Goines On: Taking on characters

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Goines imagined that his friend Zen, who was working on a sort of experimentally complex novel, thought that his editor was crazy. How could the guy think, Goines imagined Zen thinking, that Zen wanted his story to be difficult for his reader to follow? Couldn’t he see that Zen just didn’t know how to say clearly what he was trying to convey? Zen didn’t think it, but Goines did, that the editor had actually realized this, too, finally, but without sensing that Zen himself had already begun to articulate it. Shit, thought Zen, thought Goines, where does the fucking artificer of this narrative get off thinking he can say what I’m thinking, or what my editor is thinking, or when we think it, who first and who second, who before whom? I can read Wayne Booth, too, he knows. Goines felt perhaps overly pleased with himself to have thought all of this.

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