In the henhouse a baby rooster is crowing. The fog is just beginning to lift, and the air is very still. Already, in early August, the maples are reddening. On the road beyond the trees, a car advances and retreats. Somewhere, among the tamaracks, a sparrow cries, "Oh! Canada, Canada, Canada," and falls silent.

I'm sitting at my desk thinking about how much I love to play with prepositional phrases: to move them from place to place in a sentence, to substitute synonyms with slightly different sonic force (under, below, beneath; on, upon). The sparrow sings again. Now I look down at the cover of the book I've just pulled off my to-read pile. It's Philip Roth's My Life As a Man, which I bought for 25 cents last weekend at a yard sale. I'm not exactly a fan of Roth. In fact, I rather dislike him. Yet his work feels important to me. It reveals, painfully, a segment of a world that I must come to grips with, yet how would one define that world? It's one in which women are a torment to their men, in which intellect is a torment to the mind. There's great cruelty in Roth, yet kindness is not art, and I think he is an artist. But I'm loathe to say anything about where that artistry lies, for Roth is a writer who makes me feel less confident about my ideas. He makes me feel that I may have no ideas at all.