Jack The Scribbler

“And I stick burning leaves in my foodhole. So, as a matter of fact, do Kurt Vonnegut, Molly Ivins, Susan Brownmiller, Vaclac Havel, and Lech Walesa. So did Pablo Picasso, Mary McCarthy, FDR, and George Sand. Charles Kuralt couldn’t get to LA from New York without flying first to Antwerp or to Mexico City, which may be why he quit CBS instead of cigarettes. One of the pleasures of going to Sweden a while ago for the Nobel Prizes was firing up late at night with Toni Morrison, Fran Lebowitz, and Sonny Mehta. In Stockholm, they’ve got ashtrays in the elevators. We are undercover everywhere, like moles at Langley. And from the opprobium, you’d think we were gay, or Jewish, or maybe even Violence on Television. And some of us probably are. But whatever happened to Live and Let Hack?”

— John Leonard, Tropic of Cancer (A Post-Toasties Postscript) as anthologized in When the Kissing Had to Stop

(Vonnegut picture from unfutz.blogspot.com)