American Sucker
Chapter One
Speeding
Quarterly Report, January 1, 2000 Cumulative Net Gain/Loss 0
SOMETIME in early January 2000, I became aware that I was jabbering.
I was on the phone, in my little study at home on West End Avenue, in Manhattan,
and speaking as breathlessly as a cattle auctioneer in full cry. Jumping over
verbal fences, mashing participials, dropping qualifiers ... I was talking to an
old friend about movies, and I said something like this: Movie people think
platforming works only with quality-word-of-mouth and slow-building
three-four-million-a-week pictures in which buzz rolls into multiple viewings
like The English Patient or Shakespeare in Love ... I had trouble saying one thing
at a time. I had to say two things, or three, tucking statistics into my words
as I talked, and I seemed to be grouping ideas or pie ... read full excerpt from American Sucker ebook
