At First, Writing For The

I Think I Became A Better Writer After I Started Writing For The New Yorker. Well, I Know I Did. And Part Of It Was Having My New Yorker Editor And Part Of It Is That Was When I Started Really Going On Tour And Reading Things In Front Of An Audience 30 Times And Then Going Back In The Room And Rewriting It And Reading It And Rewriting It. So You Really Get The Rhythm Of The Sentences Down And You Really Get The Flow Down And You Get Rid Of Stuff That's Not Important.

It Was My Friend Frank, A Writer In San Francisco, Who Finally Set Me Straight. When Asked About My New Look He Put Down His Fork And Stared At Me For A Few Moments. "a Bow Tie Announces To The World You Can No Longer Get An Erection."

I've Never Made Up Events, But I've Always Been A Big Exaggerator. It's Written On My Humorist License That I'm Allowed To Do That.

Living In A Foreign Country Is One Of Those Things That Everyone Should Try At Least Once. My Understanding Was That It Completed A Person, Sanding Down The Rough Provincial Edges And Transforming You Into A Citizen Of The World. What I Find Appealing In Life Abroad Was The Inevitable Sense Of Helplessness It Would Inspire. Equally Exciting Would Be The Work Involved In Overcoming That Helplessness. There Would Be A Goal Involved, And I Like Having Goals.

In New York I'd Go To The Movies Three Or Four Times A Week. Here I've Upped It To Six Or Seven, Mainly Because I'm Too Lazy To Do Anything Else. Fortunately, Going To The Movies Seems To Suddenly Qualify As An Intellectual Accomplishment, On A Par With Reading A Book Or Devoting Time To Serious Thought. It's Not That The Movies Have Gotten Any More Strenuous, It's Just That A Lot Of People Are As Lazy As I Am, And Together We've Agreed To Lower The Bar.