There's an example of a writer with his cart before his horse, where he knows what he wants to say, and he's going to prove it somehow. Replacing the cue ball on the table with a rueful grin, he recalls an analogous experience. And it was good news because the Times isn't going to blast nobody from nowhere. It was 14 June 197 and so my picture and that review appear in a collector's edition of the Times. It's a funny story now.
Reviews are an interesting problem for a writer.
Honestly, I'm not really used to them. It's part of the marketplace, and I try to not think of the marketplace. A scratch indeed, but it's the kind of self-deprecatory anecdote Carlson likes to impart when he is a guest instructor at writers'conferences. As the billiard balls have stopped dropping for him, Carlson turns philosophical. He explains that he continually seeks out new challenges as a writer, so that he doesn't find himself writing the same book, or story.