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.

I read a lot of 'The Canterbury Tales' on my phone last year, because I was cycling between three different editions, and I needed to have a middle-of-the-night edition for the insomniac reading.

I believe in the absolute and unlimited liberty of reading. I believe in wandering through the stacks and picking out the first thing that strikes me. I believe in choosing books based on the dust jacket.

If I'm going to feel estranged and alienated and away from home I don't want anyone interrupting it to debate which berries to have in their pancakes.

So while it is true that I find really dark stuff funny sometimes, it's also true that as a writer of books I want to have the whole range of human emotions.

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.

I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.