I’m holding his manuscript in my hand right now, and I can see the ebb and flow of his concentration; I can decode his back pain increasing and decreasing: smooth, steady handwriting at the top of, say, page ten, which then meanders on page eleven; random words written in the margins (dwarf . . . horsemen . . . watermelon . . . slaughter); complete sentences pierced by the straight lance of the writer’s discontent (Beekeeping was an attractive summer activity); adjectives keeping company with lonely, arid nouns (stinky wafting around feet; classic accompanying theft; golden melting over honey). Toward page thirteen, one can sense longer breaks between sentences, the thickly penciled words thinning out after a sharpening session. There are mid-sentence breaks, with syntactical discrepancies between independent and dependent clauses, suggesting his thought splitting, the splinters flying off in different directions. Sometimes the sentence simply ceases: We know, then nothing; It must be said, but it is impossible to know what must be said.