SOURCE: An interview in In Their Words: Interviews with Fourteen Canadian Writers, Anansi, 1984, pp. 168-83.

In the following interview, conducted in 1982 during the James Joyce Centenary in Toronto, Canada, Moore discusses the treatment of political and religious issues in his novels, and explains why he prefers straightforward narrative to experimental fiction.

[Meyer and O'Riordan]: We live in an age where often there is more attention paid to a writer's life than is paid to his work. Has this been a problem for you?

[Moore]: There are people now reading biographies of W.H. Auden and Robert Lowell, who probably have read very little of their work. And then you have the examples of Mailer, Capote and Vidal, whose lives are of more interest to people than their work. So, in the case of a writer like myself, who has simply a private life and not a very colourful...