“I see myself as traditional even though I know you see my work as experimental. I don’t really consider Sterne, Joyce, and Proust experimental either because the tradition of their writing goes back a long way. Traditional. The Grand Tradition. Clear back to “Don Quixote.” I never decided to write in a “new way” at all. It’s realism that’s fairly new. Is it experimental to have been influenced by the Bible? By Saint Augustine?”
