From behind its grand pillars the New York Public Library on Fifth Avenue glows and beckons through a blur of rain. The fantastical lions, Patience and Fortitude, sit astride stone steps too high for ordinary mortals. It is the night of the Literary Lions gala, an award coveted by practitioners of fiction and nonfiction, who will be draped in red sashes and bronze medals, warriors in the battle of wits to create something that might last. My toes, slippered in satin, float upward step by step, my arm buoyed by the man who sculpted my career as a writer. “Clay!” people call out. It’s Tom Wolfe and Gay Talese and Vartan Gregorian, then president of the library; everybody knows Clay. He has done far more to deserve recognition than I, having given countless writers their voice. But tonight, he takes pride in the fact that I am one of the new literary lions. His throat inflates like a bullfrog who commands the pond. I am happy too, and sick with fear. At the top step, jaded news photographers pretend to be thrilled to see each couple.
