He Worked for a Living

Sometimes I tell people I’m not an author.  I work for a living.  It might seem I’m making a joke, but I’m not.  The word author evokes for me the halls of academia, the rewards of spouting the party line, the preening and showing off of the latest intellectual fashions.  Intellectual fashions are like clothing fashions.  Some of them might suit you very well and look great on you, but you can bet most of them will look pretty awful to people in fifty years.  And yet wearing them marks you as...