Perspective

Recently remembering the sad expression of a Dos Passos scholar who was an early office mate of mine at the university, I recall today, springing from the Wordstock rejection, a Portland writer of note who had established himself long before I arrived on the scene. In his view, I was a new kid on the block, as indeed I was, and as my star rose, his descended behind the mountains. I caught, now and again, an expression of dismay from him, which didn't make sense to me at the time; I thought, in fact, he was something of a snob. He was just experiencing the waning of local visibility and not enjoying it. An endless ebb and flow of the writer's ego.

And I always come back to the UCLA class I took, 19th C Popular American Lit, reading all the writers famous in their lifetimes that no one remembers, reads, or gives a shit about today.

Writing inside-out is more difficult, but also more noble, than writing outside-in. As Camus says, the struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart.