It Turns Out That There

As A Teenager In Brooklyn Quentin Had Often Imagined Himself Engaged In Martial Heroics, But After This He Knew, As A Cold Immutable Fact, That He Would Do Anything Necessary, Sacrificing Whatever Or Whomever He Had To, To Avoid Risking Exposure To Physical Violence. Shame Never Came Into It. He Embraced His New Identity As A Coward. He Would Run In The Other Direction. He Would Lie Down And Cry And Put His Arms Over His Head Or Play Dead. It Didn't Matter What He Had To Do, He Would Do It And Be Glad.

I'm Now Much More Excited About Genre Distinctions. What I Still See Breaking Down Are More The Hierarchical Arrangements Of Genres. That Is, "there Is Literary Fiction, And Then There Are Lesser Genres." I'm Much More Clear On The Idea That Literary Fiction Is Itself A Genre. It Is Not Above Other Genres. It Is Down There In The Muck With All The Other Genres, And It's Doing The Wonderful Things That It Does, But To Give It A Y-axis, To Make It High And Low, Just Seems Absurd. I Stand By That.

I've Only Read Three Books By Stephen King. When I Was 10 I Read 'the Long Walk,' One Of His Pseudonymous Bachman Books. In My Early 20s, While Trapped On A Family Vacation, I Read 'the Dark Half,' Which Taught Me A Word I Have Never Forgotten: Psychopomp. Now I Have Read '11/22/63.'

I Feel Very Conscious Of My Influences. T.h. White Is Very Important For Me.

It's Wonderful To Play Around With Fantasy, Because There Are An Amazing Number Of As-yet-unbroken Rules Out There.