Pat Conroy and I have this in common, we were both surprised to learn that John Grisham’s new book was a collection of short stories. Here is where we differ. I have yet to write an Amazon.com “exclusive”  that mentions John Grisham alongside writers John Irving, Richard Russo, Anne Rivers Siddons, Chekhov, de Maupassant, Flannery O’Connor, William Faulkner and Eudora Welty.

I’m not saying Grisham isn’t a good storyteller. I’m not saying that at his best he’s not a great storyteller. And I’m not saying that I got a free copy of Grisham’s book before it was available to the public as, apparently, Conroy routinely does. I’m just saying that once there was a little boy who said he kept seeing wolves, but there actually were no wolves, so everybody stopped believing him. And then, this one time, there was a wolf. That’s all.