In a way, I see my fiction as having moved in that direction - and the characters as dealing simultaneously with their personal history and with the present in which they are trying to make their way. So that the books are simultaneously about public and interior events. And I am having a great time getting confused and crazed writing about them.
Frederick BuschWhat to know about pain is how little we do to deserve it, how simple it is to give, how hard to lose.
Frederick BuschI always want to read Gore Vidal's nonfiction. Because everything he writes is an essay and it's worth reading.
Frederick BuschMy heroes are people like Philip Levine, who is simply like a god to me, as a writer. And he is a very good man, too.
Frederick BuschWe are herding the young in that direction so that they are not sitting still and contemplating, Goddamn it, a page of exquisite prose by Charles Dickens, which is filled with rage about poverty and the need of a household to survive. That's not in the table for consideration now. And people don't understand that beautiful rage of Dickens because they don't share it. They haven't got time to worry about an oppressed culture, a subclass.
Frederick Busch