Create in me a clean heart

Susan Henderson, who was kind enough to submit to my interview project, refers to me in her blog as a "gentle interviewer." Ha, she hasn't seen me drive. But if we take my mad driving out of the picture, and also grade on a curve the sarcastic comments I make in this blog (like calling the Vice Presidential shootee a "freakin' dope") I am sort of mild. Sometimes I wonder if my writing is the worse for it.

Anyway, she wants me to take part in one of those internet games of "tag" where you answer a series of questions. I am loathe to to spend too much time on that, but I would like to mention a bunch of my favorite books, which is one of the categories.

"Moving On" and "All My Friends Are Going to be Strangers" by Larry McMurtry
"The Age of Reason" by Jean-Paul Sartre
"The Thurber Carnival" by James Thurber
"My Mother: Demonology" by Kathy Acker
"Trout Fishing in America," "In Watermelon Sugar," and "Sombrero Fallout" by Richard Brautigan (a reviewer on Amazon.com remarks that the latter book prefigures the work of Haruki Murakami, and that's an excellent call)
"The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe
"The Wild Iris" by Louise Glück
"A Bend in the River" by V.S. Naipaul

That's just what comes to mind. I could go on, but you get the picture -- my tastes were formed in the 60s and 70s. You want something more current? How about Philip Roth's "American Pastoral"?

I'll let the other questions go for now; forgive me.