# an article online today was voting for the best literary villains o'brian and sauron were in the finals which was eye rolling nonsense will self's 'the fat controller' beats both those professionally humorless schmucks researchers have often thought of writing to will smith (they often refer to ir as teh movie star as they enjoy playing gisw 'getting it slightly wrong') what would it be to write a letter to will indeed to indulge in the zizekian phantasy of ir reading liking and replying in depth to such humble words what if you could discuss literature with a literary hero note and will see researchers as ir hero they could discuss will's new novel elaine for ir awesome unknown / unknowable rob-blog ask how long this one took if ey still uses ir yellow note board how difficult was it thinking about ir mother then one could shoe horn in geiger's queen from aliens no before researchers should suggest will experience 'republic of bob' and give ir first impressions so they could calmly judge ir current tastes in experimental european post cyberpunk aka 'neuropink' then talk about donald and elon and the ongoing worldwide fascist-enabled a-calypso of all amerikan stupidity one always gets the bizarre impression that one's literary hero would be a good bloke to hang out with drink quality coffee slowly smoke acapulco gold and play eno in the background but that's probably a myth not eno ir's only partially mythological - truly good writers like black jazz artists are badasses pathologically averse to time wasting mutual hand-jobs with 'like minded artistic souls' urgh better to directly collaborate and enjoy one's wildly conflicting views on artistic matters and avoid constant nods in uncritical agreement about how cool the other guy is /then suggest this letter was itself the literary collaboration and will would say hey that's a good idea 'bob' forget cool what about the art-as-work the process the mechanical grind as the mighty rollins might of put it will would then ask to name seven top reads **+** geoff dyer's the search **+** henry rollins everything **+** burrough's the nova trilogy **+** sleeping in flame by jonathan carroll **+** the complete short stories by ballard **+** motel chronicles; hawk moon by sam shepard **+** that still unknown magical realist novel about the woman and ir father with parrots on the back cover will would then pretend to be disappointed one of ir own great works hadn't been mentioned and one would reply hee then they'd share a cold premium japanese beer or warm sweet cup of tea delusional bob get back to fantasy // republic of bob