I had a great morning. After some technical difficulties involving hooking up a tape recorder to a phone, I had what had to be the world's greatest interview with Stanley Crouch. I've read him for years and often liked what I read, but he always struck me as very much the don't-suffer-fools-gladly type. I had this fear I'd say something wrong and he'd just say "Fuck you" and hang up. Instead, he was open and likeable and generous with his answers. Over the course of two hours or so we hit on Miles Davis' Bitches Brew, the state of modern jazz, Crouch's novel Don't the Moon Look Lonesome, Moby Dick, Philip Roth, the slapping of Dale Peck (of course), and NYT critic Judith Shulevitz -- much, much more stuff than I can possibly use. My article (which will appear next Wednesday in the Free-Times) has a word limit of about 1,300 words, but I hope to print the whole thing here, in Q&A form, or most of it.