You Become A Serious Novelist By Living

I Think Literature Has Lost It's Power. Great Novels Continue To Be Written, But They Are No Longer Changing The World.

First You Look For Discipline And Control. You Want To Exercise Your Will, Bend The Language Your Way, Bend The World Your Way. You Want To Control The Flow Of Impulses, Images, Words, Faces, Ideas. But There's A Higher Place, A Secret Aspiration. You Want To Let Go. You Want To Lose Yourself In Language, Become A Carrier Or Messenger.

Longing On A Large Scale Makes History.

In This Country There Is A Universal Third Person, The Man We All Want To Be. Advertising Has Discovered This Man. It Uses Him To Express The Possibilities Open To The Consumer. To Consume In America Is Not To Buy; It Is To Dream. Advertising Is The Suggestion That The Dream Of Entering The Third Person Singular Might Possibly Be Fulfilled.

I Marched And I Protested Against The War In Vietnam, Along With Many, Many Thousands Of Others. But I Never Quite Understood The Bombs That Were Placed In Science Labs Or Office Buildings.