It's true that I'm taking a break from writing a regular column to do other things but it's got nothing to do with what dear Simon has or has not written.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Whether my columns are worth reading isn't for me to say.
A good column is one that sells paper. It doesn't matter how beautifully it is written and how much you admire the author... if it doesn't sell any papers, it's not a good column. It's a terrible yardstick to use, but in the newspaper business, that's the whole thing.
I talk to Simon, I write to him. I never used to write a diary. But now I'm writing a diary to him. I think it's not just me, but lots of others, family and friends, can still feel him around.
When I started work at Simon & Schuster in 1958, each of us got a bronze paperweight on which was written, in raised type, ''Give the reader a break,' Richard E. Simon.
In the fall of 1989, I was writing 600-word columns at the 'Herald.' My heart always was in long-form narrative writing, though. It's what I cut my teeth on at the 'Boston Phoenix.'
If you get an opportunity to work with David Simon, anybody with good taste would.
You know, I haven't written as much as most other writers. Certainly maybe those who keep a more regular schedule accomplish more.
What the beautiful-writing writers are most attached to is almost always superfluous.
But even writing the column for the 'Telegraph,' that idea of working to deadlines, which as an actor that's not something you have to do in the same way. It's excited me into wanting to do a bit more.
Column writing is like gas - it fills the available space.