[...] We bend toward the book in fascination and alarm, and the writer continues: “The old man was crying like a baby now and swinging wildly—harmlessly, now that he’d been hurt—swinging and crying, red-faced, like a baby with his diapers full.” “Yuk!” we say, and throw the book into the fire. What has happened, of course, is that the writer has forgotten that his characters’ situation is serious; he’s responded to his own imagined scene with insufficient warmth, has allowed himself to get carried away by the baby image, and, momentarily forgetting or failing to notice the scene’s real interest—the fact that a pathetic misunderstanding can have led to this—the writer snatches at (or settles for) a detail of, at best, trivial interest, dirty diapers. The writer lacks the kind of passion all true artists possess. He lacks the nobility of spirit that enables a real writer to enter deeply into the feelings of imaginary characters (as he enters deeply into the feelings of real people). In a word, the writer is frigid.