There is today an extraordinary interest with the data of modern experience per se. Our absorption in our contemporary historical state is very high right now. It's not altogether unlike a similar situation in seventeenth century Holland  where wealthy merchants wanted their portraits done with all their blemishes included. It is the height of egotism  in a sense  to think even one's blemishes are of significance. So today Americans seem to want their writers to reveal all their weaknesses  their meannesses  to celebrate their very confusions. And they want it in the most direct possible way - they want it served up neat  as it were  without the filtering and generalizing power of fiction.
Saul Bellow
writers, writing