Modest egoists.

With a few self-promoting exceptions we avants are a retiring bunch. We lay ourselves out completely in our works and then recede in our persons. We figure our offerings, our new-borns are shining, they'll command attention; we've done our job and now don't want to interfere with the relationships the works will form with the world on their own, because we want those relationships actual, not pushed, forced, distorted, unreal. And this amidst the noise, the elbowing and bulldozing, the purposeful skewering of attention accomplished by brazen manipulative cynical slicko advertising: conmanship as culture. And then we get astonished when our shining babes don't get picked up. …