capitalist market of art — i mean, art as business — has assumed all along. but then are you saying that in this market—oriented capitalist united states of america of 2021, where the internet and digital culture dominates all, are you saying that there... ..that writing fiction and the novel matters as much as ever? that, you know, you and the generation before you, of updike and bellow and roth and all these others... it doesn't matter because a book is read by one person at a time. and the book, in spite of everything, is the only... a novel, for example, is the only place, i think, in the human world where two strangers can meet on terms of absolute intimacy. and that space that is created in the book is something very beautiful and precious. and whether ten people read the book or 10,000 people read the book or 10 million people read the book, it doesn't matter. the person reading it is alone with the writer