He wrote in the margins of a notebook around the same time, “I am a McArthur [sic] Fellow. Boy am I scared. I feel like throwing up. Why? String-free award—nothing but an avowal of their belief that I am a ‘Genius.’ I don’t feel like a Genius.” He spent a lot of time writing letters in procrastination, many of them about procrastination, as he cast around for what was keeping him from feeling he could write anything bigger or braver than his “microstories.”
