“I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That’s my dream. It’s my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor … and surviving.”

In 1979, Francis Ford Coppola defined the American experience in Vietnam by shooting the most overpriced, overrated film in history. Despite the best efforts of those who argue would have won if only – if only we had mined the harbor, if only we had bombed the dikes, if only we had not held back – Coppola defined Vietnam as a war of insanity, a war that could not be won. Permanently.

More than thirty years later, that argument continues. But the status quo is defined by Coppola: for better or for worse, we were fucked. We were the snail, crawling along the straight razor. The people argued whether we ought to go forward or back, but either way, it turns out that the painful logic of Colonel Kurtz was right: the United States was fated to be sliced apart. Little wonder that he had to be terminated…with extreme prejudice. Yes, this is a painfully repetitive argument about Vietnam, but it was about as original as original got in 1979, and more impressively, it was so artistically done.

If anyone reading this even knows who Timothy Zahn is, I’m terrified that this horribly obscure Star Wars reference within a reference might work. Are three? But the point of all of this was the power of literature.

“Drop the bomb. Exterminate them all.” This is the command with which we are left from Kurtz (and Conrad, though the pre-atomic Congolese Conrad left it at “exterminate the brutes,” but, whatever). It is not so gentle. What is to be done? Well,

Thirty years later, that remains a pretty good fucking question, doesn’t it? “You have a right to kill me … but you have no right to judge me.” A snail. Along the edge. Of a straight razor. There we are, in places we wished we only knew from Charlie Wilson’s War, Afghanistan and Iraq only a distant memory of the past (until something horrible makes it memorable again)…

Evolutionarily, words are a means to an end. Through the communication skills we have developed, we eat, we fuck, we ensure our fucking kids eat. Yes. But there is a point at which good communication transcends itself. There is a point at which talking becomes speaking; at which writing becomes art. Isolating that point is difficult, but worthwhile.

A snail along a straight razor. The first time you see Apocalypse Now, it barely registers. The second time, it’s a weird little moment. You can watch the film a dozen times, and the most impressive part about the scene at Kurtz’ compound remains Brando’s performance with that damned sponge. Until you’re presented with the monologue – stripped of all context, free of acting, of cinema, of water – you’re unable to recognize the beauty of literature.

I barely know how to read. But I know that the thing that separates men from apes is the ability to communicate. From communication we develop language; and from language, literature. So here we are.

I have a definitive moment in my life, set when I was 18 and stupid. I was watching Scorsese’s Gangs of New York over Christmas. The film ends with Leo DiCaprio narrating words about how “no matter what they did to build this city back up again – for the rest of time – it would be like nobody even knew we was ever here.” For whatever reason, and for the life of me I can no longer track it down, I went back to my aunt’s guest bedroom and wrote about the Gettysburg address.

I wrote so successfully and proudly that I was a little confused when watched the tail end of the movie on Starz about a month and a half ago and was shocked to learn that Leo wasn’t narrating about things we might “little remember nor soon forget,” despite the fact that theoretical quote doesn’t make any sense and is a far cry from what Lincoln actually wrote, which is something about how some shall neither “little note, nor long remember.”

This is the sort of tirade I’ve had myself on for the better part of a decade. And the bottom line of it is that writing had damned well better mean something. Anyone can tell a story (okay, most people can’t; but many can). Anyone can display technical proficiency (again…). The key point is that you have to combine these things and transcend them.

Good writing is like a good orgasm. There’s plenty of shit to be written. But how do you transcend the everyday? Ultimately, I suppose, it’s all about context. And, uh, the reader.