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An interview from around 2000 -- just recovered.

   I don't know who the interviewer is, but if you do, or if you are this person, let me know. What do you read these days?             One of the things I regret most about a busy life teaching and writing books that involve research is that I almost never get to read for pleasure.   What I read is:   my students’ work, which is deeply interesting and gratifying (no kidding – I know more about what smart 20-year-olds are thinking and doing than almost any man my age); books for review (just now Thomas Berger’s latest, watch the Washington Post for my opinion); and books for research (currently books about Byron or his times.)   If I could read books, I’d read Peter Carey and Phillip Pullman.               Were you a writer as a child? That is, did you make up your own stories?            ...
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  Robert Louis Stevenson and the Dilemma of an Uncritical Readership   It was the intention of the organizers of this centenary festival to invite both Stevenson scholars and non-specialists whose work has led them to be interested in Stevenson.   I am not a scholar, of Stevenson or any other topic; but certainly it is my work that has led me to be interested in Stevenson. My interest is not nostalgic or bound up with the private pleasures of youthful reading, because I didn’t read Stevenson when I was young. I knew verses from A Child’s Garden . I saw and was deeply affected by the Disney version of Treasure Island with Robert Newton. But what I read was Gods, Graves and Scholars , and Kon-Tiki , and Sons of Sinbad , and Lowell Thomas in Tibet. In adventure stories, I preferred fact to fiction. I still do.             I began to read Stevenson as a grown-up, for professional reasons. I needed to learn how to w...
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  HIT                 “Okay, come on in, sit down.”             After-action report requested by supervisor.   Time set for report assembly.   Assembled report produced to supervisor in interview location.   No record is made.             “So what happened?”             Voice-report capability is initiated. “I went to the guy’s house.”             “Okay.   Details.”             Car taken to object’s location.   Car parked four doors from location.   Car door opened and exit made.   Approach to object’s location taken, while surveillance of area is conducted.   Determination made that area is neu...
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