I'm sitting in a coffee shop in Brentwood, with a laptop in front of me, next to a window facing San Vicente Boulevard. I'm trying to write a book. Not sure yet what it'll be about, but it's going to be something deep, profound, voice-of-my-generation-ish, critically admired and vaguely popular (but not too popular, since popularity is the death of all aspirant "serious" literature). This book, I'm sure, will be so transcendent, so universally beloved, that the computer it was written on will be bronzed and displayed next to the pen and inkwell of the Constitution. The coffee shop it was written in will be designated a historical landmark. And I will be exalted and canonized and fondly remembered as one of the all-time greats -- that is, until I die and get my head chopped off to be cryogenically frozen in a lab in Arizona.
