A Good, Sympathetic Review Is Always A

'we Were The Mulvaneys' Is Perhaps The Novel Closest To My Heart. I Think Of It As A Valentine To A Passing Way Of American Life, And To My Own Particular Child - And Girlhood In Upstate New York. Everyone In The Novel Is Enormously Close To Me, Including Marianne's Cat, Muffin, Who Was In Fact My Own Cat.

We Are The Species That Clamors To Be Lied To.

Great Art Is Cathartic; It Is Always Moral.

Writing Allows For Fictitious Voices - The Voices Of Persons Unlike Myself - That Might Otherwise Be Muted.

But He Doesn't Love Her. I Invented That. It Is A Plot If You Imagine People In Love--the Lazy Looping Criss Crosses Of Love, Blows, Stares, Tears. No. It Doesn't Happen. No Love. People Meet, Touch, Stare Into One Another's Faces, Shake Their Heads Clear, Move On, Forget. It Doesn't Happen.