interesting interview with Ron Silliman, tho more for what it neglects to say. the interviewer would like to be interviewed himself. Tom Beckett's interviews are effective because they are dialogic, with his curiosity and poetic interest leading his questions, rather than staged excitement. I'd like to know more about Ron's method. he uses notebooks to collect material, but I don't glean what that material is particularly nor what the collation process is. and I don't care a lot that Ron has a special pen. maybe I'd have a special pen too if I didn't keep losing the damn things. long, long ago, the family was at Lake Chocorua in New Hampshire, a crystal clear lake. so clear that I could see 30-40 feet out from shore a fountain pen in the water. the water was shallow, and I could walk out and fetch the pen, a cheapie Shaeffer, but the thing worked. I could incite that pen to be a magical instrument, or a symbol of my writing mission. I guess I don't need that mythology. it was just a pen, and in fact, as much as I love fountain pens, they are messy and they often bleed thru papers. anyway, Ron has written how his books take so long to create. I'd like more nuts and bolts about what he does with his purposeful notebooks, how he gathers raw material (so to speak) to create the works he creates. those Paris Review interviews of yore were neat in taking up such questions, and showing manuscript samples. of course the magical compound often turns out to be pretty routine, at least in some sense. a lot of writing is just typing, or scribbling, or whatever: handing the keys to the driver.