(discreetly wipes nose with tablecloth)

SWA: What would you compare your book to?

RM: In terms of food-wise?

SWA: In terms of other books, other authors.

RM: Well, people have compared it to Mark Twain,
Flannery O'Connor, The Little Prince, and Kafka.

SWA: My goodness. What people compared it to those?

RM: Off-hand, I don't recall at this time.

SWA: Could it have been yourself?

RM: It might have, but I'd like to doubt it.

SWA: Don't you think that's a little overreaching,
comparing youself and your little book to masters and classics?

RM: At the moment, I certainly do. I haven't read many books,
so when somebody says to compare my books to other books, I
often casually compare them to the same books over in over,
just because I don't want to look any more dumber than I might
be.

SWA: All right. Let's talk about the message of the book.

RM: OK.

SWA: What is it?

RM: Oh. I thought you were going to tell me.
Well, I think it could be that, well, go ahead and fix
things if you must, that are broken, if you can, but
remember that more things might be going on than you
know, broken or not, under the surface, and, so, you ought to
maybe meditate a little, while you're at it.

SWA: That'll be catchy on the book jacket. Personally,
I think your book is a sociological inquiry into the
lexiconography of rural myth and post-rational philosophy,
concluding that communication in the 21st Century is akin
to a variety of meta-ur-dialectics.

RM: The only thing I understood is "21st Century," but
luckily the book takes place in the 20th.

SWA: Let's talk about the animal. Buzz. How did he get
that name?

RM: Well, first, it was Oscar. Somebody asked me what his
name was, and I just said the first thing. I didn't even know
the animal at the time. But a lot of animals and people were
named Oscar, including a book with Oscar in the title
by the same publisher. Then it was Aloha somehow, but everybody
thought he was Hawaiian, and he wasn't.
So then I couldn't think of any other names. Then
I had a dream about a mysterious fellow in a t-shirt that said
"Don't Kill My Buzz" on it. And then I heard a song about
the Northern Lights by Neil Young. So, I figured out how it got
its name in the book because of Uncle Leonard and where he went
to get away and think about life and inventing and misanthrope
things.

SWA: How exactly did Uncle Leonard die, by the way?
You left that somewhat up in the air.

RM: I don't believe I do, but I don't like to think about it.
It's pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty gruesome.

SWA: What about Lemuel? Lemuel Washington. Is he as dumb as
he seems some times?

RM: It depends on who he's talking to. I notice
he gets dumber or smarter depending on who he's talking to,
and I relate to that a lot myself sometimes, such as now.

SWA: Is he happy?

RM: That's a odd question, because I never thought about it.
I think he would be happier if he didn't think so much
about things. Such as winning conversations all the time.

(Part 3 later soon.)