Gary North vs. Timothy Eagan

EAGAN: Most of the writers I know work every day, in obscurity and close to poverty, trying to say one thing well and true. Day in, day out, they labor to find their voice, to learn their trade, to understand nuance and pace. And then, facing a sea of rejections, they hear about something like Barbara Bush’s dog getting a book deal.

NORTH: May they all starve as the newspaper monopolies die.

EAGAN: Writing is hard, even for the best wordsmiths.

NORTH: What bunk! Think of Mencken. Or Rothbard. Or me. It’s pure joy — the more, the better.

EAGAN: Ernest Hemingway said the most frightening thing he ever encountered was “a blank sheet of paper.”

NORTH: Or an empty bottle. Paul Johnson did the number on that self-inflated fraud in Intellectuals.

EAGAN: And Winston Churchill called the act of writing a book “a horrible, exhaustive struggle, like a long bout of painful illness.”

NORTH: It was for Winnie’s researcher, whom he treated like dirt.

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.