Words Edgewise: The Anniversary Edition

The next time you get a chance to meet your favorite author, don’t go out of your way. Writers tend to have a gift for writing but not for gab. Kurt Vonnegut tells the story of a writers conference — in Iowa, of course — where he introduced his American writer-friend Nelson Algren to his Chilean writer-friend José Donoso. After a moment to gather himself, Algren said to Donoso, “It must be nice to come from a country that long and narrow.”