Frank Sauce's one self-proclaimed fan wrote:

fanuma on 4:53 PM
Dear Frank --

The Booker is the most important prize in the English [language]. English is the most important language in the world. Why did you say this?

http://www.thestranger.com/blog/2006/10/kiran_desai_wins_man.php

Paul Constant is a critic/god. He is the Edmund Wilson of the Pacific Northwest. A flannel Edmund Wilson, if you will.

An explanatoi[io]n is required.

Your Fan,
Fanuma

to a comment Frank Sauce posted on Paul Constant's post on The Stranger's blog on the Man Booker prize for fiction a month ago:

Why, exactly, should people in Seattle care about a prize given in a little island in the Atlantic Ocean, an island about the size of the Olympic Peninsula? What makes this even more insulting to my brief attention span, scrolling through your so called blog looking for screenshots from Hump is that this prize is for a novel. The Man Booker is for 1) a book that is 2) not even real in 3) an empire that no longer exists. Who cares? Perhaps you should devote your attention to handicapping the employee of the month at Pizza Hut? It's about the same thing. Why don't you list the top five upsell techniques used by Red Robin waitstaff at South Center, Paul Constant? I read these names -- Sarah Waters -- Kiran Desei -- who? here's your real news

And, then again, Frank Sauce's second comment:

Mr. Constant:

You're prediction was correct. Congrats! Yet there's no possible way that I can bow to you, even in the figurative sense. We should all agree that the Man Booker prize is not a gauge of a book's literary value ("Literature is news that stays news"-EP), but of the book's selling [emotional and physical] value right now. No doubt, Ms. Karsai wrote her heart and soul into her book and she deserves the kudos and the sales that come from receiving the Man and in no way do I want to belittle her achievement.

However, I believe you misread my previous comment, which leads me to believe you will misread this, my second, comment, but I will try to write this text more in the narrative (a less obscure form than before), which may be more inline with the way you think. The argument of a literary prize’s value will forever be available for us to discuss, but we really should try to avoid those arguments.

My comment to your prediction questioned your position, but why you would even take a position befuddles me. Unless, of course, you like that position and you seem to like positions that make you “100% correct” for a day. Yes, I, too, love the feeling of you feeling “100% correct” for a day. Everyone should have those days. It simply saddens me that we need the Man to feel this type of validity.

Thank you for reading,

Frank Sauce


Saucer of Frank's more obscure response:

Paul is a plastic dog mouthpiece for an ancient ships computer, because critics are almost as bad as artist when given criticism. The ancient computer's ship filled with migrants who have been hiding away up here, or down there, really. They avoid the man and his post-colonial-multi-cultural theory.

You don't.

Paul must have looked at the watch set into his little fingernail, after we asked him the time by reading his reviews. We should have known his fingernails could tell anyone the time. They were that beautiful and the clocks inside them told the truest time.

you, Constant Paul, you appall me, though I'm attracted to your gun-shot text and your devil-may-care tone.

Help yourself to refreshments because that is the last kind word
of quick whispers you will get from Mr. Sauce.

Hopefully, we will not reluctantly return to each other, all scowls again.

And to Fanuma:

You're correct! The Booker prize is the most important prize each year given (the mistype before editing was "price") for a book written in the English language by a writer from the Commonwealth or the Republic of Ireland. However, I disagree that English is the most important language in the world. Because of it possesses so much popularity with some secondary speakers? I think French has the most secondary speakers still. However, I'm pretty sure Mandarin Chinese is spoken by twice as many people as English (native and secondary included), which gives a convincing argument that Mandarin Chinese is the most important language in the world and in my humble opinion it's one of the more beautiful languages to listen to and not understand. Listen to Bei Dao if you don’t believe me or watch a Wong Kar Wai flick.

Be that as it may, my response to Paul Constant's comment was a bit "dickish" in tone, as Paul wrote. This is not an apology, though; I assure you. My comment's form didn't fit the format of the mainstream, certainly, but there are more then a few ambiguous images and referents that free-up the meaning of my possible intentions. Fortunately, Paul Constant doesn't give a rat's ass about Frank Sauce and his ilk, but I'm very pleased that you do, Fanuma.

Let's hear it for Frank Sauce's only fan: Fanuma!

Let's have a hip-hop parade for Fanuma
Frank Sauce's only fan!

Thank you dearly for reading this courtship of memories, Fanuma. Really! Thank you so much!

Frank Sauce