>I reread John Barth’s second novel, The End of the Road, last week, looking for traces of my own far-off inspiration; I’d first read the book six years earlier, before starting As She Climbed Across the Table, and I recalled it as an influence without particularly remembering how it had influenced me. Or exactly how much. Rereading it I was struck by how much I’d forgotten in almost every sense–the tone and texture of the book, as well as the plot, and how deeply it had reached into me and shaped the fiction I was about to write.