Once, a famous writer gave a talk to a lot of aspiring writers. This kind of thing happens all the time — and not just at colleges and universities, but at weekend scriptwriting workshop seminars and writers conferences, that sort of thing.

It’s a small industry. In airport Hiltons and community colleges around the country, on any given weekend, some intermittently successful author or screenwriter holds forth before a rapt cluster of people who aspire to be intermittently successful authors or screenwriters. They come for career advice; he comes to act lordly and superior.