Voyages with Various Explorers

On deceiving ourselves as children (in honor of listening to records with Don the imaginary friend):

From the Vanity Fair online interview
Jim Windolf: When did you first write something that was fictional?

Charlie Kaufman: Um ... I wrote a book when I was in fourth grade. We were binding our own books and we were supposed to pick an explorer. We were studying them, and I decided I would write about my voyages with various explorers. Obviously, sort of a fictionalized idea of me. But I was traveling with these different real explorers and I illustrated it. So that’s the first thing I wrote, I guess, the first thing I remember writing. I still have it.

JW: Do you remember reading it out loud to the class?

No. What I do remember about it is thinking it was cool that I was mixing—it’s weird. I haven’t thought about this. I mean, I have the book—but I haven’t connected it to what I’ve done more recently. But I thought it was cool, when I was a little kid, that I was mixing this fiction [with fact]. I was very aware of the comedy of that. It was like a joke, that all these explorers kept asking me to come with them on their trips, like I was a necessary partner to them. And there were lots of jokes about me getting seasick and various mutinies and stuff like that.

JW: Is it possible you could adapt that into a movie now?

I don’t know. But it was pretty good for a fourth-grader.

Do you remember if your teacher praised it?

JW: I don’t remember if she did, but I knew that I did it for her, because I had an enormous love for this teacher. She was the first person I was going to marry.