SOURCE: An interview in Tom Stoppard, Heinemann Educational Books Ltd., 1977, pp. 1-13.

In this conversation, which was conducted in June 1974, Stoppard discusses his methods of composition, maintaining that the best writing is largely a "lucky accident."

[Hayman]: Some people got the impression from Jumpers that you 'd been a student of philosophy, and in the programme for Travesties you mention your indebtedness to Lenin's Collected Works, half a dozen books about him, an illustrated history of the First World War, two books on James Joyce and two on Dada. Obviously you make your preliminary reading almost integral to the writing.

[Stoppard]: That's been true right from my journalism days. A lot of my reading has resulted from the sheer necessity of having something to deliver—a piece of writing. An article on Norman Mailer for some arts page somewhere. You read the works of Norman Mailer in fourteen...