Daniel Kobayashi

July 22, 2003

Dear Captain Pinkwater,

You likely do not remember be but we have had a periodic dialogue for 10 years now. It began when you joined America Online for a story and discovered that I was the only person on AOL with the words “Daniel Pinkwater in my profile. Years later, my then girlfriend and I pawned a copy of Lizard Music off on Saul Bellow, who she had as a professor at Boston University at the time. Our thinking was that this would lead him to use his influence as a Nobel Laureate to secure you the prize you deserve as America’s foremost writer on the subject of celestial potato pancakes and sentient reptiles.

You did an ATC commentary about it some time later which I have been trying to locate. It appears to be this:

But it is not totally clear. After all, there was nothing about hyper-text fiction in the one I heard. Do you remember that commentary? Is this it. I used to have a tape of it but it was lost in a move or some such, and I desperately want a new one to put in a safe deposit box where it belongs along with my secret decoder ring and collection of clamshells.

Yours,

Dan Kobayashi

I do more or less remember you. It's a shame you and your then girlfriend bothered her then professor, Saul Bellow, like that. I mean, he must have worked hard at being a real writer, and for some reason was teaching in a college--probably took the whole business of literature quite seriously...and then some giggling, smirking, feckless kids force stuff I have written on him. What is a distinguished author to think? 
I hope he was able to forget the whole ridiculous incident. I have that gift--and therfore have no recollection of the commentary of which you write. Plus, my files and records are a massive jumble, and I am just now making up my mind to throw out every piece of paper in my office that has anything written on it, and start fresh. This time I will do it all correctly. .