The beauty of American law is you cannot slander anybody who is dead. This is not true in all countries.
I never go anywhere without a book for fear of being stuck in line in front of the theater or strapped down in the dentist's chair and being bored witless. Thus, I read everywhere.
I think that's what art is about: to provoke you. It helps me make sense of a senseless universe because I become the god of the story. I create it, and I see it in all its lineaments in my own way and can control it - in a world in which everything else is out of control.
The novel is a seduction; a reader has to be seduced.
It's hard to say how certain stories just punch us in the heart and the brain at the same time at the end. I suppose that's what we're all looking for. But each story has its own valence, its own way of saying goodbye to you.
I don't care if the audience is 600 Saul Bellows; I'm going to knock them dead with a comedy routine. I'm out there as a missionary for literature because, if people laugh and enjoy themselves, they might actually do something as bizarre as reading the book.
