I’m Not Worthy! (Am I?)

I was deeply moved—and somewhat embarrassed—to read Larry Melton’s encomium for The Syncopated Times (and its hapless publisher). I do acknowledge that the survival of this wisp of a publication for four years, run not on a shoestring but the merest strand of frayed dental floss, is nothing short of miraculous. It is just that I have difficulty admitting agency in its unlikely continuance. Not that I am completely detached from responsibility: I readily take full credit for everything that is wrong with it. All the typographical errors are mine, as well as the bad sentences and lapses in taste. They’re part of my résumé. But I recoil at being congratulated. I am allergic to praise, and it’s been a lifelong condition. As with most chronic complaints, my reluctance to shine (and to be shone upon) goes back to childhood. The trouble was that I was one of those “smart” kids. I wasn’t insufferably diligent in my application, or even what one would call mildly ambitious. Everything I knew came too easily to me. (In fact, it still does.) The upshot was that I never had to do any of the grind work to sail through elementary school. And I was lauded for this. Things were different once I encountered higher math and foreign languages. Hurtling face-first into the brick wall of algebra was actually bracing. I had never known the taste of failure, and it had a particular metal