There are things in American culture that want to wipe the class distinction. Blue jeans. Ready-made clothes. Coca-Cola.

The novel is always pop art, and the novel is always dying. That's the only way it stays alive. It does really die. I've been thinking about that a lot.

Faulkner sat in our living room and read from Light in August. That was incredible.

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

I admire Ginsberg as a poet, despite the fact that he seems not to know when he is being good and when he is bad. But he will last, or at least those poems will last.

I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.

I gave up writing blurbs because you make one friend and 200 enemies.