biographer has an almost irresistible urge to fictionalize their subject, and i do wonder what i did to keepler, right? because it's even more of a problem when it's a historical subject. but there you get all the information together you can, and then you do the best you can. when it's somebody that's still alive, you really have a certain obligation to them to make it a little more real than that, to keep it a little more authentic. and i had the advantage of going in fairly often to talk to him. occasionally, when i had a book coming out, i'd give him a copy, i would go in with that purpose so that through the years and especially when i was writing this book, i would see him this person. and i would think about what i'd written about him, and be i would think, no, it isn't quite right, i'm fictionalized him a little bit. it's so easy to do. it's just the choice of a word, the tone of a paragraph, the urge to make something just a little more dramatic or a little more funny, and it's so easy to do and so hard to resist. i also felt obliged to respect to a certain extent, to a large extent re