Conversation provoked by Claudine Gay and moving on to [well I won't name him] and Maurice Sendak

 How many articles have I written? More than 200. More than 300? How many times did I plagiarize? Probably none. Fewer than Claudine Gay, anyhow. Now, someone who became a chaired professor stole a Fitzgerald book of mine in which I had glued in several pages of analysis and published it--a little askew at times because the thief, only later a chaired professor, was not smart enough to make any connection I had not spelled out. And there was the time one of the most famous mystery writers sent me one of his books with a handwritten tribute to one of my best articles, the one on Deconstructing Blackmur's The Art of the Novel and Liberating James's Prefaces. The great writer said I had ennobled him. I am sure I had. Then by ways I do not trace our discussion wandered to how hard it is to accept criticism. The one with memory intact mentioned the time Maurice Sendak got very mad at me. It's a long story which I will not tell here. It involves my reading what was presented to me as final copy of one of his children's books and pointing out that it would be a lot better if he moved these pages before those pages. He was not pleased. He shared his opinion that criticism should always be positive. The day passed and he finally looked at what I had seen and exploded: "GOTT IN HIMMEL!" Pages had been mixed up. I sweetly reminded him that I had been a textual scholar. How much random morning conversation will Claudine Gay provoke?