True story, Word of Honor:

Back in 1966, with the Vietnam War going on, in September, the start of a new academic year at the legendary Writers’ Workshop out at the University of Iowa, I introduced the world-class novelist Nelson Algren, onetime lover of Simone de Beauvoir, wife of Nobel Laureate Jean-Paul Sartre, to the world-class novelist José Donoso, nickname “Pepe,” both of them now in Heaven.

We three had all gone bust, and so had come to work as teachers of Creative Writing. I explained to Nelson that José, that Pepe, was from Chile. Nelson thought a moment, possibly about Simone de Beauvoir. And then he said to José, to Pepe,“It must be nice to come from a country that long and narrow.”