SOURCE: Busch, Frederick, and Donald J. Greiner. “An Interview with Frederick Busch.” Iowa Review 18, no. 2 (summer 1988): 147-73.

In the following interview, Busch analyzes current critical theory and its effect on writers, discusses the inconvenience of being both a writer and a teacher, evaluates his education and its impact on his writing, and gives in-depth explanations about the inspirational sources for his works.

Born in Brooklyn in 1941, Frederick Busch now lives on more than one hundred acres of untamed countryside in Sherburne, New York. He was educated at Muhlenberg College and Columbia University, and since 1971 he has published thirteen books—eight novels, three collections of short stories, and two books of criticism—among them The Mutual Friend (1978), Rounds (1979), and Invisible Mending (1984). In 1986 the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters honored Busch with a five-thousand-dollar award in recognition of his contribution to American letters. In this interview, which...