Lipton’s Journal/February 22, 1955/674

When I take Lipton’s I am free of guilt. Hence I understand. Guilt is the inverse function of understanding. The academic compulsive is the guilt-ridden man who never has the faintest understanding of the subject to which he has given his life. When an academician begins to understand his subject (as indeed often happens) he solves a thousand other mysteries at the same time. In a funny way, I was the academician of sex while I was writing The Deer Park. The Deer Park is authoritative (indeed, author—iative) on sex, but doesn’t understand it at all. And too the author is the authoritarian, the man who does not understand, which is why authors are invariably such horses asses.