Thomas Fuller and "Monsieur Ambivalence"

I spoke with Tom Fuller yesterday. He shared a line of Niels Bohr, that there's absolutely "no scientific proof that time has motion." Bohr's line is now stuck somewhere in my brain, I can't get it out.

Three months, (or has it been four, or five) have passed since IF SF published Tom's book, "Monsieur Ambivalence," a book he claims he spent seven years writing. Once in awhile Tom will ask how the book's doing, not often, once in awhile. I tell him what I know, that the right people seem to be reading it, whatever that means. "It means, Tom says, "that the ones who tell you they're reading it are the ones who are getting it, and the ones who are getting it are the ones who have the equipment." Tom and I agreed at the beginning that not everybody would get "Monsieur Ambivalence,"--the story of a man trying to sit in a room for one hour without anxiety or any sort of restlessness in a small house in the middle of France: his expectation as a writer and my expectation as his publisher were modest. When I asked him to help me promote the book, he replied, "isn't it enough that I've written it?"

Tom's pretty much disappeared into the writing of his new book. When I ask him what his new book is about, he only says that it's about the classical world. I leave him alone, know better than to probe. I'm not completely sure where he's living, but I have his cell number and an email address.

Yesterday, I emailed him a review of "Monsieur Ambivalence" written by Renate Stendhal and just published in the on-line lit magazine, Scene4.

http://www.scene4.com/0314/renatestendhal0314.html

I didn't hear back from him right away. He called me the moment The Oscars were over, sounding as happy as I've ever heard him. "I know the book's really good," he said, "at least as good as I could make it, but Renate understands it on a level than that's even more primitive than mine." He was amused too that Renate tried to Google him. Tom suggested that I, his publisher, send her flowers, yellow and red roses.

We chatted for a few minutes. I can never really tell when Tom's being serious or when he's trying to be funny. He said that after he finishes writing his book about the classical world he's going to write a book about writing two books and call it, "Fifteen Years of Being a Slave." I didn't laugh. But I did laugh when he said that "Monsieur Ambivalence" should be made into a movie and, if it was, wouldn't it be fun to get dressed up and go to The Academy Awards with our wives and with Renate Stendhal and watch ourselves on tv.