Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.

Hemingway seems to be in a funny position. People nowadays can't identify with him closely as a member of their own generation, and he isn't yet historical.

All good criticism should be judged the way art is. You shouldn't read it the way you read history or science.

DeLillo never seems committed to me to what he is writing. Very nice surfaces, but he's got nothing underneath.

It's so wrong when I pick up a new edition of Huckleberry Finn and I look at the last page and it doesn't say, Yours truly, at the end.

I never met anybody in my life who says, I want to be a critic. People want to be a fireman, poet, novelist.

Raymond Carver is good. I think he'll be appreciated more and more. He's an easy writer to imitate.