Fax, Fed Ex, computer modems: the great world is ahum with high-speed messengers, helping everybody hurtle through his wheedling and dealing at record pace. Sometimes it seems the only people left lurking about that most primitive example of communications hardware, the mailbox, are the creators of that quaintest of software, the novel.
For unsuccessful writers the postal service mostly outputs despair: rejection slips and royalty statements showing negative balances. For literature's grandees it mainly offers worldly delights: invitations to accept honorary degrees, chair a grant-giving panel or cash a nice subsidiary-rights check. The more typical professional writer, however, earns neither pity...
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