I Think It's A Very

The Thing Is, For Me, As A Fiction Writer, I Don't Think There's A Finer Testament To Our Lives Than This Thing That's Being Spurned - The Emotional Intelligence, The Ethics, The Beauty. It's All There. It's All So Fully Contained In A Novel That Succeeds. But At The Same Time, I Understand The Impulse To Put Away Childish Things.

I'm Being Provided With Some Emotional Ballast By Giving Me An Intimate Portrait Of One Character In Particular In Contrast To The Collective. I'm Fortunate That I Had Very Sympathetic Readers, But Ordinarily - If A Book Makes You Laugh Too Much, It Shifts From "literature" To "entertainment."

I Always Knew From The Beginning That This Was The Only Way To Write Then We Came To The End - That It Had To Be In First - Person Plural If It Was Going To Illustrate How The Individual Becomes Part Of The Collective. I Had No Interest In Writing The Book In A More Conventional Voice. It Goes Back To That Fascination I Had With Telling A Story In Multiple Ways. It Was The Only Choice I Gave Myself, Really - I Said "this Is It, Pal. If You Can't Tell A Story This Way, You're Going To Have To Abandon The Book. Write It This Way Or Give Up."

I Think One Of The Ways You Avoid Being Angry Is To Avoid Being Angry At The People In Power. They Might Do Crappy Things, And Piss You Off, And Make Bad Decisions, But They Shouldn't Be Hated Simply Because They're In Power. And I Thought It Was Important To Humanize Them If The Book Was Going To Be Even-handed To All The Different Ways You Encounter People At Work.

We Were Fractious And Overpaid. Our Mornings Lacked Promise. At Least Those Of Us Who Smoked Had Something To Look Forward To At Ten-fifteen.