a bridge to nowhere

(From a conversation going on in sffnet -- )

I actually did read _The Bridges of Madison County_ -- I took it on a long train ride with no other books, vowing to read the whole damned thing so that I could figure out how to write a best-seller.  It was kind of depressing.  I couldn't do it even as a pastiche.  Too fundamentally dishonest and manipulative.  My agent at the time, Robert P. Mills, summed it up.  He said I would never be a best-seller.  On the one hand, I didn't write well enough, and on the other hand, I couldn't write badly enough.  I should be happy I had a genre audience.  This is the agent who couldn't sell _The Forever War_, though he supposedly sent it to eighteen publishers.Joe