You Become A Serious Novelist By Living

People In Free Societies Don't Have To Fear The Pathology Of The State. We Create Our Own Frenzy, Our Own Mass Convulsions, Driven By Thinking Machines That We Have No Final Authority Over. The Frenzy Is Barely Noticeable Most Of The Time. It's Simply How We Live.

People Stress The Violence. That's The Smallest Part Of It. Football Is Brutal Only From A Distance. In The Middle Of It There's A Calm, A Tranquility. The Players Accept Pain. There's A Sense Of Order Even At The End Of A Running Play With Bodies Strewn Everywhere. When The Systems Interlock, There's A Satisfaction To The Game That Can't Be Duplicated. There's A Harmony.

A Novel Determines Its Own Size And Shape And I've Never Tried To Stretch An Idea Beyond The Frame And Structure It Seemed To Require.

Everything's A Scandal. Dying's A Scandal. But We All Do It.

If I Were A Writer, How I Would Enjoy Being Told The Novel Is Dead. How Liberating To Work In The Margins, Outside A Central Perception. You Are The Ghoul Of Literature. Lovely.