Anybody who’s working in pictures, I don’t care whether you say it out loud or not, wants to be a director. The actors all think, ‘When I’m washed up in this, I can be a director.’ The writer says, ‘If I write a good script, I’ll direct it myself.’
“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