My eyebrow throbs. I decide to bait Jerry.
"You never talk about writing," I say. "You've never brought up the subject on your own, not even once."
"And what do you do?" counters Jerry. "I don't hear you babbling on about barn cleaning, or pouring anhydrous ammonia on your stubble, or whatever else it is you do."
"That's different. It was Annie who got me to rent the farm. It was Annie who got me to buy it. Not that I don't like it. But I don't know enough about it to talk about it all the time. I talk about baseball, though, and about my stadium. How many times have I told you about my stadium?"
"Don't ask," says Salinger. "You're worse than a kid wanting to show off a new toy."
"That's what I mean. You and I, we do something worth talking about, but I talk and you don't. I mean, everybody talks about what they do. Hell, have you ever had a plumber or a TV repairman at your house? They yap on and on about the jobs they've done-- the sinks they've unplugged, the vertical-hold buttons they've replaced. My father owned a farm too, but he didn't know or care much about it. He was a plastering contractor, and his every conversation was dotted with words like scratch coat, sand finish, scaffolds, hawk and trowel, cement, lime, and stone chips. Even on the farm he used to talk about plastering in his sleep. 'Move those scaffolds,' or 'More mud, dammit!' he'd holler out while he was dozing on the sofa on a sunday afternoon.
"I could talk a good game of life insurance when I was in the business. Why, I sweat endowments, and I could work Twenty-Pay-Life into any conversation, even one about baseball. I hated the job, but I still talked about it. Now if I were like you and did something I really loved..."
"Writing is different, says Jerry. "Ordinary people don't understand. Even other writers don't understand."
"But that doesn't hold up. That doesn't stop other people. Mechanics talk about widgets and glodrobs and units of compression, and get off on the looks of incomprehension they get in return."
"Writing is different," Salinger insists. "Other people get into occupations by accident or design, but writers are born. We have to write. I have to write. I could work at selling motels, or slopping hogs, for fifty years, but if someone asked my occupation, I'd say writer, even if I'd never sold a word. Writers write. Other people talk."
- Shoeless Joe, W.P. Kinsella | 
