Times, etcetera — and my book took first prize. Actually, the only prize,” and she says “That’s wonderful, you make me proud, all my children do. Now I’m a little tired, dear, do you mind?” and he says “I’m sorry, I didn’t think it was so late — I’ll call tomorrow, and we’ll come see you next week and go out for lunch to celebrate,” and she says “If I’m up to it, that would be nice.” He calls his in-laws, and his mother-in-law says “It’s been on the radio, darling, it’s wonderful,” and he says “So fast? It just happened, or almost. And Jane’s okay, having a great time, and kids are fine, but, just out of curiosity, how did the newscast word it?” and she says “That you won this complicated award’s name and the book’s title — if you’d sneezed and someone quickly said ‘God bless you,’ you would have missed it,” and in the background his father-in-law says “Offer Robert my own congratulations and tell him a friend’s already called us and others are probably dialing now and that tomorrow I’m going to each of the bookstores here to see if because of this news any more copies have been sold. I’ve been watching the shelves and so far the same number of books have been there,” and she starts to repeat it, but he says “Thanks, I heard.” He calls the Globe reporter at home collect and says “First off I want you to know I tried charging this call to my home number, but the operator said I couldn’t unless someone was there to vouch for me,” and the reporter says “Don’t fret, man, the paper phoned me the fantastic news, and I’m honored you even took to contacting me when you have to have so much else to do,” and he says “You? You? The guy who made me and my publisher feel, till this big nomination deal came along, that the book was actually published once it came out? Come off it, we owe you tons,” and the reporter says “Thanks, much too kind, but long as you did phone, I have twenty minutes to get the story in, which without your call would have been sort of a dead impersonal account of your win, so tell me how you feel,” and he says “Still gratified and astonished beyond all measure, expectation and belief, and why? Because I was happily satisfied with just being a nominee, and I thought any of the other writers would get it, not only because of the high quality of their work and that they’re much better known but also because I didn’t think mine was that much or really even good enough to be published. But that’s what I’ve thought about all my works when I finished them and they came out, so it’s probably, in part, what I need to feel in order to start and then continue a new one,” and the reporter says “You proved yourself wrong with this one, bub, but fine, you gave me exactly what I needed for the article. But on the lighter side…your tux and new dress shoes — you didn’t feel, as you said you would, ridiculous and crippled in them?” and he says “Everything went perfectly — I even remembered how to tie a bow tie, and it’s still in place,” and the reporter says “Nice, nice, I like that. One quickie, Rob, and we’re gone. Think the entire experience will change your life or even, that word you love to hate, your lifestyle?” and he says “Certainly — and hey, I’m getting good at this, aren’t I? which is when I should start watching out — but certainly a prize of this magnitude would change the life of any writer who isn’t dead, and I’ll fight it every step of the way till I’m successful at not letting this new institutional success affect me. Because I’m not a speechmaker, prize-committee member — that’s ‘prize-committee’ with a hyphen — organization joiner, panel or symposium participant or a spokesman for anything, including my own work. But if the prize does give the book a lot more sales and me, ultimately, the economic independence to do more of what I want to and maybe even a lighter teaching load for the same pay at my university, that’ll be just dandy, for the only change I want in the style of my life is to find more time to read, think and write and spend more time with my family,” and the reporter says “Couldn’t be better — consider the article your first job ad,” and he goes back to the table, plate’s gone, desert’s there melting. “Maybe at the hotel I’ll room-service up a sandwich or steak,” he says to his wife. “I can afford to do that one night in my life, can’t I, even if I have to eat it in the bathroom, and what more deserving time than tonight?” and she says “Don’t look at me to stop you,” and he says “And champagne — not the little splits in the fridge but a whole big fancy French bottle if that cheap hotel’s got it,” and she says “Stick with the sandwich and maybe a good refrigerator beer.” Later there’s a reception for the nominees, judges, officials and heavy donors, he undoes his bow tie and lets it hang, and a photographer for a publishing trade journal says “Mind if I take you like that — it’ll look like the fitting end to an emotionally and physically hard day,” he is asked to sign several copies of Scorch that had been part of each table’s center display, along with a gardenia floating in a bowl and a rusty tin cup of sharpened pencils and paper clips, his publisher says “Let’s blow everything we’re going to earn with your book and go to Elaine’s for a nightcap and snack and chats with some of their famous literary clientele or at least a peek — you’re our entrée,” but he says they have to relieve the babysitter, do, kids are asleep, has