Here's an amusing and no doubt absolutely serious cover letter that David Foster Wallace faxed to Harper's magazine demanding no edits to a piece he wrote about Kafka. I'm using it as a model for my own cover letter for my creative nonfiction essay--honed in Iowa and now ready to go!--which USPS will convey without incident to Chapel Hill, NC, today. Thank you to my classmates, Michele, and most especially to BK Loren for helping me finish it and suggesting the perfect venue. Woohoo!
ATTEMPTED FAX COVER SHEET
From: David Wallace
To: Joel Lovell, Harper's
This is pretty much the best I can do, I think. I feel shitty sticking a lot of what you wanted in FN’s, but I didn’t see any way to work it into the main text w/o having to rewrite whole ¶s and throw the thing’s Styrofoamish weight off. The deal is this. You’re welcome to this for READINGS if you wish. What I’d ask is that you (or Ms. Rosenbush, whom I respect but fear) not copyedit this like a freshman essay. Idiosyncracies of ital, punctuation, and syntax ("stuff," "lightbulb" as one word, "i.e."/"e.g." without commas after, the colon 4 words after ellipses at the end, etc.) need to be stetted. (A big reason for this is that I want to preserve an oralish, out-loud feel to the remarks so as to protect me from people’s ire at stuff that isn’t expanded on more; for you, the big reason is that I’m not especially psyched to have this run at all, much less to take a blue-skyed 75-degree afternoon futzing with it to bring it into line with your specs, and you should feel obliged and borderline guilty, and I will find a way to harm you or cause you suffering* if you fuck with the mechanics of this piece.)
Let Me Know,
Dave Wallace
* (It may take years for the oportunity to arise. I'm very patient. Think of me as a spider with a phenomenal emotional memory. Ask Charis.)
