I had to give him some perspective. Otherwise, he couldn't have had some of the thoughts that he had.

Also, no woman could do a 17-year-old's hormonal voice.

[Laughs] I think a woman can understand hormones.

I disagree, because all you'd be writing about would be his hormones. Hasn't anyone ever told you that about teenage boys?

Not as explicitly as you've just stated it. Yeah, I suppose it would be rather tedious to just read about hormones.

Did you suffer for this book?

I would say that it came more easily than some of the others, and that it amused me greatly. I worked at it, but I don't think I suffered much.

Did you suffer over the drowning-child book ["A Map of the World"]?

Yes.

What does it mean to suffer out in Wisconsin?

[Laughs] Well, I suffered not because I had such empathy for the characters but because I didn't know how the book ended. I actually wrote four distinct novels trying to arrive at the one that was inevitable. I had anguish in the fact that I really didn't know what happened to the people or how I was supposed to take care of them.

When you're going through that in Wisconsin, are there other writers you can talk to? Or do you keep it to yourself?

I don't think that talking to anybody can help you -- a writer or a nonwriter. So what do I do in Wisconsin? I don't know. I just slug through it.

It takes more self-confidence to be a writer in the Midwest, doesn't it? It's not like you run into Don DeLillo at the Piggly Wiggly.

But that is a good thing. I don't mean it to sound egomaniacal, but in a way for me it was very useful to imagine that I was the only one who was taking pen in hand. I'd always been told that it was impossible to be published, so I was writing only for myself. If I had been surrounded by other writers, I would have thought, Oh, there's nothing that I need to add to this stack of papers.

So, ballpark, when were you born?

1957.

And what were your parents like politically?

Good bleeding-heart liberals. They were against Vietnam. I think they were too old to be pro-hippie. I'm sure that they were a little alarmed at their children heading off into the sunset on motorcycles and sleeping with boyfriends and stuff like that.

I've never discussed this with anyone my age -- my parents were true-blue suburban Republicans, but as a kid I always knew that it was the hippies who were really cool. They were anti-suburban, anti-everything that surrounded me.

Well, let's see ... I was taking ballet. I was back in the romantic age, listening to Tchaikovsky. I remember going to college and returning to Oak Park in 1978. And there was one hippie left. I thought, Oh, God, this is dreadful. They're all gone. The next era is upon us, and it's not going to be half as interesting.

Everybody who interviews you has to mention the big "O," right?

Yeah.

Are you friends with Oprah? Can you call her up and chat?

No, I wouldn't feel that I could do that. I think her gift is making you feel that you are soul mates when you're in her presence. She somehow manages to do that with her 3 million viewers. In the times that I've met her, I've really enjoyed the conversations because she reads broadly and widely and deeply.

Does she define the Midwest psyche?

I don't have perspective on it because I've always lived here. A lot of the people of the Midwest came from the Northeast. We're of the same stock. Yet something must have happened when we crossed the Ohio River Valley because I have sensed that there's more of an openness and flexibility of spirit out West. Maybe it's just that everything was so big and wide that you had to really reach out to others.

Oprah has symbolically taken away some literary clout from New York.

I suppose you could see it that way. I think she's so much bigger than the Midwest now. She's the world. She is ... Woman.

Maya Angelou reads from "The Heart of a Woman"