[Theodore] Dreiser wrote this magnificent novel [Sister Carrie]. . . . But the publisher . . . didn't like it, they were afraid of it. So they buried it. And naturally it did nothing; I think it sold four copies. . . . Dreiser rented a furnished room in Brooklyn. He put a chair in the middle of this room and sat in it. The chair didn't seem to be in the right position so he turned it a few degrees, and he sat in it again. Still it was not right. He kept turning the chair around and around, trying to align it to what — trying to correct his own relation to the universe? He never could do it, so he kept going around in circles and circles. He did that for quite a while, and ended up in a sanatorium.