Recently 'The School of Life' had a new E.M. Cioran documentary on youtube. It reminded me of being young and reading Cioran because Jim Harrison liked Cioran and he was supposedly a philosopher and I was studying philosophy. So off I went to find Cioran at used books stores- hunting the stacks for thought or the more rare find- women. I read him but was never bowled over by his glorious pessimism. So those books sit on my shelf next to the other thinkers I don't think about anymore- the German Idealists, the Buddhists, and the moderns.

But the documentary had a quote- "Write books only if you are going to say in them the things you would never dare confide to anyone." Now, that's a gem. Worth writing down. As I work on the new book and the doubt monster that shares my office looks over my shoulder and asks, "What are you writing? A labor history? Porn? A fishing screed? A Clymer or Haynes manual? Literature?" That Cioran quote helps me tell the doubt monster to fuck off. And if you don't know what a Clymer or Haynes manual is you probably aren't in my demographic.