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? The first story I remember writing was called “The Bloody Knife.” I was perhaps eight. The premise was that an apparition of an enormous blood-dripping knife appeared in the sky over