James Frey has a new (legitimately fictional) book out called Bright Shining Morning. At a reading last night, when asked by an audience member if he ever found it difficult to come up with material, he responded, "Writer's block is for chumps. To me this is a job, like being a banker, or a teacher. You never hear of banker's block."
Setting aside the notion that Frey really isn't in a position to be passing judgment on anyone, "chumps" included, it seems as though he's slightly misguided. With regard to the argument that there's no mental wall involved in a profession that merely requires you to show up every day, one Lehman Brothers analyst told Radar, "Try fixing Excel spreadsheets in pitch books for 16 hours a day and then tell me there's no such thing as banker's block." And a tweaker from Morgan Stanley offered, "I suffer from banker's block every single morning I wake up to do this job. That's why God invented Red Bull." But we also get the feeling that Frey's under the impression that banking itself doesn't involve actual writer's block, which a couple professional in the field assured us it does.
Sayeth one VP at JPMorgan, "I'd like to see how long it would take Frey to try and write a public filing that describes the ass-rape of Bear Stearns without using profanity. Do you have any idea how long I sat there trying to come up with an acceptable alternative? At first I thought, okay, how about the 'non-consensual fucking of Bear Stearns," but that didn't work. Then I tried "backdoor surprise," but that didn't cut it either. I literally sat there for hours with nothing but that infernal cursor staring me in the face before deciding to go with "involuntary and immediate liquidity injection requirement." Late at night, I lie awake and see visions of that cursor. Taunting. Mocking. Making a fool of me. So don't you dare tell me there's no writer's block in banking."
]]> And a very wound up UBS employee told us that he "dared" "this Frey asshole...to singlehandedly write a detailed report in the multiple voices of the audit committee, the Chairman's special subcommittee and the independent directors announcing that because we have 50 billion in losses but raised 48 billion in new capital by diluting our shareholders to hell, our 'net loss' is 2 billion... pounds. And then try to do it in the bank's corporate language, English, when your first language is fucking GERMAN. I've been working on it since our last disclosure, i.e. several weeks and I'm not even finished. Shit... I don't think I was supposed to say anything about this 'til next week."
Bright Moment [NYP]
James Frey Calls BS on Writer's Block [Radar]
It seems like it was ages ago. But it was only last November that the hottest item in everyone's inbox was the story of an intern called Kevin who emailed his bosses about needing to take a day off work in October to take care of some family business in New York City. His bosses, however, discovered a picture of him at a party in Worcester, Massachusetts, uncovering his duplicity. Worse, his boss attached the picture to a response email to him and BCC'd the entire North American staff of the bank. And, even worse, in the picture the intern--a young man named Kevin--is dressed a fairy--complete with green wings, eye makeup and a star-tipped wand. "Nice wand," the boss adds in his email.
