Doctor Doctor, What Do You Say, Lets

If You Read A Novel In More Than Two Weeks, You Don't Read The Novel Really.

Doctor, I Had Never Had Anybody Like Her In My Life, She Was The Fulfillment Of My Most Lascivious Adolescent Dreams– But Marry Her, Can She Be Serious? You See, For All Her Preening And Perfumes, She Has A Very Low Opinion Of Herself, And Simultaneously– And Here Is The Source Of Much Of Our Trouble-a Ridiculously High Opinion Of Me. And Simultaneously, A Very Low Opinion Of Me! She Is One Confused Monkey, And, I'm Afraid, Not Too Very Bright.

For Someone Whose Roots In America Were Strong But Only Inches Deep, And Who Had No Experience, Such As A Catholic Child Might, Of An Awesome Hierarchy That Was Real And Felt, Baseball Was A Kind Of Secular Church That Reached Into Every Class And Region Of The Nation And Bound Millions Upon Millions Of Us Together In Common Concerns, Loyalties, Rituals, Enthusiasms, And Antagonisms. Baseball Made Me Understand What Patriotism Was About, At Its Best.

I Think I Write Or Publish As Much As I Do Because I Can Bear Being Without A Book To Work On. But Routinely When I Finish A Book, I Think, "what Will I Do? Where Will I Get An Idea?" And A Kind Of Low-level Panic Sets In. And Then Eventually Something Happens. I Don't Know. If I Knew How It Happened I Would Repeat The Process, But I Don't Know - Something Just Occurs To Me.

World War Iii Will Be Triggered Off Not By Suppressed Nationalists Seeking Political Independence, As Happened The First Time Around When The Serbs At Sarajevo Shot The Heir To The Austrian Throne, But By Some Semiliterate, Whacked-out "loner" Who Lobs A Rocket Into A Nuclear Arsenal In Order To Impress Brooke Shields.