Thought for the Day, from Joseph Heller

Before novelists start publishing best sellers, they need day jobs.

In twentieth-century New York, that neccessity sometimes led to writing advertising copy. Scott Fitzgerald did it. At The Merrill Anderson Company after World War II, so did Joseph Heller.

Judging from John Bogle's blog, the author of Catch 22 still has a way with words. Mr. Bogle recently told this antecdote to the MBA graduates at Georgetown University:

At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, the late Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, the author Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel, Catch-22, over its whole history.

Heller responds, "Yes, but I have something he will never have: Enough."