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His real life, outside of our destination, was complicated by ambivalence. Since childhood, his basic needs had been met as if by an invisible force. At first, he believed his mother and father were providing for him, but when they died, he was surprised to feel that he had suffered no loss. He env…

It was something. Out of nowhere, I didn’t give a shit about anything for like a month. Like nothing. I mean yeah, there’d been plenty of times where I didn’t give a shit about something. Oh that thing? Yeah, fuck that thing. I did it all the time. Multiple things even. Had to. It was part of life,…

INTERVIEWER

How are you going to cancel someone who writes, “The trees were full of silver-­white sunlight and the meanest of them sparkled”?

HAYES

Beauty can’t be canceled. O’Connor is problematic, but she’s indispensable. I think of Calvino’s “Uses of Literature,” his notion of a univer…

Adelaide was in town working at an anarchist bookstore. We met for coffee after work. I had spent most of the day in Judge Blanchard’s courtroom. His comportment was dignified and sincere and he kept order and was respected and everything ran smoothly in his courtroom. It’s just that he has no char…

The last time I saw Walker Percy, who lived across Lake Pontchartrain in Covington, a giant storm was rolling in over the bridge—the longest bridge in the world—that I would be driving on to get back home. We looked out at the gathering storm and he said, “Delery, the next half hour is going to be …