The black situation has changed. They finally realized they're Americans.

Faulkner turned out to be a great teacher. When a student asked a question ineptly, he answered the question with what the student had really wanted to know.

Of the female black authors, I really like Morrison's early books a lot. But she's really become so much a clone of Faulkner. He did it better.

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

I long for the raised voice, the howl of rage or love.

Unless criticism refuses to take itself quite so seriously or at least to permit its readers not to, it will inevitably continue to reflect the finicky canons of the genteel tradition and the depressing pieties of the Culture Religion of Modernism.

I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.