Family Secrets
One of the conditions of being a writer is that all those authors you have loved and learned from, and by necessity have taught yourself to forget, the better… More
Nadine Gordimer: Cross-Pollination
"Cross-Pollination," by Nadine Gordimer, appears in PEN America 2: Home and Away. This talk was originally presented at a Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute to Marcel Proust, sponsored by the PEN American… More
To Change the World
Though I never met James Baldwin in person, and never even saw him at a public event, he is nonetheless to me like a father, or a beloved uncle,… More
A Suffering Conscience
A good writer helps to create other writers, and I can recall the first time, in the ’30s, when I read John Steinbeck’s early books, and his stories. To… More
Pure Magic
I want to tell you the three most important theatrical events of my life. There have been many—my first Sophocles, my first Shakespeare, my first Molière, my first Uncle… More
Father of Choice
Life clung to Samuel Beckett, irritatingly, for eighty-three and three-quarter years. When he told me he’d lost his teeth, I mumbled an inanity: “It could be worse.” Without pause, he… More
The Architecture of Thought: Lydia Davis on Proust
Proust felt that a long sentence contained a whole, complex thought. The shape of the sentence was the shape of the thought, and every word was necessary to the… More
Studs Terkel: The More Things Change
PEN American Center 4: Fact/FictionThis talk was presented, in slightly different form, at a PEN Twentieth-Century Masters Tribute.Dorothy Allison reminds me of a woman I know in Chicago named… More
Evenings in Paris
There were no more than twenty or thirty people in the audience. To my surprise, I loved Godot—how could you not? Dick was beaming. I guess this had been… More
Recognitions
I had read no Proust at the time. I was much struck by the freedom from constraint and expectation I suddenly enjoyed. Thereafter, I could complicate my sentences and… More
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