You called “Wide Open” “horrid and scary.” Don’t you like it? I didn’t mean it like that. If you write literary fiction, most of the world doesn’t read it with much enthusiasm. I’ve tended to say that it was horrid and scary just to give [readers] an easier way in. But I’m still very proud of it.
Your main characters tend to be people that other writers would use as background. Why? Maybe because I’ve always perceived myself as coming from that scuttling background. I’ve always felt like a marginalized character myself, and always thought it was a good thing. How important are prizes? To literary fiction writers, they’ve become very important. So many people write fiction nowadays, so if there’s a prize and that draws attention to you, that’s great–it just means you don’t have to worry about things for a little while.
Any word from Toni Morrison or Philip Roth? Absolutely not, no. Who can blame them?
