Who Am I?

Who am I, Cazlab? Let's play a game --- you guess from what I tell you. First, I died about a hundred and fifty years ago at the age of fifty-one having been born in 1799. If I told you the country of my birth it'd be too easy, so as difficult as this might be, I will include no references to my nationality or names or even places that might give me away. I will, on the other hand, tell you that during my lifetime I was a writer.

I will add that not only was I a writer but during my life I was the most popular author of my day, and that's saying something since there were many biggies that half-century.

You might think it'll be easy to guess or deduce my identity now that you know my profession, but frankly, I don't. You see, for some reason it's the other ones who've gotten international attention since my untimely demise, even though I was heralded as the greatest living author of fiction (a real clue). Strange how the vagaries of time tilt things, isn't it?

Anyway, I was five-foot two and weighed more than I should have, enough that they used to call me Cannon Ball. Born a Taurus, I had no neck or depending on how you look at it, such a bull neck that you couldn't distinguish my head from my shoulders. Also, as I wrote I wore a monk's gown (it was so much more comfortable than pants with a belt). Now that really gives me away.

Many people have said that the robe revealed a great deal about me. Oh, not because I was particularly religious or wrote on the subject excessively because neither was dominant in my works or life, but because I worshipped writing. It was my religion, and I revered it so highly I felt the only proper thing to do was dress for the occasion. That's what people have said, anyway. The truth is that true to my birth I simply wanted to be comfortable. Stop to think about it: A five-foot two and a two-hundred pound cannonball with a belt would have been nothing but a noose around my stomach.

At this point, if I were you, I'd want to know what this fellow wrote. How else can I guess his identity since he won't tell me where he's from? In keeping with my promise, however, I will not give you any titles -- that'd make it too easy, right? I will, however, tell you that the several thousands of characters I created were so real that people used to call up asking for so-and-so in order to talk with them. Fashionable people wore the clothes my characters wore. When I had a gold-headed walking stick inlaid with alabaster and tassel it became the talk and style of the continent. (With that I've really said a lot, haven't I?)

By the way, I was also famous for my relations with women. The truth is that I was mildly ugly, my head way too big, and my clothes fit like a sack of potatoes. I suppose I would be called weird today when I dressed up because it was obvious I didn't belong in fancy clothes, but I possessed a deep and powerful character and along with my flashing black eyes and ability to influence and persuade with my voice, many husbands went to considerable lengths to see that their lovelies weren't deflowered or drawn away by me.

I say these things not from bragging or lying. Once you know my name you can easily find them true in most biographies. Incidentally, I favored

intelligent, aristocratic women, full of energy and preferably wealthy. Naturally I was most grateful when they gave me money as I was in debt most of my life. And here's a very big clue: I didn't marry until five months before I died. That allowed me to be married to my own true love all my life: writing. Also, I was squanderous, always living far beyond my means (even though I made a lot of money from writing). Several times I had to leave town, even the country, so I wouldn't be thrown in jail. (Actually I was put in prison, but that's because the rule was that every able-bodied male had to do a night of guard duty and I refused to. Many artists did the same to the chagrin of the National Guard.) Anyway, I made a lot of money during my life since my books sold well but it went through my hands like water, and I always welcomed a beautiful woman with a full well.

It wouldn't be fair for me to lead you on without giving you more clues about my writing so I'll give you this. When I was about thirty-five I saw that when I wrote about characters in one book and never mentioned them again they were buried with the last pages. In time that became repugnant. I'd breathed life into them so that killing or abandoning them simply wasn't right. So I began to put them in work after work. The more I did this the more intricate their relationships with the novel I was working at became. It got to the point that to keep things straight I sketched their family trees on the walls of my room. Would you believe that the genealogies alone covered three full walls?

Now the thousands of characters I created weren't flat or shallow or just for the sake of the story. They were very live, full, well developed, and memorable. Many people said that they were so real that they couldn't distinguish between the fiction and the real, so the family trees helped keep them in perspective. I used to have fun using X as the main character of

one book, then including him in a secondary role in another work, while in a third only alluding to him. By the way, this made them seem all the more alive to my readers because isn't that the way real-life people come to us: prominent at one time but secondary at another?

But a clue about my writing that will reveal my identity even more than the number of characters I created, their interrelationships, and how many works they stared in, was the nature of my biggest project (which I started after and because I came to the realization that people could be in more than one book). Everyone agrees it was the single most ambitious literary undertaking in history. Now THAT's a clue! But to me the undertaking was simply the only thing to do, and I swear that had I lived even three-score and ten I would have accomplished it. As it was, I wrote about one hundred books for it, only a fraction of the total planned, but still, so grandiose was the plan that what I did complete still put me high on the wall in the Hall of Fame of writers.

Maybe you've heard anecdotes about me, so I'll reveal my working habits and that way you might guess my identity if you haven't already. I used to go to bed at Eight P.M. I'd sleep to about midnight (sometimes 1:00 or 2:00 A.M.) then write for about sixteen hours. Not bad, eh? Is it any wonder that I turned out so many full-length novels?

