On a related note, one of my Internet friends asked for posts on his LiveJournal in the voices of some of his favorite literary characters. One of the listed favorites was Oedipa Maas, so I sent him the following:
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Dearest Leonard,
Today I met the infamous novelist Jerzy Fjord at a Starbucks in San Dympna. I had intended to drive down to the Office of the Registrar at San Anselmo Community College, but when I stopped for coffee, Fjord whipped out his enormous ukelele and proceeded to serenade me with a song of his own composition, and I spent the afternoon and the evening and a good portion of the night with him. His song, "The Widow of the Coxswain Shade," is one you should hear:
I screwed the widow of the Coxswain Shade
By the fake measure of the Window Lakes;
I was a smidgen of flashy love! And I
got some (awesome!) by the reflected sky!
Over coffee and a later reading at the community center, Fjord explained to me that he'd never set out to be a novelist, but was instead a scientist intent on trapping phlogistan in its pure liquid form. His novel (and I'm sure you read it; it's about a foolish boy who wanders the Eastern European countryside observing the barbarous nature of the peasants and trying to avoid the Holocaust, only to ultimately forgive Hitler and join the Third Reich) was supposed to be a way of passing the time until his MacArthur Genius Grant inevitably came through. However, his book became notorious after a shadowy rival publishing company tried to destroy it.
Fjord mentioned that he had discovered the existence of a man who had completed his research and bottled phlogistan. He knew that this man lived in the Twin Cities and lived only to kvetch about teenagers and mass culture, but it was at this point that the Starbucks in which we sat was beset by black-clad agents of the shadowy rival coffee company Flask and Stubbs. We retreated to a nearby hotel to continue our conversation, but never got back around to what Fjord learned about the man who bottled phlogistan. I mention this only because I know it is important to your own research.
It is morning now and today I must drive deep into Orange County to San Logico-Tractatus Philosophicus to see what a man who lives there can tell me about Ineffadyne.
Until next time, my love, remember to always...
Oedipa