I realize this may sound like an outburst instead of a question, but . . . Is the sky falling? Literature is in flux . . . or WORSE! Isn’t it? People have forgotten how to read or don’t have the time. Technology is destroying our culture! What’s happening? WHY?

I guess a lot of people in the arts feel haunted right now—haunted by what we sense is starting to happen, the cultural continents pulling apart. You can’t sit down with another writer and not get into some wild-eyed back-and-forth about tempora and mores. Ultimately, I don’t think it’s very important what we think. It’s a purely journalistic fixation anyway. Or worse, a business one. I laugh when I read so-called “Arts” reporting and it’s all about box office and Ipads and 3D-graphic-novel-delivery-systems (I made that one up). Don’t writers have more important things on their minds? That’s not to say I don’t wonder about the future like everybody else (though I believe that all the anxious wondering itself is a symptom of paralysis). I’m trying to enjoy as much as I can the feeling that we’ve entered a barbarous age.

Barbarous! What are you talking about?

Well, I do think it’s a barbarous time, though I don’t want to sound flip about trying to enjoy that. To me the culture looks vast, panting, messy, petty, scholastic yet stupid, vapid yet lavish. It reminds me of Byzantium and the dark ages and the early Renaissance rolled into one, except instead of actually losing the texts and knowledge of the ancients, we’ve lost the will or the ability to locate them in the whiteout of so much art and information, so many voices.