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.

First-book novelists and storywriters haven't yet failed and so it's easier to publish them - you can gamble on a success. Whereas someone who has written four books that are highly literary and demanding and require you as a reader. They may not be republished.

Let's look at what the books are that are being produced. More and more they are being made like movies. To sell. They are being tested out.

Hollywood is the model for publishing, more and more. Not just blockbusters either.

I have a wonderful editor who believes in fiction and poetry. She herself is a novelist and poet.

The importance to the world of what we scribblers write is in doubt, I would think.

When you are writing a character, what the character says is obviously crucial. But what the character doesn't say is absolutely as important as his words.