The Last Thing He Wanted (Knopf)
Part I of a special two-part interview with a novelist whose works have defined the essences of American places (Los Angeles, Miami, New York) and times (the sixties, the seventies, the eighties). Topics include the influences of T.S. Eliot, Joseph Conrad, Ernest Hemingway, and her contemporary, Joyce Carol Oates, the nature of resonance and the role of accident and intuition in the writing of novels.