(or at least snorted quietly to myself at my desk, at 3:36 AM)
....(Philip Roth's) very public retirement, so formal I wonder if there wasn't cake and a gold watch. It's almost as if he's managed to normalize the whole crazy enterprise of being Philip Roth and be a glove manufacturer who has decided to move to Florida -- followed by the equivalent of postcards from Roth, with phrases like "This not-writing thing is great!" scrawled on the back, written from a pool somewhere as he floats on a raft with a colourful drink in his hand.
- J.D. Salinger, The Escape Artist, Thomas Beller
ETA 40% in fell abruptly out of love with Beller with a bad bump when he declared "(Thurber's) most enduring contribution to the culture is 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.'" (! and even !! -- From which I can only conclude he has NEVER read My Life and Hard Times.) (Also, Beller's little blog-essaylets about his daughter in the New Yorker seem faintly creepy, as if he sees her mainly as a source of endlessly cute salable copy.)
descensus Averno facilis est