I aspire to be writing, what I am writing – has never had a huge
audience. And, that audience is naturally in decline. At one point,
it was the only game in town. Now, there are fifty million games
in town, and lots of them are easier to access than a sophisticated
novel.
Further, we have acculturated ourselves away from the idea
of contemplative time. A time in which you sit by that fire, right
there (points to the large fireplace in the center of his living
room), with a dog, and a book, and music playing. That doesn’t
happen much in people’s lives. It doesn’t happen as often as I’d
like it to happen in
my
life. Or going to the beach with a book.
Because we might be missing something. It’s a more and more
frenetic society, and less and less relaxing.
Something that changed my life beautifully was leaving
L.A. and moving here twenty-three years ago. You don’t have
to use your car. Just that. Just to be able to walk into the village
and know everybody is a miracle compared to what most people
have. Most people are living behind walls. They don’t know
their neighbors. They don’t go out. Everything comes to them
electronically, and they’re in a kind of frenzy all the time.
Unless people can slow down I don’t know that there’s much
of a future for the novel.
What and how do you read?
I read books, fiction and non-fiction. On this tour, I took my
wife’s Kindle because it’s light and I’m carrying one bag over each
shoulder, so weight is important. I suppose I had a paperback or
two. On the Kindle, I was reading William Manchester’s three-
volume biography of Winston Churchill,
The Last Lion
. It is
wonderful, but each book weighs forty pounds. Otherwise, I’m
only reading books. I don’t really care for the Kindle. I don’t care
for the way it looks.
When I’m grading my work – and I’ve always worked on a
keyboard so the switch from typewriter to keyboard doesn’t really
CONVERSATIONS
32
summer
|
fall
