Without A Reader, I Cannot

It Is Not, As Somebody Once Wrote, The Smell Of Corn Bread That Calls Us Back From Death; It Is The Lights And Signs Of Love And Friendship.

When The Beginnings Of Self Destruction Enter The Heart, It Seems No Bigger Than A Grain Of Sand.

We Praise Him, We Bless Him, We Adore Him, We Glorify Him, And We Wonder Who Is That Baritone Across The Aisle And That Pretty Woman On Our Right Who Smells Of Apple Blossoms. Our Bowels Stir And Our Cod Itches And We Amend Our Prayers For The Spiritual Life With The Hope That It Will Not Be Too Spiritual.

The Writer Cultivates, Extends, Raises And Inflates His Imagination, Sure That This Is His Destiny, His Usefulness, His Contribution To The Understanding Of Good And Evil. As He Inflates His Imagination He Inflates His Capacity For Evil.

The Novel Remains For Me One Of The Few Forms Where We Can Record Man's Complexity And The Strength And Decency Of His Longings. Where We Can Describe, Step By Step, Minute By Minute, Our Not Altogether Unpleasant Struggle To Put Ourselves Into A Viable And Devout Relationship To Our Beloved And Mistaken World.