Any Other Vexations To Report?" He Asks.

He's One Of Those Smart, Drifty Young People Who, After Certain Deliberations, Decides He Wants To Do Something In The Arts But Won't, Possibly Can't, Think In Terms Of An Actual Job; Who Seems To Imagine That Youth And Brains And Willingness Will Simply Summon An Occupation, The Precise And Perfect Nature Of Which Will Reveal Itself In Its Own Time.

Like The Morning You Walked Out Of That Old House, When You Were Eighteen And I Was, Well, I Had Just Turned Nineteen, Hadn't I? I Was A Nineteen-year-old And I Was In Love With Louis And I Was In Love With You, And I Thought I Had Never Seen Anything So Beautiful As The Sight Of You Walking Out A Glass Door In The Early Morning, Still Sleepy, In Your Underwear. Isn't It Strange?

I Just Don't Feel Much Interested In The Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous.

There's The Fact That American Fiction Is Basically The Most Apolitical Fiction On The Globe. A South American Writer Wouldn't Dare Think Of Writing A Novel If It Didn't Allude To The System Into Which These People Are Orchestrated - Or An Eastern European Writer, Or A Russian Writer, Or A Chinese Writer. Only American Writers Are Able To Imagine That The Government And The Corporations - All Of It - Seem To Have No Effect Whatsoever.

Remember, How Often The Great Art Of The Past Didn't Look Great At First, How Often It Didn't Look Like Art At All; How Much Easier It Is, Decades Or Centuries Later, To Adore It, Not Only Because It Is, In Fact, Great But Because It's Still Here; Because The Inevitable Little Errors And Infelicities Tend To Recede In An Object That's Survived The War Of 1812, The Eruption Of Krakatoa, The Rise And Fall Of Nazism.