Dennis Latham: Life, Fiction, and the Pursuit of Madness

My third novel (the first two were throw aways) was called I Guess You're Still A Virgin. It was published years later as Driving With Ace . After I finished it, I wrote to Kurt Vonnegut to see if he would read it because someone told me it reminded them of his writing. I liked his writing and thought I would attempt to write to him through his publisher. I received the above response on onion skin paper on his old typewriter. It shows some of what he thought about New York publishing. I was surprised I even heard from him. Now that he is gone, the letter has more meaning to me.

(What I imagined the operation would look like after I was out and having a nightmare.) I had an operation at the Cincinnati VA to remove something called a papilloma from my right nostril. It’s basically a wart. I had two of them, one on the outside of the skin inside the nose and one called an inverted papilloma , with roots that dig under the skin inside the nose. It sounds gross as hell and I’m glad I didn’t have to see the things. They are supposed to be common, but I’ve never heard anyone say they ever had one. The inverted kind can turn into cancer, (10% chance) and no one seems to know what causes them. (Before photo at left) I’ve never been operated on except for my tonsils as a kid and ten years ago when I had another papilloma removed by a civilian doctor. The VA doctors also decided to fix my screwed up septum, since my nose has been broken several times. I went weeks ago in February for the operation and was put to sleep, but when I woke up, I found out that they didn’t d