The writer—to continue pro hominem —is the world’s interpreter. The writer is certainly interested in the art of fiction, but perhaps less so than the critic is. The critic is interested in the novel; the novelist is interested in his neighbors. Perhaps even more than in his own techniques, then, the writer is interested in knowing the world in order to make real and honest sense of it. He worries the world and probes it; he collects the world and collates it. No part of it is outside his field. All the great world is his field. That is, the novel’s potential field is the whole world; any given novel’s actual field is only a small wedge of it. But that wedge may include anything: philology, genocide, childbirth, naval architecture, micro-physics, love, the dressing of game. The writer is interested in everything (which is why he is such good company)—in hockey and horseshoe crabs and baton twirling. His interest, I think, is genuine. It is not only that he plans to use these bits of world in his work; it is actually and wonderfully that he plans to learn them all, for starters, and then to understand them.

For his interpretations of the world to be as valuable and accurate as possible, they must include as much breadth and variety as possible. The aim of the interpretative, referential writer is to render as much of the world as he possibly can as coherent as he possibly can. To this end the writer studies the great world closely, and takes notes. The writer, then, approaches the world exactly as a critic approaches a text.