"I’ve spent the last twenty years or so being embarrassed about J. D. Salinger. His thoughts are so clichéd! The language is so dated! There is nothing he has written that would seem insightful to anyone but a searching, frustrated teenager! Thinking about that in light of his passing, it’s fairly obvious that those reactions are all part of having read and loved almost everything Salinger wrote when I was a searching, frustrated [teenager]. The embarrassment I feel when I think about J. D. Salinger is actually the embarrassment I feel when I think about that kid who loved those books and felt like they finally helped him to understand a world that seemed so unfair and incomprehensible. I don’t know whether or not that makes Salinger a Great Writer In The Canon, but if someone has so much of an impact on you at a tender age that you’ve essentially incorporated the reading of his work with that specific moment of your life I think it’s probably fair to say that he was at least a great writer. I wouldn’t go back and read those books any sooner than I’d go back to that point in my life, but, on reflection, yes, that writer was pretty great."

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M.M.: What do you wish to do before dying?

R.B.: Nothing special. Well, clearly I’d prefer not to die. But sooner or later the distinguished lady arrives. The problem is that sometimes she’s neither a lady nor very distinguished, but, as Nicanor Parra says in a poem, she’s a hot wench who will make your teeth chatter no matter how fancy you think you are.

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