If You Write Enough, You

I'd Given Up Everything To Be A Writer, And If I Didn't Then Go On To Do That - To Write - Then I Didn't Know What Would Happen To Me.

When I'm Filling Notebooks I'm Trying To Pin Down What I'm Really Interested In And To Find Those Details That Are So Hard To Come By, Details That I Can Look At And Believe Are Right On The Mark. Things Which Bring A Novel To Life. They Can Take A While To Come.

But Knowledge Does Not Protect One. Life Is Contemptuous Of Knowledge; It Forces It To Sit In The Anterooms, To Wait Outside. Passion, Energy, Lies: These Are What Life Admires. Still, Anything Can Be Endured If All Humanity Is Watching. The Martyrs Prove It. We Live In The Attention Of Others. We Turn To It As Flowers To The Sun.

In General, American Life Is More Easy-going. And Civic Pride, National Pride In A Cultural Sense, Is Great In America. I Think What They Esteem In America Is Character And Energy, And Being Different And Superior To Other Peoples. Of Course, Every Nation Feels Itself To Be Superior, But In America It's A Jaunty Feeling, And In Some Cases A Rather Ominous One Among The Super-patriots.

A Writer Writes A Book. People Read It. You Don't Know What They're Reading, Really. You Read A Review And Think, "that Is So Inaccurate. You Can't Have Been Reading My Book With Any Kind Of Attention, Because That Is All Wrong, That's Even The Wrong Name You're Including There." But These Reviewers Have Been Diminished In Importance, The Work Is So Little Respected. If You're Reviewed By A Real Critic, By James Wood Or Louis Menand, Then You Get Something That Is Informed, Interesting, And Highly Articulate. But The Average Review Doesn't Have That Kind Of Depth Anymore.