The Best Life For A Writer Is

Well, They Each Seem To Do One Thing Well Enough, But Fail To Realize That Literature Depends On Doing Several Things Well At The Same Time.

What Is The Easiest, The Most Comfortable Thing For A Writer To Do? To Congratulate The Society In Which He Lives: To Admire Its Biceps, Applaud Its Progress, Tease It Endearingly About Its Follies.

In 1980, I Published My First Novel, In The Usual Swirl Of Unjustified Hope And Justified Anxiety.

I Was Initially Planning To Write About Grief In Terms Of Eurydice And The Myth Thereof. By That Point The Overall Metaphor Of Height And Depth And Flat And Falling And Rising Was Coming Into Being In My Mind.

You Can't Have A Novel Without Real, Believable People, And Once You Get Into Either Too Theoretical A Novel Or Too Philosophical A Novel, You Get Into The Dangers That The French Novel Has Discovered In The Past 50 Or 60 Years. And You Get Into A Sort Of Aridity. No, You Have To Have Real, Identifiable People To Whom The Reader Reacts In A Way As If They Were Real People.