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“And were your fears … justified?” I can’t believe George has such fears. I’ve never seen him show any insecurity at all. “Were the pieces embarrassing?”

“Some of them, yes. But others—” He stops short. I know what he wants to say, but self-praise doesn’t come easily to George. It goes against his wiring. However, it’s important for him to talk about this, so I encourage him to muscle it out.

“Some of them weren’t bad, if I say so myself,” he manages between gritted teeth.

The lunch is becoming strangely emotional. George is turning me into some sort of stand-in psychologist. However, not only am I totally unqualified for this role (shouldn’t he call Charlie Rose instead?) but the fact that it’s George makes it all the more intimidating. George is the master interviewer: he’s conducted hundreds, if not thousands of interviews onstage and in print, and knows just which questions to ask (or, perhaps more important, not ask). With his encouragement I’ve done a few interviews myself for the magazine, but my style of interviewing couldn’t be more different. George is subtle and delicate. I give the maxim “there are no stupid questions” a backbreaking workout. And I’m not happy in the slightest about George witnessing this firsthand. Nevertheless, wiggling out is not an option. The task of summing up his life is obviously causing George distress, and he needs a sounding board.

“Do you feel like a different person now than when you started writing?” I ask. George looks at me curiously and frowns. Too vague, I think. Who wouldn’t feel that they’d changed over fifty years? But then he surprises me by answering.

“I am a different person,” he says sharply. “Being a writer didn’t come naturally. I had to coach myself, learn little by little.”

“Did you have any mentors?” Better: a concrete question. George muses about the influence of Paul Gallico, a sportswriter and novelist who had been his model for the “professional amateur,” but the question obviously doesn’t engage him.

“What about how to write sentences, that sort of thing? Did you imitate anyone?”

Again George answers somewhat indifferently. I’m missing the mark. There’s something else he wants to talk about—his insecurities are elsewhere.

“Well, what’s the hardest part of your job, George?” I ask, deciding to be as blunt as I can.

Suddenly he lights up. At last! his expression seems to say.

“Performance,” he says. “Performance is the part that I dread. Getting in front of an audience, having to speak and entertain …” He shudders. “I get so bloody nervous.”

This gives me a bit of a chill, because for George to even talk about “performance” means he’s stepping out of character, which, either because he’s incapable or because he refuses, he simply does not do. George onstage, George regaling guests at a party, George holding court among autograph seekers at a restaurant, are all more or less the same person as George in the office or at home. The mask doesn’t fall away. But everyone who knows George has at one time wondered how happy he is about being “George” all the time, and whether he’s ever wanted to say “Enough! I’m tired of being charming.”

“You really don’t enjoy performing?” I ask incredulously.

Frowning, he shudders again. “Sometimes I hate it,” he says, another shock—George never uses the word “hate.” “I get so bloody nervous and worked up. ‘How am I going to do this? I have no idea what I’m doing! Why am I here? What if I fall on my face?’ Oh, it’s absolutely terrifying.”

George has none of his usual spirit as he says this. He simply looks tired. And now I’m reeling, for not only does this upend my image of George as someone with zero inclination to look inward or engage in self-doubt, but it challenges the whole notion of him as a kind of overgrown child. After all, why would someone do something he hates except out of a sober sense of duty?

“George, I have to tell you, I never thought you were doing anything but having fun.”

“Well, then, you see, I am a fraud.” And as if it pleases