They wanted me to come to a high school in Glenview, Illinois, to lecture about my writing and they paid me very well, so I did it. Last Thursday. There was a time when I might have commanded more, but this was something like 250 dollars a minute for an hour or so. A lot of that time I just read from my work, or recycled old stories about myself, and it was a good cause, so why not. Of course there was the other part, the reception afterward, where you have to sign books, personalize them for people who paid extra for the privilege and let them have their picture taken standing near you, as if you were Mount Rushmore or, God forbid, their best friend. That part could make you throw up but it only lasts half an hour if you’re lucky and then you can escape and there’s enough money to help out with the foundation or for a nice little trip to Paris or someplace else where you can forget it ever happened.
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They were pretty quiet after that, but they applauded. And I read something else, something about Lillian Gish at a party after she had lost her hearing and her marbles, and something that happened to me, the surprise of old age, and then I was done. There were the usual questions, “I missed your play in London,” that sort, till we adjourned to the reception, where a dozen women, a goddam club or something, piled around me for a group photo that had to be taken a dozen times so each would have it on her own camera. Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop. And I couldn’t say, “No! I can’t do that! You know I can’t do that!”
