By my count, I have only one hundred and sixty words left before the thirteen-hundred alarm sounds.
I loved what I did to Mr. Chapman with my alarm clock on Santorini. I loved the way he let me fritter away his time talking about the Majestic Theater in San Antonio and similar matters. He thought he was going to con me. He was wrong. Would I really have called the Greek cops? You bet.
I did not listen to CDs on the trip down from Washington to Williamsburg. My car does not have a CD player. I listened to an audiotape of Robert Duvall’s reading of
As I Lay Dying
by William Faulkner. I have always been a great admirer of William Faulkner’s work, and I am indeed thinking about writing a novel myself. A
real
novel. It is one of the few things this awful travesty of a book—the one by Chapman you just read—got right. I am considering several possible story lines for my novel, one of them being a multilayered epic based on the Williamsburg Debate. Maybe in that book the real and complete truth can be told. It sure as hell hasn’t been told in this one.
Time’s up.
—Michael J. Howley
Santorini, Greece
To Bob Compton, Lew Harris, and Bob Miller
Also by Jim Lehrer
BOOKS:
Fine Lines
Blue Hearts
Short List
A Bus of My Own
Lost and Found
The Sooner Spy
Crown Oklahoma
Kick the Can
We Were Dreamers
Viva Max!
PLAYS:
The Will and Bart
Show Church Key Charlie Blue
Chili Queen
J
IM
L
EHRER
, co-anchor of
The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour
, has worked in daily journalism for thirty-five years. This is his ninth novel. He has also written two books of nonfiction and three plays. He and his wife, Kate, live in Washington, D.C. They have three daughters.