| Chapter 1: Golden Boy |
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I would be better off, he thought, if I'd known I was writing that kind of book. But he had not known. He had not even believed that he would find a publisher, back in the days when he had been writing that book -- the days right after he had married Joan. Together, they did not think about money or success. It was the pure act of creation which ignited his imagination; and the warm spell of her pride and eagerness kept him burning like a bolt of lightning, not for seconds or fractions of seconds, but for five months in one long wild discharge of energy that seemed to create the landscapes of the earth out of nothingness by the sheer force of its brilliance -- hills and crags, trees bent by the passionate wind, night-ridden people, all rendered into being by that white bolt striking into the heavens from the lightning rod of his writing. When he was done, he felt as drained and satisfied as all of life's love uttered in one act. |