Hardship Makes The World Obscure.

It's No Accident That My First Novel Was Called Americana. This Was A Private Declaration Of Independence, A Statement Of My Intention To Use The Whole Picture, The Whole Culture.

People Stress The Violence. That's The Smallest Part Of It. Football Is Brutal Only From A Distance. In The Middle Of It There's A Calm, A Tranquility. The Players Accept Pain. There's A Sense Of Order Even At The End Of A Running Play With Bodies Strewn Everywhere. When The Systems Interlock, There's A Satisfaction To The Game That Can't Be Duplicated. There's A Harmony.

Man's Guilt In History And In The Tides Of His Own Blood Has Been Complicated By Technology, The Daily Seeping Falsehearted Death.

It's My Contention That Each Book Creates Its Own Structure And Its Own Length. I've Written Three Or Four Slim Books. It May Be That The Next Novel Is A Big One, But I Don't Know.

I Am Ashamed Every Day, And More Ashamed The Next. But I Will Spend The Rest Of My Life In This Living Space Writing These Notes, This Journal, Recording My Acts And Reflections, Finding Some Honor, Some Worth At The Bottom Of Things. I Want Ten Thousand Pages That Will Stop The World.