Have you read Marilynne Robinson's Gilead?

Finished reading Marilynne Robinson’s Pulitzer Prize winning book, Gilead last night. I loved it, loved it, loved it. It’s a posthumous letter of a preacher in Iowa to his son, a lyrical meditation on the beauty of life, the relationships between fathers and sons, and the manifestation of God everywhere. It’s the kind of luminous novel that comes around once every two or three years; it’s why I read fiction.

And it was kind of – well, no actually it was totally - depressing to read, because I realize how utterly and insurmountably far I am from being able to write anything good. Gilead is a sun. At best, I can produce a candle. Truly, it makes me want to give up, go wrap my lips around a crack pipe and fuck my brains out. To obliterate my pain, you understand.