That 'writers Write' Is Meant To Be

And Then There Were The Wallflowers Who Had Recognized For Years That The Thing Was Hopeless, Who Had Found In That Information A Kind Of Calm. They No Longer Tried, With A Bright And Desperate Effort, To Sustain A Conversation With Somebody's Brother, Somebody's Usher, Somebody's Roommate, Somebody's Roommate's Usher's Brother... The Category Of Wallflower Who Had Given Up On All This Was Very Quiet, Not Indifferent, Only Quiet. And She Always Brought A Book.

Speech, Tennis, Music, Skiing, Manners, Love- You Try Them Waking And Perhaps Balk At The Jump, And Then You're Over. You've Caught The Rhythm Of Them Once And For All, In Your Sleep At Night. The City, Of Course, Can Wreck It. So Much Insomnia. So Many Rhythms Collide. The Salesgirl, The Landlord, The Guests, The Bystanders, Sixteen Varieties Of Social Circumstance In A Day. Everyone Has The Power To Call Your Whole Life Into Question Here. Too Many People Have Access To Your State Of Mind. Some People Are Indifferent To Dislike, Even Relish It. Hardly Anyone I Know.

Hardly Anyone About Whom I Deeply Care At All Resembles Anyone Else I Have Ever Met, Or Heard Of, Or Read About In Literature.

The Writer Has A Grudge Against Society, Which He Documents With Accounts Of Unsatisfying Sex, Unrealized Ambition, Unmitigated Loneliness, And A Sense Of Local And Global Distress. The Square, Overpopulation, The Bourgeois, The Bomb And The Cocktail Party Are Variously Identified As Sources Of The Grudge. There Follows A Little Obscenity Here, A Dash Of Philosophy There, Considerable Whining Overall, And A Modern Satirical Novel Is Born.

I Think When You Are Truly Stuck, When You Have Stood Still In The Same Spot For Too Long, You Throw A Grenade In Exactly The Spot You Were Standing In, And Jump, And Pray. It Is The Momentum Of Last Resort.