I Would Really Hope This

There's A Kind Of Tension That If I'm Getting A Story Right I Can Feel Right Away, And I Don't Feel That When I Try To Write A Novel. I Kind Of Want A Moment That's Explosive, And I Want Everything Gathered Into That.

I Loved Taking Off. In My Own House, I Seemed To Be Often Looking For A Place To Hide - Sometimes From The Children But More Often From The Jobs To Be Done And The Phone Ringing And The Sociability Of The Neighborhood. I Wanted To Hide So That I Could Get Busy At My Real Work, Which Was A Sort Of Wooing Of Distant Parts Of Myself.

It Must Have Meant Something, Though, That At This Turn Of My Life I Grabbed Up A Book. Because It Was In Books That I Would Find, For The Next Few Years, My Lovers. They Were Men, Not Boys. They Were Self-possessed And Sardonic, With A Ferocious Streak In Them, Reserves Of Gloom.

I Want The Reader To Feel Something Is Astonishing. Not The 'what Happens,' But The Way Everything Happens. These Long Short Story Fictions Do That Best, For Me.

Peoples Lives, In Jubilee As Elsewhere, Were Dull, Simple, Amazing, Unfathomable-deep Caves Paved With Kitchen Linoleum. . . . What I Wanted [to Write Down] Was Every Last Thing, Every Layer Of Speech And Thought, Stroke Of Light On Bark Or Walls, Every Smell, Pothole, Pain, Crack, Delusion, Held Still And Held Together-radiant, Everlasting.