FORD: It’s, you know, I don’t know that I’ve ever been thinking about anything. I just write stuff. I just write stuff down and put it down. That’s as close as I come to thinking. I mean, that’s what DeLillo said. Don DeLillo said that writing is a concentrated form of thinking. And that’s pretty much as close as I get to actual thinking. But yeah (laughter). GROSS: Do you teach literature? Because you seem to have all these things, like, at the forefront of your brain, all these great things that other writers have said about writing. FORD: I have an absorptive memory about things like that. I do teach literature at Columbia these days. But I – you know, I’m dyslexic, and I read really slowly. And one of the advantages of reading really slowly is things get in your brain and they stay there. And I’m not fiercely dyslexic, but I do – I do remember stuff.
You know, I – if I see something that – if I read something that I think is really interesting, I’ll copy it out on a 3-by-5 card and look at it every once in a while. It just sort of reminds me of great things. It reminds me of great things that people have said. And it encourages me about literature. These are usually things that are of a literary nature, like DeLillo’s line, a concentrated form of thinking. So I don’t know if it’s that I teach literature because I do that, or I do that because I teach literature, but yes. GROSS: So these 3-by-5 cards, how do you file them so you actually have access to them, or are they just, like, randomly organized and you skim through them? FORD: They are chaos, and I – and I often skim through them. Just – you know, if I’m on a plane sometime and I don’t know what to read and I don’t feel like reading, I’ll just get out this lump of 3-by-5 cards and read them through. I feel much better after that somehow. And I also find all kinds of – all kinds of currents through my 3-by-5 cards about – about the efficacy of literature, why people write, what the consequences of literature are, what It’s value and virtues are for its readers that like line of Leavis’ I quoted, which I love very much , that – it’s a means by which we undergo a renewal of sensuous and emotional new-lights life and learn a new awareness. That somehow – when I think about that, it encourages me in my line of work. GROSS: And how come you’re not writing these down on a computer? FORD: Oh, Lord. GROSS: (Laughter). FORD: (Laughter) I write novels with a pen. GROSS: You start with a pen. FORD: Yeah, I still do, absolutely.