Books: It Just Looks Easy

WRITERS AND WRITING (381 pp.] —Robert van Gelder — Scrlbner ($3).

Readers generally take it for granted that writers like to write. It is perhaps also generally assumed that after a little practice they find writing easy. The fact is that most writers find their work desperately difficult, no matter how long they have been at it, and regard the whole literary process as one part pleasure and nine parts drudgery.

Doubtless a few special cases, including geniuses and college sophomores, enjoy the process; writers as a group have to drive themselves to it. As a group they have always been spiritual hypochondriacs,...