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The only moments in life when I’m 100 percent happy, almost deliriously happy, is when I’m writing, so that there is this feeling of creation of what you can do with words, this joy when you hit on something. Well, I know what Freud would say about all this, but that doesn’t worry me. I’m just very happy when I’m writing.
“I would rather read genre fiction than what they call “Quality Lit.” Which is mostly what Knopf publishes, for example. I don’t want to use the word “elitist,” but it’s very narrow-minded — the kind of literary writing you find celebrated in the prizes, the Pulitzers, even the National Book Critics Circle, of which I used to be on the Board, and fought against. It’s recognized Literature with a capital L. So that’s another kind of thing that holds the genres apart: there’s this kind of thing that you’re supposed to write that I just don’t see any reason for writing.“
Ronald Sukenick