A Novelist Is On The Cusp Between

Many People, Myself Among Them, Feel Better At The Mere Sight Of A Book.

A Reader's Tastes Are Peculiar. Choosing Books To Read Is Like Making Your Way Down A Remote And Winding Path. Your Stops On That Path Are Always Idiosyncratic. One Book Leads To Another And Another The Way One Thought Leads To Another And Another. My Type Of Reader Is The Sort Who Burrows Through The Stacks In The Bookstore Or The Library (or The Web Site — Stacks Are Stacks), Yielding To Impulse And Instinct.

The Novel As A Form Is Usually Seen To Be Moral If Its Readers Consider Freedom, Individuality, Democracy, Privacy, Social Connection, Tolerance And Hope To Be Morally Good, But It Is Not Considered Moral If The Highest Values Of A Society Are Adherence To Rules And Traditional Mores, The Maintenance Of Hierarchical Relationships, And Absolute Ideas Of Right And Wrong. Any Society Based On The Latter Will Find Novels Inherently Immoral And Subversive.

I Say, When Your Hair Turns Gray And Your Children Think They Know Who You Are, Do The Thing That Shakes Up Who You Think You Are, Even Who You Had Prided Yourself On Being. When All Those Around You Say They Simply Don't Recognize You Any Longer, That's The Real Compliment.

The Thing About Republicans Is That They Don't Care So Much About Respect, But They Love Fear, At Least In Others.