In his 30 years of broadcasting and publishing fiction, Garrison Keillor has set the laugh bar pretty high.
I had spent years thinking about one thing while I was doing another. I had, in fact, prided myself on being able to do two things at once.
I was an only child. I've known only children. From this experience, I do believe that the children should outnumber the parents.
Trollope wrote so many novels and other works that they tend to crowd each other out.
I spent part of my college years in a Marxist commune. I was not a Marxist. I wasn't even pretending to be one. I was a Marxist-in-law.
Progressivism is usually seen as a stepping back from individualism into a progressive community...
Every novel deals with social problems. It can't help it because the protagonist must come in conflict with his group. So the author has to offer an analysis of how the group and the protagonist fit. Otherwise, the reader will just say, "This makes no sense," and will put it away.
I love to write about sex. You just have to make it idiosyncratic. You have to have a strong comprehension of your characters, and write it from their point of view. It's really fun. It's not erotic.
I'm a natural novelist. I'm interested in the person and the group, and how they mesh. And one of the ways I don't want them to mesh is for the person to be subsumed into the group.
