I would read and write all night long and, as a result, wound up cutting a lot of my other classes. |
I wrote a novel about the combat experiences I didn't have in Vietnam. |
I'm a little suspicious of the great, overarching view. It always leaves something out. |
I'm sure that many set out for Vietnam feeling confused or unhappy, as adolescents tend to do, |
If you had an essentially happy childhood, that tends to dwell with you. |
If you live in the same small place long enough, something you don't like is bound to happen. |
In a very basic way, a prominent landmark such as Mt. Holyoke tells you where you are. They let you know that you're not the first person in a place. |
It's important to hang around with people for a while, let people know what they're getting into. I try to make people have their eyes as open as they can be. |
Memory is so much a part of imagination, so plastic, so wonderfully plastic. |
Most teachers have little control over school policy or curriculum or choice of texts or special placement of students, but most have a great deal of autonomy inside the classroom. To a degree shared by only a few other occupations, such as police work, public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid. |
My Detachment: A Memoir |
My Detachment. |
New Journalism was such the rage with authors like Tom Wolfe and John McPhee. All I kept hearing was that non-fiction was so much more interesting than the novels being written at that time. |
Northampton has layers and layers. I saw a whole side of it I didn't know, hadn't imagined had existed. |
One of the things I wanted you to feel in this book, when you were with each of the characters, you'd really be with the person, engaged, wondering what would happen and why. |