INTERVIEWER: Whatsustained you without publication during that period?

OZICK: Belief. Not precisely self-belief, because that faltered profoundly again and again. Belief in Art, in Literature: I was a worshipper of Literature. I had a youthful arrogance about my“powers,” and at the same time a terrible feeling of humiliation, of total shame and defeat. When I think about that time—and I’ve spent each decade as it comes regretting the decade before, it seems—l wish I had done what I see the current generation doing: I wish I had scurried around for reviews to do, for articles to write. I wish I had written short stories. I wish I had not been sunk in an immense dream of immense achievement. For most of this time, I was living at home in my parents’ house, already married. But my outer life was unchanged from childhood. And my inner life was also unchanged. I was fixed, transfixed. It was Literature every breathing moment. I had no “ordinary” life. I despised ordinary life; I had contempt for it. What a meshuggas!