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Re: YOUR DAMN MEMOIRS
Jun 15th, 2009 by Gatsby

To: GB

From:

Pliny (the Younger)
LXVII Oysterbath Way
Lower Triumphia
BCBG81

Do please release my hendecasyllables from their promise – they were guarantors to our friends for the apperance of your work, and every day brings in some new request and demand; so they now run the risk of being served with a writ to produce it. I know I am very slow to publish my own work, but you overdo even my doubts and hesitations. So bestir yourself, or else beware lest I drag those books out of you by the fury of my iambics, since my hendcasyllables failed to entice them with honeyed words! The work is already finished and perfect; revision will not give them further polish but only dull its freshness.

Please let me see your name published and hear that my friend’s books are being copied, read and sold. In view of our warm friendship, it is only fair that you should let me have the same pleasure from you as you enjoy in me.

Perturbed,
Pliny (the Younger)

Perturbed,

Pliny (the Younger)

pliny

My DEAR Pliny,

I’d rather appreciate if you refrain from sending these “helpful reminders” re: my memoirs. It is already quite difficult to produce a work of Quality and Substance with my rotten editor breathing down my neck (foul woman, quite unplesant and crass!), so I’d thank you to keep your trips of guilt and whimsy to yourself, thank you very much!

Adieu!

GB

gatsby

P.S. Bridge on Tuesday? You bring the crusty loaves, this time!

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Inbox: R is for “RESPONDEZ,” if you Please!
May 4th, 2009 by Gatsby

To: GB

From:

Pliny (the Younger)

LXVII Oysterbath Way

Lower Triumphia

BCBG81

GB!

Who are you, to accept my invitation to dinner and never come? Here’s your sentence and you shall pay me costs IN FULL, no small sum either. It was all laid out: one lettuce each, three snails, two eggs, barley-cake and wine with honey chilled with with snow (you will reckon this too, and as an expensive item, seeing that it disappears in the dish!), besides olives, beetroots, gherkins, onions and any number of similar delicacies. You would have heard a comic play, a reader or singer, or all three if I felt generous. Instead you chose to go where you could have oysters, sow’s innards, sea-urchins, and Spanish dancing-girls. You will suffer for this – I won’t say how. It was a Cruel Trick done to spite one of us – yourself or most likely me, and possibly both of us, if you think what a feast of fun, laughter and learning we were going to have. You can eat richer food at many houses, but nowhere with such free and easy enjoyment. All I can say is, try me; and then, if you don’t prefer to decline invitations elsewhere, you can always make excuses to me.

Miffed,
Pliny (the Younger)

pliny

 

 

 

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