There is such a diversity of opinion in the Chapbook that it may be hard to construct a composite writer out of the material at hand. The working habits are different: Hemingway rises at dawn to work; James Baldwin works late at night after the hour is quiet. Truman Capote, Paul Bowles, and Evelyn Waugh often work in bed. Robert Frost takes off a shoe and uses the sole for a desk. John Dos Passos rewrites a chapter seven or eight times. William Kennedy’s rewrites of Legs stacked up to match the height of his six-year-old son. Yet Eudora Welty only corrects or changes an occasional word; to do more would make her feel that “someone would start looking over my shoulder.” Writers have divergent views about the importance of plot. Norman Mailer doesn’t work from plots. Neither does Elizabeth Hardwick She says that if she wants a plot she’ll watch the TV series Dallas . . . .

Interviews tend to be derided as a form. Too easy. Tape recorders do not necessarily catch true meanings. The interviewers set their machines down nervously on the coffee table. “Do you mind?” No matter. At the conclusion of his introduction to one of the Writers-at-Work volumes, Wilfred Sheed wrote that he would trade half of Childe Harold for an interview with Lord Byron and all of Adam Bede for one with George Eliot. He said he was speaking for his “frivolous self,” but I suspect he meant it. He would certainly have my support if he did.