You Get Towards The End Of Life

I'm One Of Those Writers Who Started Off Writing Novels And Came To Writing Short Stories Later, Partly Because I Didn't Have The Right Ideas, Partly Because I Think That Short Stories Are More Difficult. I Think Learning To Write Short Stories Also Made Me Attracted Toward A Paring Down Of The Novel Form.

In Britain I'm Sometimes Regarded As A Suspiciously Europeanized Writer, Who Has This Rather Dubious French Influence.

Did You Know That There Is No Exact Rhyme In The Russian Language For The Word 'pravda'? Ponder And Weigh This Insufficiency In Your Mind. Doesn't That Just Echo Down The Canyons Of Your Soul?

In 1980, I Published My First Novel, In The Usual Swirl Of Unjustified Hope And Justified Anxiety.

You Can't Have A Novel Without Real, Believable People, And Once You Get Into Either Too Theoretical A Novel Or Too Philosophical A Novel, You Get Into The Dangers That The French Novel Has Discovered In The Past 50 Or 60 Years. And You Get Into A Sort Of Aridity. No, You Have To Have Real, Identifiable People To Whom The Reader Reacts In A Way As If They Were Real People.