This is the second installment of SALON's ongoing conversation with the noted novelist and memoirist. Ms. Lamott is not responsible for errors of fact, syntax or grammar -- all she did was talk and then "Arthur Wilson," bless him, a lowly SALON functionary and friend of the writer, turned her words into prose. Ms. Lamott is personally busy writing a novel and has no time for prose frivolity of any sort.

---

Sam, stop ringing the doorbell, later you and your young friend can be raucous like when you're 16, but right now I am trying to talk to Arthur.

First you should know that children do not like potatoes; it's all on the lists of the things kids won't eat. That's because children don't know French Fries are potatoes; they think a French Fry is a special kind of plant.

So you have to keep this mind when I tell you that I had my friends Bill and Adair over for dinner, and Anne Lamott the feminist huntress went down to get Chinese take-out because to tell you the truth I don't cook very much. I also got baguettes and cheese and we were sitting in my living room eating this very acceptable pre-dinner foodstuff when Sam and his friend Jack appeared, and they each had a knife and a potato, and they were peeling the potatoes.

I should say that I do buy potatoes from time to time because I think I'm going to cook them but I don't get around to it and they form tendrils and it's all very spiritual and I give them to Jesus eventually, that's the way I look at it.

So then Sam and Jack got the untwisted metal coathangers that we use for roasting marshmallows and they put the peeled potatoes on the coat hangers and stuck them over the fire in the fireplace for about 45 seconds. And then they disappeared into the kitchen and Sam said, "OK, don't come in."

So we sat making light conversation and hardly wondering what was going on, and then Sam yelled, "Mom, what's a good dipping sauce for potatoes?" -- he's a very advanced child -- and I yelled back "ketchup" because as I said I'm not very much of a cook.

So some more time passed and then Sam appeared with a huge plate just heaped with slices of raw potatoes that were burned black at the very edges, and on each slice was a dollop of ketchup, and this was all surrounded by Pringles potato chips and because I have many friends in the food service industry, also orange slices.

Then he said: "And that's not all!"

So he went back in the kitchen and I took a huge handful of raw potatoes and stuffed them in my pocket and probably stained my jeans with ketchup, I haven't had the heart to look, and when Sam came back out I said, "Oh, those were really good," and then right behind Sam came his friend Jack with a huge plate of peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches and right in the middle of the sandwiches was a mound of unpeeled bananas.

Bill and Adair and I really did eat some of the sandwiches and the bananas even though I had paid big money for the Chinese food that was getting glutinous in its little cartons out in the kitchen. And Sam asked, "Were the potatoes really good?" and I said, "Oh yes, honey," so he took a bite of this raw potato with the burned outside and the dollop of ketchup and he chewed it and he said, "I guess I still don't like potatoes."