Abstract
I think that when I wrote those early books I was timid. I still felt the incredible effrontery of announcing myself to the world (in part I mean the WASP world) as a writer and an artist. I had to...demonstrate my abilities, pay my respects to formal requirements.... I was afraid to let myself go.... When I began to write Augie March, I took off many of these restraints.... My first two books are well made.... Those books...did not give me a form in which I felt comfortable. A writer should be able to express himself easily, naturally. ...Why should I force myself to write like an Englishman or a contributor to The New Yorker? ...I should add that for a young man in my position there were social inhibitions, too. I had good reason to fear that I would be put down as a foreigner, an interloper. It was made clear to me when I studied literature in the university that as a Jew and the son of Russian Jews I would probably never have the right feeling for Anglo-Saxon, for English words. (Harper 9)
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