“a writer”. I was suddenly caught in a conceptually-reorganizing aphasia when I heard Kurt Vonnegut saying he wanted to be “a writer.” What is that? I think, colloquially, we think “someone who writes (non)fiction for a reader.” But it just struck me as such a medieval word. Like, “I want to be a cobbler.” And that’s just what you do, cobbling. Except, this is writing, of course. Where does the reputation of the _writer_ come from? Is it really just the timeless bourgeois life of contemplation? Are we timestamped and spammed by a tortuous funneling force that makes us say things like “I am a philosopher/janitor/scientist/journalist/athlete/etc.”? Are these bad images of thought and/or action? Products of the culture industry? Something worse? PS: Kilgore Trout would rather get the gist of the written word than the written word itself.