I went off to this conversation as an eager fan. I've read and reread and taught Robinson's Housekeeping umpteen times. I adore it and also adore--for entirely different reasons--the achievement of Gilead. Just last night I'd begun Petterson's Out Stealing Horses and was already under the spell of Petterson's immediacy with  place and character. Without having gotten too far in his novel--I was struck by the elegaic tone in both novelists. I'm also, quite frankly,  a sucker for opportunities to hear writers talk about process and their engagement with language and fiction. It isn't so much that I think I'm going to hear something new under the sun so much as hearing the particular way a  writer reckons with the...