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50 years ahead? And now we are going to go into cloning, fooling with the gene stream? If we can make an error like Y2K and not be able to see in advance what the mistake will do, in the very system these guys developed and invented, then I am terrified. As an extension, the idea that you can���t write about things you haven���t immediately experienced is odious to me. There is much too much journalism in our lives now. I remember when I did the biography of Marilyn Monroe; the first question everyone asked me was ���Did you know her?��� I���d say no. Immediately the shades would come down on interview shows. In effect, if you didn���t know her, then what you wrote about her was not worth reading. CB: Did you know Christ? No, He was before your time. NM: The odd notion that only direct human experience is worth writing about is a sign of how much the media has taken over from literature. I���m arguing the opposite, that novelists, in this technological time, occupy the same position that high priests used to have. CB: There you said what I was trying to hear. NM: I believe it. You need an awful amount of luck to be a novelist, and I have had a lot in my life. I didn���t have to spend half of my 50 years of writing earning a living at things I didn���t want to do, which is killing to talent. This ability to reinvent cultures, to make imaginative works of them that are more real than any pieces of journalism, is crucial to our continuation. For many years I felt we were just scribblers and it didn���t mean a damn thing. What I was recognizing was that what we write doesn���t change anything. Everything I detest has gotten stronger in the last 30 or 40 years: plastic, airplane interiors, modern HYLAND 32