I spent my afternoons with a babysitter, a small, stolid gray-haired lady named Mrs. Albrecht
The night of the dinner, Barth had on a black beret, worn at a jaunty angle upon his bald crown, and looked just like John Barth. He made the rounds to each table, and when he took a seat at ours, he talked wittily about hot-air balloons, which was just the sort of thing you’d expect John Barth to …
Questions: Is there any more tenuous, insecure, and impossible job than a writer’s? Are there ever any judgments more unforgiving than literary judgments? Why do we, or did we (back when we, for better or worse, cared a little more than we do now), insist on evaluating a writer’s career—the career …
Remember, remember, I’d tell myself, whatever power this job provides is an illusion.
Remember, remember, I’d say, when you get thrown back into who you are, you’d better have something there.
Another lesson: I had to remember to quit before I got fired. I didn’t want to become a Japanese sol…
during a particular recent phone conversation with him I had experienced an existential “I am a fraud” moment—a line he repurposed (to my biliousness) in the first sentence of his celebrated tour de force “Good Old Neon.”
