Confessions of a Failed Novelist

TWENTY years ago I published a short story called “Larsen’s Novel.” The plot was simple: A man named Larsen unexpectedly presents his best friend, Flem, with the novel he’s written. Flem spends the rest of the story crafting increasingly far-fetched excuses to avoid reading the book.

It’s hard to blame Flem. Larsen’s novel tracks the exploits of Red Lawson, “a periodontist with the soul of a bluesman.” A brief excerpt of Larsen’s opus should suffice:

“I have never been so insulted in all my life,” Rosetta Stone screeched. Her green eyes blazed like a forest fire ablaze.

“What did I do?” Red declared, his eyes like the eyes of a deer whose eyes are caught in a set of headlights.

But the only answer he received was the slamming of his door, like a crack of thunder inside the eardrum of his heart.

I had a lot of fun writing the story. But “Larsen’s Novel” was also a veiled confession. In the three years preceding its composition, I myself had written a novel nearly as wretched as Larsen’s. I, too, had foisted this monstrosity upon a host of unlucky friends, as well as an agent who took six months to read what she could before informing me (in forty seconds) that we were best to part ways.

I wish I could report that