A Man Is Not Much If He

The Novel Is Resilient, And So Are Novelists.

Writing Keeps Me At My Desk, Constantly Trying To Write A Perfect Sentence. It Is A Great Privilege To Make One's Living From Writing Sentences. The Sentence Is The Greatest Invention Of Civilization. To Sit All Day Long Assembling These Extraordinary Strings Of Words Is A Marvelous Thing. I Couldn't Ask For Anything Better. It's As Near To Godliness As I Can Get.

Yes, This Is What I Thought Adulthood Would Be, A Kind Of Long Indian Summer, A State Of Tranquility, Of Calm Incuriousness, With Nothing Left Of The Barely Bearable Raw Immediacy Of Childhood, All The Things Solved That Had Puzzled Me When I Was Small, All Mysteries Settled, All Questions Answered, And The Moments Dripping Away, Unnoticed Almost, Drip By Golden Drip, Toward The Final, Almost Unnoticed, Quietus.

I Shall Strip Away Layer After Layer Of Grime -- The Toffee-colored Varnish And Caked Soot Left By A Lifetime Of Dissembling -- Until I Come To The Very Thing Itself And Know It For What It Is. My Soul. My Self.

That's One Of The Many Things I Hate About Life, That It's A Hideously Cliched Business.