How Will You Know A Good Farmer

A Reader's Tastes Are Peculiar. Choosing Books To Read Is Like Making Your Way Down A Remote And Winding Path. Your Stops On That Path Are Always Idiosyncratic. One Book Leads To Another And Another The Way One Thought Leads To Another And Another. My Type Of Reader Is The Sort Who Burrows Through The Stacks In The Bookstore Or The Library (or The Web Site — Stacks Are Stacks), Yielding To Impulse And Instinct.

My Mom Was Paranoid About My Safety.

Novelists Never Have To Footnote.

Every Novel Deals With Social Problems. It Can't Help It Because The Protagonist Must Come In Conflict With His Group. So The Author Has To Offer An Analysis Of How The Group And The Protagonist Fit. Otherwise, The Reader Will Just Say, "this Makes No Sense," And Will Put It Away.

Some Novelists Are Luckier Than Others In The Eras Of Their Formative Intellectual Years, But All Weltanschauungs Return, Which Means That Most Novelists Have At Least A Chance Of A Revival.