Thousands Of Miles Of Wheat, Indifference, And

When A Child Is Born, I Once Explained To The Kids, Some Dads Lay Down Bottles Of Wine For Them That Will Mature When They Grow Up Into Ungrateful Adults. Instead, What You're Going To Get From Me, As Each Of You Turns Sixteen, Is A Library Of The One Hundred Books That Gave Me The Most Pleasure When I Was A Know-nothing Adolescent.

Well, When I Was A Young Writer The People We Read Were Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Sartre, Camus, Celine, Malraux. And To Begin With, I Was A Bit Of A Copycat Writer And Very Derivative And Tried To Write A Novel Using Their Voices, Really.... I Keep It Out Of Print.

I'm Criticized By The Feminists, By The Jewish Establishment, By Canadian Nationalists. And Why Not? I've Had My Pot Shots At Them. I'm Fair Game.

If You Caricature Friends In Your First Novel They Will Be Upset, But If You Don't They Will Feel Betrayed.

A Novel May Take Anywhere From Two To Five Years To Write And, In The End, You Might Manage A Couple Of Thousand Dollars On It, No More.