El Somnambulo to Enter 3rd Person Withdrawal Rehab

Facing an intervention from his loved ones ostensibly concerned about saving him from terminal self-aggrandizement, El Somnambulo has reluctantly agreed to enter the Homey D. Clown Third Person Withdrawal Center in Iowa City, Iowa. You may remember Homey by his catchphrase of  “Homey don’t play dat”:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QhuBIkPXn0[/youtube]

For years, Homey coasted on that Third Person laugh line. However, like Pagliacci channeled through Smokey Robinson, his smile was ‘just a frown turned upside down’.

He resolved to undergo treatment to “reach his, I mean my, potential.”

Since no facility of its kind existed at the time, he searched far and wide for a partner to help him discover his ‘inner first person’. His odyssey bore fruit when he discovered the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa .  He underwent intensive therapy on learning to love the first person narrator’s voice with such writer/therapists as Jane Smiley (she even named a character, well, a cow, after Homey in her agricultural novel, Moo); T. Corraghessan Boyle (who refused to autograph Homey’s dog-eared copy of Greasy Lake until Homey could speak in the first-person without having someone first translate from the third person for him); and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marilynne Robinson, who Homey initially considered ‘too weird for Homey’, but who eventually became ‘too weird for me’. He did admire her for naming her poodle ‘Otis’, however.

Not only did Homey master the First Person Narrative, but he learned so much about the ‘Unreliable Narrator’ and character shadings that he has subsequently brought demonic and homicidal characteristics to the Homey D. character. So much so that he almost edged out Heath Ledger for the Joker role in The Dark Knight.

Grateful for discovering his inner first-person, and gratified that he experienced so much personal growth that he could add psychopathic underpinnings to his Homey D persona in a guilt-free manner, the Homester resolved to do all that he could to help others. He had seen others suffer the Heartbreak of Third Personhood, and had watched the tragic symptoms play out in public: Bob Dole’s all-too public struggle with erectile dysfunction, and Henry Kissinger’s all too public struggle with…, well, let’s just let the pictures tell the story:

Which is what led to the founding of the Homey D. Center at the Writer’s Workshop of the University of Iowa.

Inspired by the psychotic clown, along with the miniaturist fiction of Lorrie Moore (‘Birds in America’), El Somnambulo will soon set out for the cornfields of Iowa. 

He intends to post during his stay at the Homey D. Center, although there may indeed be some inconsistency with his narrative voice, not to mention unanticipated reactions to hallucinogenic medications.

He hopes to write primarily, if not exclusively, in the First Person upon his return. 

He also hopes to get past his writer’s block on writing the Great American Novel. He has only written one line thus far:

“Call him Ishmael.”

Please wish El Somnambulo good fortune as he begins this spiritual journey of a lifetime.