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THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

Copyright 2015 by David Shields and Caleb Powell
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House LLC, New York, and distributed in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, Penguin Random House companies.
www.aaknopf.com

Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House LLC.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Grove/Atlantic, Inc.: Excerpt from My Dinner with Andr, copyright 1981 by Wallace Shawn and Andr Gregory. Reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third-party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

Revolution Films, Baby Cow Films, and Arbie: Excerpts from The Trip, copyright 2010. Reprinted by permission of Revolution Films, Baby Cow Films, and Arbie.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Shields, David, 1956
I think youre totally wrong : a quarrel / David Shields and Caleb
Powell.First edition.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-385-35194-2 (hardback) ISBN 978-0-385-35195-9 (eBook)
I. Powell, Caleb. II. Title.
PS 3569. H 4834 I 3 2015
814.54dc23 2014020754

Cover design by Joan Wong

In the conversation between the authors, certain names and identifying characteristics of persons mentioned have been changed to protect their privacy.

v3.1_r2

The intellect of man is forced to choose

Perfection of the life, or of the work,

And if it take the second must refuse

A heavenly mansion, raging in the dark.

When all that storys finished, whats the news?

In luck or out the toil has left its mark:

That old perplexity an empty purse,

Or the days vanity, the nights remorse.

Yeats

CALEB POWELL: (speaking into digital voice recorder) Current time: 6:30 p.m., Thursday, September 29th, 2011. Place: Seattle. My driveway. David has arrived. Im going out to meet him.

DAVID SHIELDS: Where do you want me to put my stuff?

CALEB: Back of my car. Im looking forward to this.

DAVID: Definitely, but did you see the article in the [University of Washington] Daily?

CALEB: Its out?

DAVID: (pulling up the article on his phone) I must admit Im a bit flummoxed by your quotes.

CALEB: (reading the article) Hmm. I dont see the big deal. She asked me my first impressions of you, and I told her.

DAVID: Do you feel that much animosity toward me, or am I completely imagining it?

CALEB: Animosity?

DAVID: Theres hardly a line of yours whose purpose was to do anything but to undermine me.

CALEB: You mean when I said, Your classes wasted time? I went on to praise you, but she didnt quote that, of course. And your novel classes did waste timeendlessly dissecting Ted Mooneys Easy Travel to Other Planets and Marilynne Robinsons Housekeeping.

DAVID: Id never teach those books now, but still, Caleb

CALEB: Come in and meet my family.

CALEB: (entering the chaos of the house; the girls swarm at the entrance) Thats Kaya, Ava, Gia.

DAVID: Theyre adorable.

CALEB: My wife, Terry.

DAVID: Hi, everybody.

CALEB: (entering living room and speaking first to David, then to his parents, then again to David) My parents, Dave and Beatrice Powell; David Shields. My parents came to help out with the kids tomorrow.

FATHER: Good to meet you, David.

CALEB: My parents met at Cooper Union.

DAVID: The free-tuition school.

CALEB: (speaking first to David, then to his parents) All the paintings in our house are my mothers. Davids daughter is a freshman at college in Rhode Island.

DAVID: She goes to RISD.

MOTHER: Risby?

DAVID: The Rhode Island School of Design. RISD.

MOTHER: Never heard of Risby.

FATHER: Your sister Marilyn went there.

MOTHER: Where, Risby?

FATHER: Ris-Dee.

DAVID: Its the Rhode Island School of Design, but they call it RIS-D for short.

MOTHER: Risby?

FATHER: Trice!

CALEB: (to David) You wanna beer?

DAVID: Im good; thanks.

TERRY: Youre leaving him with your parents?

CALEB: Why not?

TERRY: Youre having a beer?

CALEB: One for the road.

TERRY: You excited?

CALEB: Im ready.

TERRY: What if he makes a move on you?

CALEB: Ha ha.

CALEB: (showing David his shelf of books about Cambodia) Did you read The Road of Lost Innocence?

DAVID: Was I supposed to?

CALEB: It wasnt a coaster. Youve had me read, what, fifty books over the last few years, and I give you one?

DAVID: I spent an hour with it, thumbing back and forth. Its not very well written. Whats the point? I already know people suffer.

CALEB: Its not trying to be a work of art. Did you get a sense of it at all?

DAVID: Its horriblewhat she endured.

CALEB: Im going to come back to this.

CALEB: (starting the ignition, pulling out the digital voice recorder, placing it on the console) Current time: 7:07 p.m. You ready?

DAVID: You probably prepared much more assiduously than I did. Itll be an interesting experiment. Im totally open to it bombing.

CALEB: I want to have a good time.

DAVID: How so?

CALEB: No kids for four dayssomething to take advantage of.

DAVID: Well walk, talk, read, cook. I think if we try too hard to have some point-by-point debate, itll turn out quite stilted. How did you explain this to your parents, your wife? That were going to go to a cabin for four days to yell at each other, and out of that well try to produce a