a sandwich sent up and has it with a couple of foreign beers, they make love, again early next morning, around seven the phone rings, it’s the editor, “Just got a call they want you at a TV studio for national viewing, a limo could pick you up in half an hour, can you make it?” and he says “I’ve really nothing to wear but a smelly dress shirt and those wrinkled corduroy pants and old sports jacket I wore to those bookstores yesterday and the reading the other night,” and she says “That’s the costume — don’t even splash water on your hair or brush it back till it’s flat, we want you to completely look the part — only kidding…Mr. Terngull came with about a dozen shirts and pairs of socks so how about one each of his, though he’s almost twice your size?” interview with a Times cultural affairs reporter later that day about his origins, antecedents, influences, aims with this book, future writing plans, feelings about his years of general obscurity and near poverty and now sudden recognition and perhaps wealth and fame, articles and profiles on him, book sells well, paperback, number of translations in a year, all his out-of-print novels and story collections republished in a unified edition, his school gives him a paid year off and tenure, and when he comes back he only has to teach one semester a year, gives readings around the country once a month at ten times what he got before, State Department tour through Eastern Europe and then Latin America, is invited to a literary festival in Japan, a symposium on the arts and censorship in Spain, is offered so much money to teach for a week at a summer writing conference that he can’t turn it down, finishes the long short story he started before he got the award, plot’s too melodramatic, language all wrong, has an agent now who sells it to a major magazine, thinks maybe he’s not a short story writer anymore and should go back to what he did best or at least won him the award, starts lots of novels, tries writing plays, does an appreciation of a Norwegian writer he met at the Japanese festival and whose work he thinks just so-so but whom he’s come to like and know and places it in a prestigious literary journal, on commission writes an essay on what it’s like to be a cellar writer, as he calls it, and after so many years down there to suddenly come out into the light with a band playing and crowd waiting and much confetti thrown at him and applause and then, because this isn’t his natural environment, to feel he needs to retreat back into his hole, it takes nearly four years to finish a short novel, which he does between travels, appearances, essays and reviews, his new publisher thinks it inferior to Scorch and a bit too short to publish alone, but they’ll do it since they already paid him a sizable advance, while going over the copyedited manuscript he changes his mind about publishing it and returns the advance and tells the editor this novel isn’t the right one to follow Scorch, which anyway maybe wasn’t as good as he and lots of other people thought, “Maybe,” he says, “just to change things around a little, the next one should be a collection of stories or essays,” turns the novel into a short story, and the agent sells it, and no one he knows whose opinion he admires and trusts seems to like it, starts another novel, pecks away at it for years, puts it down, works on something else, takes it up, and so on, tries writing film treatments and scripts for lots of money but never gets the hang of it, possibly because he hates the restrictions and rules of the form and usually movies themselves, every so often reads an article about artistic prizes and what the big ones can do to the artist, some are able to overcome this ironic handicap and continue to grow in their work, most though repeat their old works or just don’t produce much or at all and, if they still feel the compulsion to create, do so in related but less demanding fields, something dries them up, sometimes their family life breaks up, and occasionally the artist himself cracks up, psychologists and critics and scholars are asked about this and give all sorts of reasons and interpretations, “It’s conceivable they only had one or two important things to say and only one or two original ways to say it, were fortunate to win the awards, and after that were afraid to parrot or parody themselves,” “Why look at it as a negative phenomenon? Perhaps in the prize-winning work they felt they did it all and didn’t see any point to continue creating, or just wanted an easier avocation, since art is hard,” “It might be they don’t think they deserve the acclaim and now feel sufficient guilt to stifle their work,” “Fame works strangely and often unfathomably on the subconscious, for the good or bad,” “It’s possible the individual artist fears that once he’s on top of his craft the critics will look for things to pick at or savage in his work that they never would have thought of touching on before, to bring him down a few pegs, for malevolent reasons, or because they think they’re actually helping him and he’s a big enough person now to take the assault or simply to ignore it,” he thinks maybe they’re all right, maybe only some are, though no two seem to agree with each other, tells his wife he wishes he could return to teaching full-time, for he just doesn’t have enough to do the other eight months of the year, “Well,” she says, “I’m sure it can be arranged.”