Early in September, Christopher Glazek and I spent a long, pleasant afternoon interviewing Helen DeWitt. Helen had arrived in New York a few days earlier, about a month before her latest novel, Lightning Rods, was to be released by New Directions. There were miles of book tour events to be traveled before she slept, and our discussion was one of them. But it was a Friday, and the end of summer, and the city was warm and mild and forgiving, and all in all our meeting felt less like an interview and more like a conversation. The three of us met on the Upper East Side and talked for many hours, as if we had nowhere to be. I don’t think any of us did.
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