A perfect passage in a sweet Sunday profile of Budd Schulberg

Robert Chalmers in the independent goes a round with Budd Schulberg. This is by far not the best paragraph but it is great: "A well-preserved and alert 94, Schulberg sits by a log fire while his fourth wife Betsy Langman, a former actor and magazine journalist who protects his interests with formidable devotion, is discussing percentages on the phone. Budd seems more interested in looking out for the swans that visit Aspatuck Creek, the stretch of water just beyond his window. Some of them will take corn from his hand. If you didn't know, you would never guess that this gentlest of ornithologists, who speaks with a slight stammer, would be a legend even if all he'd ever produced was his boxing journalism.

'Did you ever fight, yourself?'

'I tried to box,' he says. 'But I had two major flaws: I never liked being hit on the nose. And I never developed a strategy to avoid being hit on the nose.'"