Special Guest, Enoch Soames
I was on TV! That proves I’m real. Well, you probably didn’t see my interview with Charlie Rose, but Hilobrow has published an edited transcript.
from the transcript:
“Charlie Rose: Enoch, you have a Twitter feed, and a blog. Let me just jump right in and ask the question at the top of everyone’s mind, how were you able to return? Did you make another Deal with the Devil?
Enoch Soames: No, I exploited a legal loophole. Basically there was nothing in the contract about virtual reality. There is now of course, He’s gone over everything with counsel and made sure to close that gap. But we were grandfathered in, all of us from the Faustian Era. No Tiger Woods-style rewriting of the pre-nup, in Hell! I can’t walk around, like you; well except for that one time at the British Museum in 1997. That was what the original Deal was about, of course. But, I can hang around cyberspace all I want. It’s really similar to down south, except a little colder. Luckily I still have my cape. Look: not only waterproof, Polartec!
[Shows features of cape]
CR: You’ve been in cyberspace? This whole time?
ES: No, I only became interested once the web really took off. I’ve been hanging around and surfing and watching videos; you know, the usual, just from the other side of the screen. But then once Web 2.0 arrived I realized I didn’t just have to be a voyeur, I could be a writer again! It was the perfect opportunity to re-tell my story.
CR: We know the Max Beerbohm version of course; now obviously we can see that that was biography, and not fiction as was thought for over a hundred years …
ES: Beerbohm! That wannabe! That paparazzo! That, that – insect! Every time I turn around, there he is again! No, not down there, in here. [Points] When I Google myself, which of course I do on a regular basis, everywhere I look his name is tethered to mine. I remember in London, it took me months to gain admittance to the back room at the Café Royal (where all they did, I can assure you, was gossip and play dominos. Dominos – please! ) – anyway, months, and once I got in, there he was already, entrenched like a tick. Wouldn’t leave me in peace! Always with the naive questions, the buttering-up – well he did actually buy my books, yes. I believed he was sincere, at first. But he turned out to be worse than all the others …
CR: But without Beerbohm’s short story, Enoch Soames, we wouldn’t know you at all, would we? Your own books went out of print long ago and there are no –- “
… at this point I got a little upset and they had to break for an underwriting infomercial. But check out the entire thing at Hilobrow!
