From KCRW, Santa Monica and KCRW.com, this is The Treatment.

Welcome to the treatment. I'm Elvis Mitchell. I'm in New York. If you were a read of the Village

Voice in the late 1970s, you may have come across a column title that may have reminded you of civilization and its discontents. The column title was television and its discontents. It was the greatest and the first great TV column ever written by my guest, James Walcott, who has collected some of those columns, some pieces of his film criticism from Texas Monthly, some Vanity Fair pieces and pieces from any publication you can name almost.

And his new collection, Critical Mass. Jim is back here again. Jim is so good to have you

back on the show. Thank you. It's great to be back. One of the things people have got to ask

you a lot is how long it takes you because I know really you're kind

of living these pieces of a long time before you write them. It's one of those things. It's almost

like Inspector May Gray. You know, when he cracks a case, he, if you ever read the novels,

often he's kind of in a coma. And actually the other detectives say, he's in a coma. And he's

sort of sitting staring into space.

And then when something happens, suddenly everything speeds up.

Well, that's sort of what writing is like, you know, I'm doing the research, whatever.

But I'm calling it procrastination.

But something is like you're not ready to go.

You're not quite ready to start.

And then at some point you have no choice but to start because you realize, oh, they're expecting it. So you know, deadlines push you. But then

all of a sudden, it's like then it accelerates. And the good thing about that is it means that all

of the things that have been sort of collecting in your head. And a lot of them are not even things you're particularly aware of.

Then when you have to write fast, they come out.

And they're more seamless than if you're like endlessly working over a piece, working over a piece.

But so much of your TV writing for me was really lent itself to that thing because you had to turn

the stuff over quickly anyway. And it lived in kind of an almost an evanescent state.

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