Katy, I had the advantage of growing up in a country that didn't get television until I was a student and too poor to buy one. I have read nearly everything published that I could get my hands on up to the time I was in London and went to visit a friend who had a television set. I said: "Do you mean to say that you can watch films and exciting stories on television?"
Everybody in the room laughed.
By the time I had said that I had already read almost everything that you say you will never read. I had several friends who had read "Finegans Wake". I read morality plays, every French novel in English translation, the complete works of Thomas Hardy, most fashionable English writers. If I was less well read in American writers it was because the books were not available. I did read "Portnoy's Complaint".
Since then, I have watched an awful lot of television.
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