It is now two decades ago that I got my first job after college: as assistant to the manager of Access Services of Gelman Library, George Washington University. I had come to Washington, D.C. with hopes–no, expectations–of landing a well-paying job in editing or some other aspect of publishing. After several months of rejections (it was not as bad a time to come out of college as it is now, but the class of 1990 graduated only a three years after Black Monday, the day on which the Dow plunged over 22% and bankers jumped out of windows) I fell back on the only relevant work experience I had and applied for jobs at the library. I wore a suit (I had two) to my job every day. I had a variety of ties. I was half convinced the job would be a steppingstone to some other management position and half in utter denial of the fact that I had put my shoulders in the harness of a 9-5, 40 hour per week job. I wanted to be a writer. It was there, in the Gelman stacks, that I discovered the collected Paris Review interviews–an impressive row of hardbound volumes, featuring [...] Read More »