Today I realize that I have to thank my female friend in college for a good deal more than a happy half-year and a fine copy of Lawrence. She taught me about the cryptic code of books, and that is probably what made me a writer. I soon learned to explore the inner world of fictional seduction at first hand. Writing is teasing, exciting, a chase through the mysteries of narrative, filled with deception, delays, reticence and revelation, rising expectation and sudden fulfillment. The means of seduction is the book itself, that intricate object, with its great fan of pages far more complex in its messages than the most advanced word processor.
Designers design it - the right cover, the right typeface, the right style.
Then the booksellers take over. I am not sure what your bookstores in the States are like these days, but here in Europe they grow more exotic by the week. The lighting is low, coffee is served, evening readings and lunchtime signings tempt you to some literary assignation. You taste, you sniff, at last you buy. I'm an old writing hand now, with a large and noisy library that surrounds me as I write.