Now That I Knew Fear, I Also

She Had Always Been A Reader… But Now She Was Obsessed. Since Her Discovery Of The Book Hoard Downstairs From Her Job, She’d Been Caught Up In One Such Collection Of People And Their Doings After The Next…the Pleasure Of This Sort Of Life – Bookish, She Supposed It Might Be Called, A Reading Life – Had Made Her Isolation Into A Rich And Even Subversive Thing. She Inhabited One Consoling Or Horrifying Persona After Another…that She Was Childless And Husbandless And Poor Meant Less Once She Picked Up A Book. Her Mistakes Disappeared Into It. She Lived With An Invented Force.

You Really Need To Approach Each Book As If You Have Been A Failure. . . . If You Start To Believe Your Flap-copy, You're Finished As A Writer.

I Want To Hear What's Happened To You," She Said Evenly After A While. She Gestured In The Direction, Down River, Of The Butcher Shop. "it's Just That There Is Nowhere Else To Start," She Said Gently. "niether Of Us Is The Same. But I'm Different Because Of Small, Good, Manageable Things. You're Different Because ... Things I Don't Know.

My Mind Ran Over Scenes Of Shesheeb Seducing Margaret Until I Was A Wagon Dragged By The Runaway Horses Of My Jealousy.

To Be Of Mixed Blood Is A Great Gift For A Writer. I Have One Foot On Tribal Lands And One Foot In Middle-class Life.