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I Felt No Shame In These Activities, Because I Understood What Almost No One Else Seemed To Grasp: That There Was Only An Infinitesimal Difference, A Difference So Small That It Barely Existed Except As A Figment Of The Human Imagination, Between Working In A Tall Green Glass Building On Park Avenue And Collecting Litter In A Park. In Fact, There May Have Been No Difference At All.

I Write Fiction Longhand. That's Not So Much About Rejecting Technology As Being Unable To Write Fiction On A Computer For Some Reason. I Don't Think I Would Write It On A Typewriter Either. I Write In A Very Blind Gut Instinctive Way. It Just Doesn't Feel Right. There's A Physical Connection. And Then In Nonfiction That's Not The Case At All. I Can't Even Imagine Writing Nonfiction By Hand.

Nineteen Eighty Is Almost Here, Thank God. The Hippies Are Getting Old, They Blew Their Brains On Acid And Now They're Begging On Street Corners All Over San Francisco. Their Hair Is Tangled And Their Bare Feet Are Thick And Gray As Shoes. We're Sick Of Them.

I Felt More Doubtful Than Usual With 'goon Squad,' Because I Knew That The Book's Genre Wasn't Easily Named - Novel? Stories? Novel-in-stories? - And I Worried That Its Lack Of A Clear Category Would Count Against It. My Hopes For It Were Pretty Modest.

The Bottom Line Is That I Like My First Drafts To Be Blind, Unconscious, Messy Efforts; That's What Gets Me The Best Material.