On Writing-Part 6

One of the many different jobs I had in my youth was selling encyclopedias door-to-door. I don't recommend trying this in upstate New York in the winter, when on top of everything else you have to hear the locals joke that the three feet of white stuff you have to trudge through isn't snow, it's 'lake effect'.
My supervisor was a long-time salesman named Dan Barshay. The man was full of stories about things he'd done and girlfriends he'd had, and sfter a while he was easy to tune out. When he found out that I wanted to be a writer, he started talking about the novel he was going to write. He even had a title for it: "Eli, Eli'. There was a gay acquaintance of his who was going to let him use a vacation cabin to do his writing. Yet for all the time I knew him, I never saw him write a single line. No, this novel was something he was going to write real soon, even if it took him years and years to do it, and when it was finished it would be great. He also went on at length about Norman Mailer. To him, Mailer was the greatest writer of all time, and all other writers should strive to be like him. He gave me some books by Mailer to read. I did, and came away with a strong urge not to read any more Mailer if I could help it. At some point, Dan found some writing I'd done and read it, without asking. He told me there was one piece that led him to believe I might make it as a writer, calling it 'tight' and 'spare', almost like Mailer's writing, as he put it.
I'm pretty sure that wherever he is, whether in this world or the next, Dan Barshay is still bending ears about his novel. He'd managed to convince me for some time that writing was incredibly difficult and complicated and only serious novels were worth writing, as long as they mimicked the style of Norman Mailer.