In this episode we bring you a study in contrasts to writers both literary, both born in the first half of the 20th century,

both winners of the National Book Award, but there the similarities come to a halt.

Here's Joyce Carroll Oates, author of Them.

We were the Mulvaney's, blonde, and her new novel, Night Sleep death, the stars.

I've always been so interested in personal history.

I'm very fascinated by my parents and my grandparents' generations.

I seem to think that they had a

resilience and an integrity that may be somewhat deficient in my own

generation and in subsequent generations as well.

And this is Gore Vidal, author of Myra Breckenridge, Burr, Julian, and Lincoln.

I've lived in the world and taken part and many things.

Outside myself, the problem with most American writers,

they only write about themselves.

And they're not very interesting.

I don't care about why the marriage went wrong.

Why the author left his wife for the old pair of girl

when he did not get tenure at Ann Arbor, which really broke

his heart.

I mean these books should be written on Kleenex and disposed of.

But everybody's been told in the United States that he's interesting.

You're a very interesting person I can just tell. Or my

feelings are most just as good as your feelings. Well that's a fairly true

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