Little Help, Please?

By Ben Yagoda. John Updike once commented in a letter to his editor William Maxwell, “It occurs to me that the world would not be significantly poorer if I stopped writing altogether. Only a bottomless capacity for envy keeps me going. That, and the pleasure of reading proofs and designing book jackets.”
I know what he meant, though I would never presume to design a book jacket, or, indeed, anything. More...