In order to do this I drank coffee. I mean COFFEE. Someone estimated that before I died I had guzzled approximately fifty-thousand cups of the brown, liquid gold. By the way, this was not diluted, de-caffinated, diet, low-fat, low-cholesterol stuff, but black and powerful enough to burn the hair off the roof of your mouth. I found that it was the only way I could keep the hours I did and produce so much.

Well, that's not entirely true. You see, the bottom-line of a Taurus is strength. Power, staying power, and the stubbornness to plod-plod-plod.

I was prolific, then, because of my basic nature and by the help of coffee so strong and thick you could cut it with a knife.

Another reason I chose the hours I did was that I liked things quiet. I hated noise disturbing me. Once I went to a grand city with a great deal of water and it was so quiet I thought I was in Heaven. At home, if someone knocked on the door when I was in a story, it could throw me off balance so much I'd be dumbfounded for two or three days. You see, then, that my midnight literary rendezvous were not just wanted but necessary. And being a bachelor it bothered no one except the maids whom I sometimes trusted to brew my coffee (though I preferred to do it myself so I'd KNOW it be strong enough).

Don't be surprised if even after all these clues you still don't know who I am. As I say, the whims of history and literary tastes sometimes really do lower the once most famous fiction-writer in history to a nobody. But I tell you this, and so would anyone who knew/knows me, that from the quality and quantity of my work, today I'd be the only one on Broadway, I'd send Disney into oblivion, and my name would be the only one you'd hear on the best-seller lists year after year. In other words, I was not only prolific but my stuff was full of philosophical meat and acceptability too.

If you don't believe that I'll relate a few testimonials from well-known writers. Oscar Wilde, no minor genius himself, said I was half-creator of the Nineteenth Century. Count Leo Tolstoy drew from one of my works when preparing to writeWar and Peace. Picasso was inspired by a work as was Cezanne -- he was convinced I'd written a piece about him. One of my works was Karl Marx's favorite story. In fact, he thought that a great deal of the underlying tone of communism came from me (maybe that's why I went out of style this last century). Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, father of the great Sherlock Holmes, wouldn't read my works because they were

so involved with relationships that, "I don't know where to begin." (By the way, Oscar Wilde so liked my famous walking stick that he had a replica made for himself.) Not bad testimonials, eh?

For those of you who need more profound clues, here are some of the realizations/revelations I came up with during my tour de force literary life:

One can be made impotent by genius. The desire for perfection destroys a work of art. After all, how can the inner vision of the perfection the genius sees possibly be communicated?

Because of this, I surmised that thought destroys the thinker. It's far better simply to create.

And there's the clue to the writer: No matter what happens, JUST KEEP WRITING. You know that coming from me that's not just talk. I practiced what I preached endlessly.

Also, I learned that the purpose for every single experience, whether mine or anyone else's, is to create a story. Now those are the words of a real writer, aren't they?

Remember the definition of a lunatic? A man who creates an abyss and then falls into it. Or creates a character and then chats with him. But what the hell, madness has always been thought to lurk at the great minds that function to excess! (I wasn't mad, but I did go through a spell after I banged my head once.)

It wasn't uncommon that I found myself living according to the characters and plots I'd written. Usually it was the other way around as it is with most writers: We experience something, then write about it afterwards. With me, often I wrote and then lived.

I never believed in coincidence. It never surprised me when reality turned out to be exactly what I'd dreamed. I even came to believe that true

reality was the product of dreams: That is, that reality was there to be transformed, not to be followed blindly.

I believed there was ultimate independence in writing. Not just financial or physical, but psychological and even cosmic. By creating one's reality, you see, the writer is perfectly free from what already exists.

Truth comes first. Emotions simply muddle things up. People who operate by emotions are weak and incompetent. Passion, on the other hand, is real power.

I was convinced that the destiny of me and mankind is being worked out somewhere else. The sensitive ones always feel that something is about to happen or that they're never quite sure where they should be.

My private room was magical. I created and infused into it vibrations I had only to pluck in order to create any story. That's magic both ways.

I paid no attention to what others said. Why should I? They're outside of me. The only thing that was important was what was inside and how I reacted to it.

My health reflected my work and visa versa.

People with no ambition love no one but themselves.

It takes a lot of money to promote a real genius.

You can only rely on the present because at any given moment you don't know exactly what future you will create.

Love was my physical activity. Writing was my life.

Well, that should do it. If you haven't recognized me or figured out my identity by now I doubt if you ever will. Moreover, if after all these clues you still don't have the foggiest notion of my identify, I suspect you've never even heard my name unless in a joke. And if you've never heard my name, there's no real sense telling you now, is there? Well, it's been fun --- like in a comedy, right? --- and that's your next-to-last big clue, Cazlab.