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A. S. Byatt
© Nancy Crampton
A. S. BYATT

The Art of Fiction No. 168
Interviewed by Philip Hensher
Issue 159, Fall 2001
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From the Interview
INTERVIEWER
In your books you talk about post-structuralist systems that are not systems but anti-systems, and I think you are interested but wary about them.

BYATT
I don’t know of a system that I believe in. I do feel a compulsion to respect people who build systems, because it’s obviously a human thing. I don’t see much point in doing things for a pure joke. Every now and then you need a joke, but not so much as the people who spend all their lives constructing joke palaces think you do.
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