You look at the faces of women splaying their labia on porn sites or on the faces of most of the women on Myspace and you have to wonder if any of them are like Stephen Hunter, author of The Second Saladin and Point of Impact. Actually, you have to wonder if they could be any less like him.

You see, to be even a crappy author of crassly manipulative pulp you have to have some kind of insight, some kind of  inner life and interior monologue that observes even when you don’t want to observe. Desperation, the inward focus, those are what make you stupid. I want to be wet, I want to be hard, I want an orgasm and some money. Block everything else out and that’s how you become like everybody who pretends to be happy, to have what they want. That’s how you become your cousin Angela stuck in her bad marriage, stuck in a bad job, but grinning all the same.

Tags: book, books, author, writer, writers, authors, Stephen, Hunter, Earl Swagger, Point, of, Impact, The, Second, Saladin