ABSTRACT
Congratulating you on your seventy-fifth birthday gives me as much pleasure as that I received years ago upon introducing you to another outstanding writer, Saul Bellow. Over the years we've seldom met but I've followed your career with pleasure and instruction, and would like you to know that for me your example as artist has been important. For despite our differences in artistic form (and often in ideology) your insistence upon bringing the most universal vision and sophisticated dramatic techniques to your material has affirmed and encouraged my own efforts.
