Still there must be things that move you — likes and dislikes.

My loathings are simple: stupidity, oppression, crime, cruelty, soft music. My pleasures are the most intense known to man: writing and butterfly hunting.

You write everything in longhand, don't you?

Yes. I cannot type.

Would you agree to show us a sample of your rough drafts?

I'm afraid I must refuse. Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It is like passing around samples of one's sputum.

Do you read many new novels? Why do you laugh?

I laugh because wellmeaning publishers keep sending me — with hopeyouwilllikeitasmuchaswedo» letters — only one kind of fiction: novels truffled with obscenities, fancy words, and wouldbe weird incidents. They seem to be all by one and the same writer — who is not even the shadow of my shadow.

What is your opinion of the so-called «antinovel» in France?

I am not interested in groups, movements, schools of writing and so forth. I am interested only in the individual artist. This «antinovel» does not really exist; but there does exist one great French writer, Robbe-Grillet; his work is grotesquely imitated by a number of banal scribblers whom a phony label assists commercially.

I notice you «haw» and «er» a great deal. Is it a sign of approaching senility?

Not at all. I have always been a wretched speaker. My vocabulary dwells deep in my mind and needs paper to wriggle out into the physical zone. Spontaneous eloquence seems to me a miracle. I have rewritten — often several times — every word I have ever published. My pencils outlast their erasers.