In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.

I suppose I should say that I treasure blasphemy, as a faith of the highest order.

In general, each form is a relief from the other forms. I can't write a novel after a novel. I just use up all the material each time, and I need to rest.

Have I mentioned that I expect death around every turn, that every blue sky has a safe sailing out of it, that every bus runs me over, that every low, mean syllable uttered in my direction seems to intimate the violence of murder, that every family seems like an opportunity for ruin and every marriage a ceremony into which calamity will fall and hearts will be broken and lives destroyed and people branded by the mortifications of love?

I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.

I always feel I have made unfilmable books. I even felt that way about a book of mine that was later made into a movie. But my wife, who has made two films, thinks this one would make a very original film. I'm all for original films.

The Great Recession is not imaginary, and the effects loom large. There was an article in the NYT about the galloping death rate among white men in middle age. Higher than among any other demographic, etc. Mostly death by drugs, alcohol, or suicide. Many of them rural. My feeling is that it's many people who haven't been able to get back into the work force. Reg Morse is an example of the problem.