All criticism is a form of autobiography.
—Oscar Wilde
Is that something you still do—read all your reviews?
Every last word of every one?
Both positive and negative?
Really?
Why?
Are you unusual in that regard?
Didn’t you once look up every bad review of your first several books and quote the meanest lines?
What was up with that?
Do you see that as a not very subtle form of masochism?
I guess what I’m asking is, how much do you hate yourself?
Do you see a way going forward to mitigate and finally empty out that emotion?
Is the relationship between every critic and every writer sadomasochistic in essence?
What is that Conrad story called, “The Secret Sharer”?
Is that not every critic and every writer?
Is there a sense in which most critics try to use most writers as a way to “get well,” pretending to be healthier than the putatively ill human who committed the crime of writing the book?
Who was it who said, on the basis of one of your books, that your then-wife should divorce you?
How could that not lodge indelibly in her psyche?
Karinsky’s one reservation about your second novel was that it was too nakedly autobiographical. Do you think that’s a fair criticism?
He also wanted less contemplation and more narrative, more scene. You more or less concur, don’t you?
You haven’t published any reviews in a very long time. Why not?
No takers?
No invites?
Are you too much of a “loose cannon”—a man without a country, so to speak?
Do the best reviews alter your understanding of what you’ve written?
What’s the smartest review you’ve ever received?
Did you write her to thank her?
What’s the stupidest review you’ve ever received?
What do you mean, how much time do I have?
What’s the most vitriolic review you’ve ever received?
Perhaps you can file a lawsuit when someone says something like that?
What do you do when people get basic information wrong?
Do you write a letter to the editor?
Do these ever appear in print?
Is there a sense in which nearly every book you’ve written over the last twenty years can best be understood as a poison dart aimed directly at the “literary establishment”?
Does such a thing still even exist?
Is there another sense in which nearly every book you’ve written over the last forty years can be best understood as a poison dart aimed directly at yourself?
Do you ever take your books-in-progress, show them to other writers for “feedback,” and then revise the work based on their suggestions?
Who has been your most useful “first responder” in this sense?
The most unhelpful?
What’s the worst thing a reviewer can do?
Have you ever imagined killing a critic?
Isn’t there a Stoppard play that does that?
Doesn’t he get mainly good reviews, though?
Is one reason you love Simon Gray’s Smoking Diaries so much because he can’t stop worrying the sore tooth of bad reviews?
What are the kinds of reviews that infuriate him?
Infuriate you?
Did you ever meet him?
Didn’t you briefly get to know his widow?
Do you know anyone who knows her?
Could I trouble you for her email?
Is it true that you once outlined a book about Michiko Kakutani that was going to be called Limning the Chiaroscuro and was going to remix every review she’d ever written?
Oh, I see—those were her two favorite words, and she used them over and over?
Well, we all have our go-to vocab, don’t we?
For instance, for you, the following words: “candor,” “brave,” “meditation,” “rigorous,” “excavation,” “examination,” “exploration,” “investigation,” “relentlessly,” “bottomlessly,” “powerfully,” “enormously,” “human,” “animal,” “text,” “intimacy,” “urgency,” “existence,” “sex,” “violence,” “metaphysical,” etc., etc. Pot/kettle/black, mister?
Is that the point, for you, of Markson’s compendia of ludicrously “wrong” reviews of books now worshipped?
When I google you, thumbnail photos come up of other writers I’ve never heard of, like Thomas Ligotti. Any clue why?
Has the praise so far, in your forty-year career, reached the level of your expectations?
Nothing could ever fill the void, could it?