The novelist E.L. Doctorow has helped me out with my writing without even knowing it. At one point, he said something like, “Writing a book is like driving at night: you don’t need to see the whole way ahead, just a short way in front of you…” I’m sure he said something more poetic than that about it, probably involving the quality of headlamp illumination through trees, or something else that evokes the strange and special quality of driving somewhere unfamiliar at night. In any case, that helped me out a lot. I’m very detail-oriented and so is my writing. It’s always an effort for me to see the “big picture” in whatever I do, although I’ve evolved a lot of strategies for viewing it over the years — and the notion that one can just make a solid plan for the larger writing and travel as far as the headlights go at a time is one of them. So today, while I’m embroiled in election politics and writing, I wanted to share this short essay with you, sent to me by my ever-alert auntie. It’s what E.L.Doctorow had to say about Bush a couple of years ago. Unfortunately, it still fits — there are just more dead young Americans missing from our lives. Check it out.