..books Look As If They

The Imagination Doesn't Crop Annually Like A Reliable Fruit Tree. The Writer Has To Gather Whatever's There: Sometimes Too Much, Sometimes Too Little, Sometimes Nothing At All. And In The Years Of Glut There Is Always A Slatted Wooden Tray In Some Cool, Dark Attic, Which The Writer Nervously Visits From Time To Time; And Yes, Oh Dear, While He's Been Hard At Work Downstairs, Up In The Attic There Are Puckering Skins, Warning Spots, A Sudden Brown Collapse And The Sprouting Of Snowflakes. What Can He Do About It?

To Look At Ourselves From Afar, To Make The Subjective Suddenly Objective: This Gives Us A Psychic Shock.

But I’ve Been Turning Over In My Mind The Question Of Nostalgia, And Whether I Suffer From It. I Certainly Don’t Get Soggy At The Memory Of Some Childhood Knickknack; Nor Do I Want To Deceive Myself Sentimentally About Something That Wasn’t Even True At The Time—love Of The Old School, And So On. But If Nostalgia Means The Powerful Recollection Of Strong Emotions—and A Regret That Such Feelings Are No Longer Present In Our Lives—then I Plead Guilty.

I Had Wanted Life Not To Bother Me Too Much, And Had Succeeded - And How Pitiful That Was.

In 1980, I Published My First Novel, In The Usual Swirl Of Unjustified Hope And Justified Anxiety.