John Barth about himself, the story of a writer and a conversation: A drummer in an ocean of stories

An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spend itself on the linguistics): yet always I had the sense of recording what was already ‘there’, somewhere: not of ‘inventing’.

Friends sometimes ask, "Don't you get lonely sitting by yourself all day?" At first it seemed odd to hear myself answer No. Then I realized that I was not alone; I was in the book; I was with the characters. I was with my Self. Not only do I not feel alone with my characters; they are more vivid and interesting to me than the people in my

It was very good for me, because I saw a lot of authentic backgrounds for made-up stories which I will write later on. One of them will be “Russian Baroque” and another will be “No Kissing” and another will be “Dollar Bar” and another will be “If the Accident Will,” and so on. And so on.

One of the constants that appear in interviews with Coltrane is his commitment to push the limits of his own mastery regardless of how this mastery is fixed and canonized by the professional jazz critics.