All In His Imagination - Part Two - Page 5
© Paula E. Kirman
David: I don't know what it is about it - I guess it's because I like the first hundred pages so much. And then it's like wet toilet paper - it just comes apart. Something just happens; right after the murder, just around when the trial starts, something happens to the book and for some reason it just completely comes unglued and the disappointment and the sort of sick feeling in my stomach from reading it - that's why I hate it so much. It's the physical sensation I have to the second half of the book. The first half of the book I really like. I should have spent another year or two years on it.
Paula: Do you think you would ever do television again?
David: [long pause] The truth about television is . . . I never miss it and I know why I never miss it. I never miss television for even a nanosecond because I know I am going to go back to it, and because I know when I go back to it I'll be sorry. My relationship with television really is like, to use the girl metaphor again, is like one of those old girlfriends that you don't really like and you're incompatible with but the sex is just so fabulous you just keep dropping by. I know that at some point somebody is going to offer me a television job; I am going to get tired of my own company; I am going to say, "sure"; I am going to go back; some hung-over techie with beer breath is going to be sticking my microphone on at nine o'clock in the morning; and I am going to say, "Fuck, I'm back here again." I know that's going to happen and so that's why I never miss it.
It was great for me; it was like being in the Beatles, but it's over. That sense of being important, in the center of the world, all the excitement that I got from television, to tell you the truth, really had more to do with self-aggrandizement than interest in what I was actually doing. In my interviews with people, what really got me off to be honest with you, was how good they made me look. I didn't give a shit about what my guests were thinking or talking about to be honest with you.
