INTERVIEWER: Can you describe the feeling of first publication?

ozick: I was thirty-seven years old. I had the baby and the galleys together, and I sat at my desk—the same desk I use now, the same desk I inherited from my brother when I was eight years old—correcting the galleys with my right hand, and rocking the baby carriage with my left. I felt stung when the review in Time, which had a big feature on first novels that season, got my age wrong and added a year. I hated being so old; beginning when I thought I’d be so far along. I’ve had age-sorrow all my life. I had it on publication, but for the next ten years or so the child was so distracting that I hardly noticed what publication “felt’’ like.