“In my experience an appreciative letter from a fellow writer means a lot.”
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I actually find novels that are determined to be funny at every turn quite oppressive.
I think of novels in architectural terms. You have to enter at the gate, and this gate must be constructed in such a way that the reader has immediate confidence in the strength of the building.
Politics is the enemy of the imagination.
London in the '70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble we had severe energy problems we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.