American Scholar, January 1st, 1997
Physicist Robert Oppenheimer and poet Stephen Spender had much in common. Both had great talent and were acutely aware of it. Both befriended genuises in their fields that they admired greatly: Paul A.M. Dirac and W.H. Auden. Neither Oppenheimer, nor Spender, could emerge from the shadow of their friends' geniuses.
Early in 1981 I received an invitation to give a lecture at a writer's conference that was being held someplace on the Delaware River in Pennsylvania, just across from New Jersey. I don't remember the exact location, but a study of the map persuades me that it was probably New Hope...
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