When Brew worked for IBM, they paid Edward Tufte, The Graphical Display of Quantitative Information, to come in as a consultant, look at the books they produced, and advise them on book design.

It pissed Brew off.

Everything Tufte told them, Brew had told them.

They had ignored Brew, a lowly associate information developer.

He wrote his manager a memo predicting they would ignore Tufte too, because his suggested changes to existing procedures were not in accordance with existing procedures.

They did.

Brew had inherited a paid-for house.

He batted his head against the wall for 3½ years.

Then he quit.

In his letter of resignation, which he kept in his desk, and updated, frequently--all he had to do was date it--he said, "This job is too big a waste of my time."

William Faulkner hated to go to Hollywood. The only reason he went was he was desperate for money.

Until Malcolm Cowley's Portable Faulkner came out, and he won the Nobel Prize, he was chronically desperate for money.

Faulkner was paying for Rowan Oak, and Bailey's Woods, he had to take care of his widowed mother, take care of a feckless brother, and his children, and another brother's widow, and child, take care of Estelle's two children, by a former marriage, and their child, take care of several black servants, keep a stable.

Brew's paid-for house was burning a hole in his pocket. At IBM.

Now, his annuity was burning a hole in his pocket. As a grant writer.

He wanted to tell his bossman the job was too big a waste of his time.

The job he was doing was too big a waste of his time.

Faulkner turned down a commission to write a nonfiction book about the Mississippi River because he thought he had another novel in him.

Brew didn't want to screw the next couple of months up bitching about having to work, and drive to work, which was slowly grinding him away.

He didn't want to screw up the next two novels.

DRAGGING UP and 258.

Well, now, Brew had an LDA grant.