[Part one of this con­ver­sa­tion is here.]

John Bradley: Now, I wonder if you could talk more about my pre­vi­ous point, if you don’t mind going back to it: that polit­i­cal fig­ures are more deserv­ing of satire. They run for public office and know­ingly enter the tor­nado zone of public wrath. Writ­ers, how­ever, don’t deserve such scorn as they are not really public fig­ures. And their book photos should be off limits. Crit­i­cize the writ­ing or lit­er­ary move­ments, but not how a writer appears. That’s too easy and per­haps cruel. And don’t epi­grams about poets, epi­grams that name par­tic­u­lar poets, rein­force in some way the figure of Authorship?

Kent John­son: Only in the sense, I’d say, that words like “queer” or “nigger” rein­force big­otry when retaken and wielded openly in the faces of the bigoted…