When Somebody Asks Me What I Do,

Saul Bellow Never Took My Advice When He Was My Friend.

The Novel Doesn't Come Into Existence Until Certain Methods Of Reproducing Fiction Come Along.

Jane Austen Is At The End Of The Line That Begins With Samuel Richardson, Which Takes Wonder And Magic Out Of The Novel, Treats Not The Past But The Present.

To Be An American (unlike Being English Or French Or Whatever) Is Precisely To Imagine A Destiny Rather Than To Inherit One; Since We Have Always Been, Insofar As We Are Americans At All, Inhabitants Of Myth Rather Than History.

I Think The Pattern Of My Essays Is, A Funny Thing Happened To Me On My Way Through Finnegans Wake.