I don't know - is everything the U.S. does a shocking embarrassment?

In every society, the artists will be the ones who set themselves up as contrary to whatever the society expects.

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.

In the traditional urban novel, there is only survival or not. The suburban idea, the conformist idea, that agony can be seen to and cured by doctors or psychoanalysis or self-knowledge is nowhere to be found in the city. Talking is a way of life, but it is not a cure. Same with religion.

Because your goal is a complete rough draft of a novel, and every rough draft, by being complete, is perfect.