Bartleby’s Books, Gatsby’s Café

Volumes I-IV of Secret Histories dealt exclusively with artists/writers/musicians.

While writing Balzac’s Coffee, DaVinci’s Ristorante, a very unusual thing happened.

From somewhere, I heard a voice, a voice I had heard before, a familiar voice. In fact, it

was Bartleby’s voice and what he said was that he (and a lot of his other fictional

character friends) wanted to get in on a “piece of the action” that the writers, composers,

and painters were getting in on. I asked him what he meant by that and he said he wanted

his own store and speaking for the other fictional characters, they wanted theirs as well

and the only way that was going to happen was if I did it. So, to appease Bartleby (since

I didn’t want him spending the rest of his life in my bedroom) I’m writing this volume of

Secret Histories titled, Bartleby’s Books, Gatsby’s Café which, similar to Borges’ Travel,

Hemingway’s Garage and the other volumes, deals with how these fictional characters

from world literature, attempted to survive outside the confines of their creators’ stories