Joy Williams Grudgingly Revises, Word by Word

What books are on your night stand?

Walton Ford’s “Pancha Tantra.” A stunning assemblage of the painter’s vivid and tragic work. Also, a tattered “Testament Newydd” found years ago in a broken church in Wales, re-bound through the kindness of New York’s Argosy Book Store. I know only six words of Welsh but I love looking through it.

What’s the best writing advice you’ve ever received?

I can’t recall the best but the worst was if you’re not having fun don’t do it.

What book should nobody read until the age of 70?

Lewis Carroll maybe? “The Mad Gardener’s Song”?

Not until the seventh or eighth decade would this make perfect sense.

A writer in The New York Times once called you the “pre-eminent bard of humanity’s insignificance.” Does the shoe fit?

Bard? Shoe? What peculiar words.

Who is your favorite fictional hero or heroine? Favorite antihero or villain?

I have several. Harrison’s Dalva, McCarthy’s Judge, Flannery O’Connor’s Grandmother, Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, DeLillo’s Lauren Hartke, Lowry’s Consul, Sorokin’s Crouper, Didion’s Maria Wyeth.