First things first

Countless sentences of Robert Richardson's have reached and jolted me, in his probing bios of Emerson, Thoreau, and James, and in his little survey of their respective early encounters with deep grief Three Roads Back and in First We Read's opening paragraph below.

It is a strong reminder that authorship, though audacious, is also only human. I'll bear it in mind as my friend and I finally burrow into our eagerly-anticipated collaborative book project.

I'd amend Richardson's title, though: first we read, then we talk, then we write. And then we repeat. Repeatedly.

But first I grade.

"The first sentence of Ralph Waldo Emerson's that reached me still jolts me every time I run into it. "Meek young men;" he wrote in "The American Scholar," "grow up in libraries believing it their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke, which Bacon have given, forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries when they wrote those books."" — First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process by Robert D. Richardson

Not many young men hang out in libraries anymore, but ours will not be a collaboration of young men. Except in spirit.