This is partly because it is not particularly chic for celebrities to come to New Jersey, which is just fine with us. We're somewhat blasé about celebrities out here because, in fact, most people from New Jersey are celebrities. I could just say the words "Frank Sinatra" and leave it at that, but the truth is that most of the movie stars, the really significant ones, Susan Sarandon, John Travolta, Michael Douglas, Kevin Spacey (who grew up about two blocks from where I write this), Tom Cruise (who grew up about a mile from here), Bruce Willis, Kirsten Dunst (about half a mile from Cruise's house), Elizabeth Shue (who went to the high school right outside my window), Ray Liotta, Robert Wuhl, Linda Fiorentino, Danny DeVito (who waited on tables two towns over), Whitney Houston (whose mom directs a church choir in Newark), Jason Alexander (who went to Livingston High right down the road) and, oh, maybe a couple of dozen others are from New Jersey. Other celebrity types like Bruce and Bon Jovi and Lauryn Hill (who shops at my Rite Aid) and most significant athletes, current or retired (such as Yogi Berra, who has a museum not far from me), are either from or live in New Jersey. And though it isn't widely known, nearly all truly great American literature was written by writers from New Jersey. (I refer not so much to our greatest man of letters, Edmund Wilson, or our greatest living poet, W. S. Merwin, or even Philip Roth, but to Mark Leyner, whose "The Tetherballs of Bougainville" will dominate next century's best-of lists the way "Ulysses" and "Lolita" did the last one.)