The other day I ran into a neighbor who told me she still had to return my book. I had lent it to her months ago and forgotten all about it. A few minutes later she knocked at my door and handed me the wayward copy of The Joys of Travel, without a word about its contents. She smiled inscrutably; I couldn’t tell if she had liked it, or hated it, or never opened it. There are people who don’t realize that writers are needy creatures who crave feedback, not unlike parents, on what they’ve brought into the world.
After she had gone, I opened the book and found a cartoon from the New Yorker that I had not placed in it. It showed a man standing at a grill grilling a book. A woman appears to his left, holding two glasses of wine and asking, “How’s your book coming?”
I wondered if it was a critique or a suggestion.
