MC: Is that right?

GD: I should have said, n-i-c-h-e. Niche. I read all those people before I knew how to pronounce their names. I quite like the idea of the self-educated mispronouncer of names.

MC: ‘We all have to try to make some progress with our books about D. H. Lawrence.’

GD: Those are wise words.  Them’s wise words.

MC: So much of an essay, for me, depends on the act of writing. If you know the answer to the question your essay asks, your question isn’t complicated enough, and so the process of writing is a journey toward articulating the right question.

GD: I completely agree. It’s one of the reasons I’m struggling with this next little book.  I had the experience, which I can’t talk about for all kinds of publishing and promotional reasons and immediately after I knew what I thought of it.  There’s nothing for me to discover in writing about it that I didn’t discover in the instant of my experience and so, really, I think the best book I can write will be one that films my experience, a work of straight reportage. But one of the things that this book has made me aware of is that of all the kinds of writers I’m not, a reporter is pretty close to the top. It’s really difficult, reporting. There’s no scope for persona. There’s all this technological stuff.  And there’s what stuff is called. It’s all really boring and difficult. Even a short book is a large book.

MC: Have you read John McPhee?

GD: I read Levels of the Game, his tennis book, and I have his big geology book.

MC: I only mention him because he is one of my favorite authors and he talks a lot about organization and structure and narrative and tension. But I wouldn’t call him an essayist.