What pleases you most about the way your essay turned out? Are there ways in which you feel it fell short of your original goal?

I'm pleased that it gave me the opportunity to speak about my father in a way that I have wanted to do for some time; to address if not redress what I feel has been a slight of him by the so-called "literary establishment."

I am also pleased that I was able to sustain the "associative" quality of the essay's rumination so that its reference to Montaigne's model of digression is, I hope, clear. I worry that there might be too much of the author's bio represented rather than the working of the author's mind. Thanks to the editor, a lot of the former was eliminated.

How did your essay develop, both in your initial thinking about it and in the revision process? What happened in the writing of it that you didn't expect would happen?

I don't think I expected the essay to take this turn; I began with the incident with the photographer. Over my years of friendship with Wright Morris, also a photographer, we talked many times of the peculiar archival quality of photography - how an image for all time can be frozen in an instant. These ideas seemed to naturally ground my random reflections on a person's representation by a community, how a reputation is made or unmade, which led me to my own experience as the son of a famous father. Photography also became a flexible metaphor that would lend a unity to the essay.

In the course of its writing, I was also reading a biography of Alexander Dumas Sr., and, unexpectedly, some of that father and son's life appeared as a useful "set piece" within the essay. Then, even more unexpectedly, this bit of "research" gave me the opportunity to have some fun with Virginia Woolf and her famous essay.

How does your experience writing in creative nonfiction depend upon or depart from your work in other genres (poetry, fiction, playwriting, literary criticism)?

I think of myself as a novelist first, then a short story writer, and so I approach the personal essay with many of the same techniques and concerns for form that I employ in the other two genres; particularly time and memory.

My particular interest in the personal essay, as I interpret it at least, is a freeing up of the argument which is at the base of my novels. The novel is, I believe, a form of argument with the different characters each taking a position, and even the readers are invited to engage in the argument in the act of reading. The short story is a formal construction, a vessel to hold and enact a particular emotion. But the essay departs from both; it is not out to prove anything other than the essayist's mind and imagination doodling on the path.

Speculate about creative nonfiction as an emerging genre in American literature? Where do you see it going in the next several years, or even further down the line?

Certainly, the essay form has been enjoying a renewed interest by writers and readers. It emerged, though, a long time back ... read "Life on the Mississippi" by Samuel Clemens or some of the slave narratives. People are always curious about others' lives. My version of the essay is based on Montaigne's model of investigating and evaluating a person's life and times with the writer's point-of-view as the subject.

I think young writers enjoy the form because of the challenges it offers off the orderly, well-traveled routes of fiction. One student called my personal essay workshop at Carnegie-Mellon University "mental aerobics."

What are the specific literary techniques you attempt to use as a creative nonfiction writer? Scenes? Dialogue? Specific detail, etc.?

Since the use of memory is of great importance in all my work, I will employ scenes, scraps of dialogue in my essays - even make them up as I have done with the Shakespeare-fils in "Son of Spoon River" - to make the point I wish. But, of course, I hope to take pains that the reader will understand the fabrication and have fun with it.

What advice do you offer young people interested in writing?

That's easy and in one word - read. No, two - keep reading.