30
summer
|
fall
between the guy who created it and the guy who financed
it, and that was the end of that. Today, it is a tourist site.
It’s outside Tucson and the University of Arizona owns it.
It’s extraordinary and speaks to all the things I mention in
A
Friend of the Earth
. It’s about us and our relationship to the
earth and all the species we’re driving extinct, global warming,
and all the rest of it.
The question is: is creating an artificial world a possible
solution to our problem? Anyway, I’m deep into it and I’m rolling
along. I hope to finish it by the end of the year.
You almost seem to represent the adage of “Write what you
know,” in that you’ve taken on issues that are very California-centric
or very personal, such as
The Women
, about the four women in
Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, inspired apparently by the fact that you live
in a Wright-designed house. After
The Terranauts
, will you be writing
about tenured professors at USC?
Only if it’s an exciting story. I don’t agree with your
premise, though. I say write what you
don’t
know and find
something out, so whatever interests me is what I want to
write about. For instance,
The Inner Circle
about Dr. Kinsey.
I wanted to find out what is a sex researcher. What does it
mean? Can you really separate the spiritual and the intellectual
from the animal, and what does it all mean? What about the
biosphere? Is it possible to shuttle this off and create a new
world?
That’s basically what charges me. I have no idea what will
come next.
Speaking of what may come next, what do you see as print’s
future: does it even have one?
I can’t say. Who could tell in past years that we would be
communicating mainly by
writing
to each other today? We
don’t even talk on the phone any more; everything is written
electronically, but that’s how we communicate. So I don’t know
what’s to come of it. Certainly, a serious novel of literature – what
CONVERSATIONS
