Here's A Secret. Many Novelists, If They

He's One Of Those Smart, Drifty Young People Who, After Certain Deliberations, Decides He Wants To Do Something In The Arts But Won't, Possibly Can't, Think In Terms Of An Actual Job; Who Seems To Imagine That Youth And Brains And Willingness Will Simply Summon An Occupation, The Precise And Perfect Nature Of Which Will Reveal Itself In Its Own Time.

What She Wants To Say Has To Do Not Only With Joy But With The Penetrating, Constant Fear That Is Joy's Other Half.

We Throw Our Parties; We Abandon Our Families To Live Alone In Canada; We Struggle To Write Books That Do Not Change The World, Despite Our Gifts And Our Unstinting Efforts, Our Most Extravagant Hopes. We Live Our Lives, Do Whatever We Do, And Then We Sleep--it's As Simple And Ordinary As That. A Few Jump Out Of Windows Or Drown Themselves Or Take Pills; More Die By Accident; And Most Of Us, The Vast Majority, Are Slowly Devoured By Some Disease Or, If We're Very Fortunate, By Time Itself.

Remember, How Often The Great Art Of The Past Didn't Look Great At First, How Often It Didn't Look Like Art At All; How Much Easier It Is, Decades Or Centuries Later, To Adore It, Not Only Because It Is, In Fact, Great But Because It's Still Here; Because The Inevitable Little Errors And Infelicities Tend To Recede In An Object That's Survived The War Of 1812, The Eruption Of Krakatoa, The Rise And Fall Of Nazism.

You Cannot Find Peace By Avoiding Life, Leonard.