Basic Instinct

A nice-sized crowd showed up this evening to watch Tim Youd type the final three pages of THE SOUND AND THE FURY. I got there way early, before anybody besides the staff, so I got to see Tim carry his Underwood and desk to the side porch of Rowan Oak in preparation. A little spider of a color I have never seen before - at least on a spider - started climbing on the page. I'd say it was a fluorescent green spider. "Neon," said the photographer. Then she snapped a picture of it. Bill Griffith swatted a mosquito that had perched on my neck. "I've saved your life!" he yelled. "And not for the first time!" The yard filled up. Lizzie was there. "I read the wikipedia page on BASIC INSTINCT yesterday," she said. I asked why. "Because I didn't want to watch the movie," Lizzie explained. It made sense! She said her favorite movie was something called TEEN WITCH. When Tim Youd finished typing THE SOUND AND THE FURY everybody clapped. He held up the two pages. (He types the whole novel on one page, over and over itself until it's pretty much a black rectangle, with a safety page underneath it to soak up the ink when the first page inevitably tears.) "He tore that page UP!" I screamed in a kind of ecstasy. "You sound like a sports announcer," said my friend Amy. And you know, I FELT like a sports announcer. Here's an old photo from another event entirely, but it shows you how Lizzie feels whenever she runs into me.