In Hollywood you always feel a bit like a hake. The publicists march people up and down in front of you and they interview you... You feel like the turbot and the sea-bream go by, and you're the hake. ↗
My mother used to take my brother and me to get any books we wanted, but they were second hand books published in the '30s and '40s. I liked scary books. ↗
That's a wonderful change that's taken place, and so most poetry today is published, if not directly by the person, certainly by the enterprise of the poet himself, working with his friends. ↗
I maintain the rather old-fashioned view that this is my work and it's in the public arena, but that doesn't entitle everyone to know what happened at home before coming here. ↗
As for collaboration - I have done a lot, 26 books, and found publishers increasingly resistive to them. It's not that the books are bad; editors won't even read them. ↗
I do one Xanth novel a year, because at the moment that is all that publishers will accept; they don't want any other type of fiction from me, so Xanth pays my way. ↗
The Sophists' paradoxical talk pieces and their public debates were entertainment in 5th century Greece. And in that world, Socrates was an entertainer. ↗
