People Shouldn't Trust Artists And

The Primary Thing I Should Do, Apart From Being A Good Husband, Brother, Son, And Friend, Is To Be A Citizen Activist. But I'm Afraid It Takes Away From The Writing. Not That Anything Depends On Whether I Put An Essay In 'the Nation' Or Not. But You Want To Participate.

What Makes The Voice Pathetic Is That It Doesn't Know What Kind Of People It's Reaching. Us. No One Hears It, Except Us. This Age Wanted Heroes. It Got Us Instead: Carefully Constructed, But Immobile. Subtle But, Unfit To Take Up The Burden Of The Times. It Happens. A Whole Generation Of Washouts. History Says Stand Up, And We Totter And Collapse, Weeping, Moved, But Not Sufficient.

I Don't Want To Name Names Because They'd Be Mad At Me If I Did, But People Who Are Significant Novelists Can't Get Published By Real Publishers At This Point, Or Have To Go Through Two Years Of Trying After Writing A Novel That's Taken Them Five Or Six Years And Simply Can't Get The Thing In Print. Or It Gets In Print And It Doesn't Get Reviewed In The New York Times Book Review And Disappears Without A Trace. I Mean, It's Terrifying. I Don't Know How Anybody Can Stand It. It's Such An Enormous Amount Of Work And The Economics Of It Are Really Quite Brutal.

Constitutional Democracy Has Created Astonishing And Apparently Irreversible Social Progress. All We're Interested In Is Talking About When Government Doesn't Work.

If You Know That Life Is Basically Going To Be Horrendously Difficult, At Best, And All But Unlivable At Worst, Or Possibly Even Unlivable, Do You Go On? And The Choice To Go On Is The Only Thing That I Think Can Be Called Hope. Because If Hope Isn't Forced To Encounter The Worst Possibility, Then It's A Lie.