The Novelist Has More And More To

He Became Another Data Point In The American Experiment Of Self-government, An Experiment Statistically Skewed From The Outset, Because It Wasn't The People With Sociable Genes Who Fled The Crowded Old World For The New Continent; It Was The People Who Didn't Get Along Well With Others.

Readers And Writers Are United In Their Need For Solitude, In Their Pursuit Of Substance In A Time Of Ever-increasing Evanescence: In Their Reach Inward, Via Print, For A Way Out Of Loneliness.

The Mekons Were Kind Of Like The Background Music Of My Life.

Depression Presents Itself As A Realism Regarding The Rottenness Of The World In General And The Rottenness Of Your Life In Particular. But The Realism Is Merely A Mask For Depression's Actual Essence, Which Is An Overwhelming Estrangement From Humanity. The More Persuaded You Are Of Your Unique Access To The Rottenness, The More Afraid You Become Of Engaging With The World; And The Less You Engage With The World, The More Perfidiously Happy-faced The Rest Of Humanity Seems For Continuing To Engage With It.

The More You Pursue Distractions, The Less Effective Any Particular Distraction Is, And So I'd Had To Up Various Dosages, Until, Before I Knew It, I Was Checking My E-mail Every Ten Minutes, And My Plugs Of Tobacco Were Getting Ever Larger, And My Two Drinks A Night Had Worsened To Four, And I'd Achieved Such Deep Mastery Of Computer Solitaire That My Goal Was No Longer To Win A Game But To Win Two Or More Games In A Row--a Kind Of Meta-solitaire Whose Fascination Consisted Not In Playing The Cards But In Surfing The Streaks Of Wins And Losses.