Even a self-proclaimed hermit sometimes feels obliged to attend a party during the holiday season.
Social obligations are the enemy of the author, but from time to time they come in handy. They give him an opportunity to spy on the human race.
And as every connoisseur of the human race knows, there is no better argument against the theory of intelligent design than mankind itself. If I am the design of an intelligent deity, we must reinvent our whole concept of intelligence.
The only disadvantage of spying on the human race during cocktail parties is that the self-proclaimed hermit has to answer the same question every fifty minutes. “Could you tell me what your novel is about?”
Or, as a non-fiction author told me over dinner at Barolo in Manhattan, “Even people who should know better want to know if I can say what my thesis is in two sentences.”
If you can say what your thesis is in two sentences, why write sixty thousand other sentences?
And in The New York Times of today, December 7, I found this marvelous quote: "'If there's any theme to the year,' said David Rosenthal, the publisher of Simon & Schuster's flagship imprint, 'it's that people only want to read the truth.' So while nonfiction sales are generally good, he said, fiction sales are best defined, in Mr. Rosenthal's usual plain-spoken manner, by an expletive."
After centuries of reading lies, readers have apparently turned to the truth again.
The truth has become hip and fashionable.
Tomorrow morning, I’m going to Bergdorf & Goodman.
If the truth is in fashion, I need to change my wardrobe.