If you need proof of how the oral relates to the written, consider that many great novelists, including Joyce and Hemingway, never submitted a piece of work without reading it aloud.

If you ever want to understand multitasking in prose, James Joyce is your man.

The car is a character in the piece - I've never liked the car, I submitted to it's objectionable popularity.

'The Great Gatsby,' by F. Scott Fitzgerald, remains the most perfect novel that has ever come out of the United States. Everything in the book moves as it should, in the manner of a piece by Bach or Mozart.

As an arts journalist in London, working mainly for the BBC, I interviewed hundreds if not thousands of authors. From them I gleaned a great deal of passing instruction in writing and I observed one fascinating detail: no two writers approach their work - physically - in the same way.

Chuck Norris doesn't need to understand the work of James Joyce; James Joyce needs to understand the work of Chuck Norris.