Brass Balls and Infinite Patience

Dorsey Kindler with William Langewiesche: Back in Davis, Langewiesche was about to finish his second Heineken when he mentioned one of his pet peeves – the mini-industry that had crept up around telling people how to write. It was mostly geared toward novelists, but it didn't matter. The books could all be boiled down to one sentence: write well.

"There is no special club," he said. "It doesn't matter who your friends are. It doesn't matter where you went to school. It only matters what you're capable of providing now. Write well. Period. But of course if they said that there wouldn't be that whole industry."

Magazines, in Langewiesche's opinion, are great beasts that have to be fed,…