I watched a very strange documentary about The Wire last night

It was by the people who made the show, and it was strange because it was making a number of Important Political Points, but it was interspersed with various very pointed remarks made by the narrator (David Simon, who directs the wire) which were clearly directed towards specific people he hated when he was working as a journalist. And not like politicans or any other public figures, like other journalists and news editors and things. It was a bit of an Uneasy Mixture. Saying all these very NB things about the failure of the public school system in America, and the failure of the war on drugs, and the decline of journalism, and what terrible baddies the Bush administration were, and then going "BUT CLEARLY THE REAL VILLAIN WAS YOU, MAN I USED TO WORK WITH ON THE BALTIMORE SUN OVER TEN YEARS AGO." It was a good example of what happens when people let their "private grievances" spill over into other aspects of their lives. ANYWAY, there was one bit in the documentary where David Simon was talking about someone he actually did like, and he said "Ed Burns has the imagination of at least three men."
This sounds pretty feeble when you first hear it, like quite a rubbish compliment, but actually it is quite a thing to say about someone. I have been thinking about it a lot since I heard it because I am trying frantically to work out What Happens Next in this story I am writing, and I have come to the conclusion that I have absolutely no imagination whatsoever. I don't even have the imagination of half a man.
And THEN I was thinking about writers who have the imagination of lots of men, and obviously all the brilliant ones have the imagination of a whole bus full of people, but the one I was thinking about this specifically this morning was JD Salinger, and specifically that story called The Laughing Man. I think about that story all the time.
Here it is:
http://derosaworld.typepad.com/derosaworld/2010/01/jd-salinger-the-laughing-man.html
(It's quite amazing that it comes from a blog called DeRosaWorld, which is of course the name of my theme park.)