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.
Critics? How do they happen? I know how it happened to me. I would send a poem or story to a magazine and they would say this doesn't suit our needs precisely but on the other hand you sound interesting. Would you be interested in doing a review?
I liked Camille Paglia. I liked her even better when I heard her talk.
I think Henry Miller has had huge influence not because he wrote about sex, but because the memoir or the nonfiction novel has become such a monumental force in American publishing, if not in literature.
I think the pattern of my essays is, A funny thing happened to me on my way through Finnegans Wake.
My assignment is what every writer's assignment is: tell the truth of his own time.
