LE ae) OT CF: a Good Time? Bill Berkson and Bernadette MayerCopyright © 2006 by Bill Berkson and Bernadette Mayer First edition, first printing ‘The authors hereby express their gratitude to Mac McGinnes, Pegey DeCoursey, Grace Murphy, Constance Lewallen, and Philip Good for help and encouragement Cover design by Ree Katrak Cover image by Lyn Hejinia Distributed by Small Press Distribution 1341 Seventh Street Berkeley, CA 94710-1403 To order from SPD call 510-524-1668 or coll-frr 800-869-7553 Fax orders to 510-524-0852 Order via e-mail at: orders@spdbooks.org Order online at www.spdbooks.org “What’s...” Errata Pages 16-19: The numerical order of BB’s answers to BM’s first set of questions should read: 1, 2,3, 4, 5, 6,7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 12, 20, 21, 22, 24, 23, 26, 25, 27, 28, 30, 31, 32, 29, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37. p- 20, paragraph 2: Herzog’s Of Walking In Ice. p- 37, line 7 & 8 from bottom: no comma after ‘jangled’; us not ‘use’. p. 46, line 3: thick not ‘think*, 2™ paragraph: ‘In high school, p. 56, 1" line: “Else all out of love p- 57, middle: Uptoit! p. 58, 7 lines from bottom: ‘audience of 9°. p. 65: ‘Is it shame of delight?’. p. 74, line 6: ‘one more éhan four’. P. P. P. P. ), 98, end of 1* paragraph: are not ‘is’. . 123, line 5: play not ‘pay’. . 127: Marge Piercy. . 148, middle: ‘everyone in the country smokes . . .’. 7 lines from bottom: kept not ‘kep’. p. 204: Ben Jonson, not ‘Johnson’.In or around 1977, Bernadette Mayer and Bill Berkson initiated a correspondence that eventually centered on question-and-answer exchanges usually folded inside accompanying cover letters. The can- dor and intensity of these epistolary interviews was sustained well into the mid 1980s, Included are intimate musings on everyday life, childhood, marriage, sex, poetry and other arts, cooking, weather, house-and-garden details, fashion, politics, philosophy, time, identi- ty, morality, and much else besides. Although the exchanges have continued intermittently to this day, it is the bulk of that early, high- intensity phase that the present volume represents. In that respect, this edition is complete, but for some lacunae that have proved unfillable: mice ate two or three of Bill’s letters kept among Bernadette’s files, The title Whar Your Idea of a Good Time? was the question that sparked the original project.