I'm going to read a short and then a regular length story.
This will be sort of the sherbet between the courses.
I'm very fond of short short stories,
reading them and writing them, and I was very pleased
that in the course of People magazine's trashing my work,
they paid me an inadvertent compliment.
They were complaining that my stories are so short,
and the fellow called me James Michener's evil twin.
[LAUGHTER] This is one of the reasons
why it's from Reasons to Live.
It's called "The Man in Bogota."
"The police and emergency service people
failed to make a dent.
The voice of the pleading spouse does not
have the hoped for effect.
The woman remains on the ledge, though not, she threatens,
for long.
I imagine that I'm the one who must talk the woman down.
I see it, and it happens like this.
I tell the woman about a man in Bogota.
He was a wealthy man, an industrialist
who is kidnapped and held for ransom.
It was not a TV drama.
His wife could not call the bank and in 24 hours
have $1 million.
It took months.
The man had a heart condition, and the kidnappers
had to keep the man alive.
Listen to this, I tell the woman on the ledge,
his captors made him quit smoking.
They changed his diet, made him exercise every day.
They held him that way for three months.
When the ransom was paid, and the man was released,
his doctor looked him over, he found the man
to be an excellent health.
I tell the woman what the doctor said then
that the kidnap was the best thing to happen to that man.
Maybe this is not a come down from the ledge story,
but I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge
will ask herself a question, the question that
occurred to that man in Bogota.
He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good."
[APPLAUSE] A generous audience.