If God Speaks Through Burning

If One Loves Stories, Then One Would Naturally Love The Story Of The Story. Or The Story Behind The Story, Pick Your Preposition. It Does Seem To Me To Be A Kind Of Animal Impulse Almost, A Mammalian Curiosity. For A Reader To Wonder About The Autobiography In A Fiction May Be Completely Unavoidable And In Fact May Speak To The Success Of A Particular Narrative, Though It May Also Speak To Its Failure.

A Short Story Is A Love Affair, A Novel Is A Marriage. A Short Story Is A Photograph; A Novel Is A Film.

I Tried Not To Think About My Life. I Did Not Have Any Good Solid Plans For It Long-term - No Bad Plans Either, No Plans At All - And The Lostness Of That, Compared With The Clear Ambitions Of My Friends (marriage, Children, Law School), Sometimes Shamed Me. Other Times In My Mind I Defended Such A Condition As Morally And Intellectually Superior - My Life Was Open And Ready And Free - But That Did Not Make It Less Lonely.

They Had, Finally, The Only Thing Anyone Really Wants In Life: Someone To Hold Your Hand When You Die.

Later I Would Come To Believe That Erotic Ties Were All A Spell, A Temporary Psychosis, Even A Kind Of Violence, Or At Least They Coexisted With These States.