“Of course there is powerful literature in all big cultures, but you can’t get away from the fact that Europe still is the center of the literary world … not the United States…The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature. That ignorance is restraining.” (The head of the U.S. National Book Foundation replies, “Put him in touch with me, and I’ll send him a reading list.”)