1. What’s the most underrated candy? I’m going with Blow Pop. I mean you get to unravel the wrapper and then suck or lick the candy and chomp the gum. And it’s fun to say aloud, Blow Pop. After you eat the Blow Pop, you get a useful little white stick. Blow Pop: It is an affordable and satisfying experience.
2. I don’t think anyone is frightened by the blank page. People say that, but those people are wrong. The blank page is just there, a blank, white page. Writers just look at it like the rain, an orange crow, or a woman kicking a tree stump. It doesn’t move them; it is something to move upon.

13.

Donat Bobet invited me to his home for the night of Halloween. I came as a pirate, a costume which I assembled out of a bandana and the cardboard spool from a roll of paper towels.

Ah, forget that one. Let’s go with:

In a distant country where the towns had improbable names, a woman looked upon the unmoving form of her newborn baby and refused to see what the midwife saw. This was her son. She had brought him forth in agony, and now he must suck. She pressed his lips to her breast.

“But he is dead!” said the midwife.

3. You go to grad school and they have these Halloween parties and people get way too cute in their brains about their costumes: People go as Postmodern, as Realism, etc. It’s a genre in itself, the myopic grad student costume. I went once as a homeless MFA grad and I held a sign that said, WILL EXPLICATE FOR FOOD. That seems tasteless and just sort of stupid to me now. Time and place. Who knows?

4. Why in the fuck does Stephen King want to be more respected by academia? By literary circles (whatever type of circle that is [circle-jerk?]) and the like? Let it go, Mr. King. You are Ok and doing just fine. Go have a sandwich or a seizure or a Blow Pop.