Strong Delusions Travel Like Cold Germs On

...my Basic Belief About The Making Of Stories Is That They Pretty Much Make Themselves.

These Self-appointed Deacons In The Church Of Latter-day American Literature Seem To Regard Generosity (of Words) With Suspicion, Texture With Dislike, And Any Broad Literary Stroke With Outright Hate. The Result Is A Strange And Arid Literary Climate Where A Meaningless Little Fingernail Paring Like Nicholson Baker's Vox Becomes An Object Of Fascinated Debate And Dissection, And A Truly Ambitious American Novel Like Matthew's Heart Of The Country Is All But Ignored.

What If There Were No Grownups? Suppose The Whole Idea Of Grownups Was An Illusion? What If Their Money Was Really Just Playground Marbles, Their Business Deals No More Than Baseball-card Trades, Their Wars Only Games Of Guns In The Park? What If They Were All Still Snotty-nosed Kids Inside Their Suits And Dresses? Christ, That Couldn't Be, Could It? It Was Too Horrible To Think About.

And Suddenly It Didn't Seem To Matter Any More, Nothing Would Matter If She Could Turn Over, Turn Over And See The Stars, Turn Over And Look Once And Die.

Why Don't We All Just Go Crazy When We Know Were Going To Croak? Because The Mind's A Monkey. You Put Things In Departments And You Go Ahead. You Go On And Plan For The Future And Assume That The Future's Going To Work Out Okay. Yet We Know That Sooner Or Later We're All Going To Be Eating Worms, Whether It's Fifty Years Or Sixty. It Might Be Tomorrow. It Might Happen Today.