"'I T'ink I'd Like to Talk to Someone About Gettin' a Grant'"

"Charm wafted up the line, fragrant as peat smoke, as I heard him utter the magic spell: 'I'd like to start a museum of American literature.'

"He said something else too, but I didn't catch it, because I was already racing downstairs three marble steps at a time."

David Kipen in the Los Angeles Times discusses the origins of the American Writers Musuem.