the literary theorists loved him, because he was doing literature that ma y tnk about what a s ilite zzandas. a h boxes for you to figure out. and i ved the fact that literature could be playful and to me, he was really my roanwh ils led about him was that he never wrote a novel, because i knew w neroi d that either because i'm lazy. you know, all of my ideas wod ly, that i have for any kind of writing that i would do, lasted maybe you owfr aoue ndd to a few thousand words and then that was the end. >> smith: short r >> hodgman: short form, and i so- t kn eug athe wen't a lot of people in the world paying big dolls r rus short stories that were imitations of borges. right? soanounoinhe 70s, yes, sure, of course, you could make a living that way. but in the early 1990s in new york city you had to do something else. so i decided to become, to work ipuisnga i took a job at aerary agency called writer's house, largely because i was in a beautiful old brownstone and looked like what a publishing compa should look like, in my mind. it had a lot of ferns around anlehecoheani was like, yeah, this