This Was Long Before The

In 1980, I Published My First Novel, In The Usual Swirl Of Unjustified Hope And Justified Anxiety.

There Is Accumulation. There Is Responsibility. And Beyond This There Is Great Unrest.

When We Fall In Love, We Hope - Both Egotistically And Altruistically - That We Shall Be Finally, Truly Seen: Judged And Approved. Of Course, Love Does Not Always Bring Approval: Being Seen May Just As Well Lead To A Thumbs-down And A Season In Hell.

You Put Together Two People Who Have Not Been Put Together Before. Sometimes It Is Like That First Attempt To Harness A Hydrogen Balloon To A Fire Balloon: Do You Prefer Crash And Burn, Or Burn And Crash? But Sometimes It Works, And Something New Is Made, And The World Is Changed. Then, At Some Point, Sooner Or Later, For This Reason Or That, One Of Them Is Taken Away. And What Is Taken Away Is Greater Than The Sum Of What Was There. This May Not Be Mathematically Possible; But It Is Emotionally Possible.

Does Character Develop Over Time? In Novels, Of Course It Does: Otherwise There Wouldn't Be Much Of A Story. But In Life? I Sometimes Wonder. Our Attitudes And Opinions Change, We Develop New Habits And Eccentricities; But That's Something Different, More Like Decoration. Perhaps Character Resembles Intelligence, Except That Character Peaks A Little Later: Between Twenty And Thirty, Say. And After That, We're Just Stuck With What We've Got. We're On Our Own. If So, That Would Explain A Lot Of Lives, Wouldn't It? And Also - If This Isn't Too Grand A Word - Our Tragedy.