One Thirty-six A.m.
One Thirty-six A.m. - meaning Summary
Ordinary Men, Extraordinary Compulsion
The speaker imagines literary giants—Céline, Dostoevsky, Hamsun—as ordinary, bodily, distracted men at their typewriters, balancing petty needs and obsessions while still compelled to write. That image comforts and amuses him in a shabby room, turning literary genius into shared human persistence. The poem registers empathy, ironic distance, and quiet companionship, suggesting that writing is a stubborn, everyday act that connects the famous and the solitary alike.
Read Complete AnalysesI laugh sometimes when I think about, say, Céline at a typewriter or Dostoevsky… or Hamsun… ordinary men with feet, ears, eyes, ordinary men with hair on their heads sitting there typing words while having difficulties with life while being puzzled almost to madness. Dostoevsky gets up he leaves the machine to piss, comes back drinks a glass of milk and thinks about the casino and the roulette wheel. Céline stops, gets up, walks to the window, looks out, thinks, my last patient died today, I won't have to make any more visits there. when I saw him last he paid his doctor bill; it's those who don't pay their bills, they live on and on. Céline walks back, sits down at the machine, is still for a good two minutes then begins to type. Hamsun stands over his machine thinking, I wonder if they are going to believe all these things I write? he sits down, begins to type. he doesn't know what a writer's block is: he's a prolific son-of-a-bitch damn near as magnificent as the sun. he types away. and I laugh not out loud but all up and down these walls, these dirty yellow and blue walls my white cat asleep on the table hiding his eyes from the light. he's not alone tonight and neither am I.
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