'A Reader Who Is Moved to Emulation'

“My first novel, Bright Center of Heaven, is a compendium of all the writers I loved and admired. In a symposium at Smith College, Saul Bellow said something that describes it to perfection. He said, ‘A writer is a reader who is moved to emulation.’” I’ve learned that not every writer is a reader. That seems remarkable, though nothing in the human realm should still surprise me. Writing starts as blunt self-expression. As a little kid I wrote about things I liked -- the animals and plants in the fields and woods behind our house. I never had a strong impulse to be a complainer or junior-grade satirist. A fellow reporter once hacked the computer of an editor, now dead, a crude bully and deeply unpleasant man, and found a document titled something like “Things I Hate.” What followed was a list of grievances, mundane things like traffic and yogurt, that he might address in a column. That leaves unanswered a more fundamental question: why write? At its most primal, the urge recalls the…

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