Review of Bill by Vern Myers
Michael Hemmingson
9700 Gilman Drive PMB 241
La Jolla, CA 92093
michaelhemmingson@yahoo.com
approx. 2,300 words
My Review of Bill by Vern Myers
Michael Hemmingson
Bill: A Novella. Vern Myers. NY: Pelican Publishing. 102 pp. Cloth, $17.95.
Reviewed by Gerald Bass
To start, I would like you to know that I am writing this book review on an old fashioned manual typewriter, an Olympia Model 9 in fact, that I purchased at a consignment antique store. I think this machine dates back to the early 1970s. It makes a nostalgic clack-clack-clack sound.[1] I am not writing this book review in solidarity with author Vern Myers (who refuses to use a computer and composes his work on a 1968 Underwood-Miller, and before that a 1909 Corona 3, the same Ernest Hemingway employed for his early works[2]), no; I am afraid my reason is pedestrian in nature: my girlfriend, Michèle, deep-sixed my Sony Vaio laptop into the back end of the toilet, where the water rises after you flush, after what one would call “a heated argument.” She locked herself in the shitter[3] (which she hates me to call the commode), after having grabbed my laptop, stating that I loved my machine more than her; that she was jealous of the attention I gave to my novel-in-progress. Needless to say, my laptop will not start up. A friend told me to let it dry out. I will probably have to take it to a shop and pray that they can recover my data—most importantly: my unfinished novel, which I have been laboring at for three years now. It’s an opus, this novel of mine, 850 pages and three-fourths done, so I would say it will be 1,000 manuscript pages when finished, or around 250,000 words. It began as a short story, and then I thought it would be a novella, 80 pages at best, but the thing took on a life of its own. I hear that is what happened to Vern Myers’ 23,000-word masterpiece, Bill. Talking grapes around the New York literati have it that Myers worked on the project for nearly
9700 Gilman Drive PMB 241
La Jolla, CA 92093
michaelhemmingson@yahoo.com
approx. 2,300 words
My Review of Bill by Vern Myers
Michael Hemmingson
Bill: A Novella. Vern Myers. NY: Pelican Publishing. 102 pp. Cloth, $17.95.
Reviewed by Gerald Bass
To start, I would like you to know that I am writing this book review on an old fashioned manual typewriter, an Olympia Model 9 in fact, that I purchased at a consignment antique store. I think this machine dates back to the early 1970s. It makes a nostalgic clack-clack-clack sound.[1] I am not writing this book review in solidarity with author Vern Myers (who refuses to use a computer and composes his work on a 1968 Underwood-Miller, and before that a 1909 Corona 3, the same Ernest Hemingway employed for his early works[2]), no; I am afraid my reason is pedestrian in nature: my girlfriend, Michèle, deep-sixed my Sony Vaio laptop into the back end of the toilet, where the water rises after you flush, after what one would call “a heated argument.” She locked herself in the shitter[3] (which she hates me to call the commode), after having grabbed my laptop, stating that I loved my machine more than her; that she was jealous of the attention I gave to my novel-in-progress. Needless to say, my laptop will not start up. A friend told me to let it dry out. I will probably have to take it to a shop and pray that they can recover my data—most importantly: my unfinished novel, which I have been laboring at for three years now. It’s an opus, this novel of mine, 850 pages and three-fourths done, so I would say it will be 1,000 manuscript pages when finished, or around 250,000 words. It began as a short story, and then I thought it would be a novella, 80 pages at best, but the thing took on a life of its own. I hear that is what happened to Vern Myers’ 23,000-word masterpiece, Bill. Talking grapes around the New York literati have it that Myers worked on the project for nearly