America Was And Is The Immigrant's Dream.

There's A Curious Knot That Binds Novelists And Terrorists...years Ago I Used To Think It Was Possible For A Novelist To Alter The Inner Life Of The Culture. Now Bomb-makers And Gunmen Have Taken That Territory. They Make Raids On Human Consciousness. What Writers Used To Do Before We Were All Incorporated.

The Cheesecake Was Smooth And Lush, With The Personality Of A Warm And Well-to-do Uncle Who Knows A Hundred Dirty Jokes And Will Die Of Sexual Exertions In The Arms Of His Mistress.

When My Head Is In The Typewriter The Last Thing On My Mind Is Some Imaginary Reader. I Don't Have An Audience; I Have A Set Of Standards.

Naturally A Direct Comparison Of Terrorist And Novelist Is Complete Nonsense. But There Was Once A Time When The Novelist Also Had Some Influence On How His Contemporaries Thought, The Way They Saw The World, The Way They Lived.

In This Country There Is A Universal Third Person, The Man We All Want To Be. Advertising Has Discovered This Man. It Uses Him To Express The Possibilities Open To The Consumer. To Consume In America Is Not To Buy; It Is To Dream. Advertising Is The Suggestion That The Dream Of Entering The Third Person Singular Might Possibly Be Fulfilled.