When I was in my early to mid-teens, that was a very heavy diet of science fiction and fantasy, so those were the kinds of books I tended to imagine writing someday, or even began to try to write.
— Michael Chabon
I'm a big fan of Tarantino's work, and I think I'm fascinated by his evident sense of entitlement to use black characters and black material that he feels not simply comfortable with, but that it's his right and privilege - the apparent ease with which he handles black characters, fully aware that he's been criticized for that, too.
Ideas are the easy part. I spend a lot of time batting them away, trying to keep them from distracting me from what I actually have to focus on and finish. A lot of times, they are a siren temptress beckoning me with the promise of a much shorter, simpler, more slender novel over the horizon, but of course that's very dangerous.
God, I just love 'A Journey to the End of the Millennium,' by A. B. Yehoshua. My favorite novel by an American Jew is probably 'Humboldt's Gift.'
The First Amendment has the same role in my life as a citizen and a writer as the sun has in our ecosystem.
I was surprised that my wife thought it was a good idea, then again with my agent, another woman, then my editor, another woman - in spite of the fact that all three of them reacted positively I still have this fear.
That was all very nice of them. They didn't have to do anything because I wasn't officially involved at all.
Every time another review comes out I let out a deep breath.
The things I keep going back to, rereading, maybe they say more about me as a reader than about the books. Love in the Time of Cholera, Pale Fire.
It was fun. That was something I came to fairly late.
That's the best thing about writing, when you're in that zone, you're porous, ready to absorb the solution.
I was thinking, too, of Superman and his fortress of solitude.
I found one remaining box of comics which I had saved. When I opened it up and that smell came pouring out, that old paper smell, I was struck by a rush of memories, a sense of my childhood self that seemed to be contained in there.
Nothing ever comes out the way I hope it will. That first vision, that initial vision you have of a book, what it's going to be like when it's done, it begins to go wrong the second you start to write.
I grew up in Columbia, Maryland, a planned community built during the sixties. During the early years, it was very integrated. I grew up being taught by black teachers with black principals and vice principals and, you know, a lot of black friends. We played in mixed groups, and I kind of thought that was how it was.
I work at night, starting at around 10 o'clock and working until 2 or 3 in the morning. I do that usually five days a week. In Berkeley, I have an office behind our house that I share with my wife, who works more in the daytime.
I am a huge, raving fan of writer Matt Fraction. His semi-indie 'Casanova' series is an ongoing masterpiece of 21st-century American comics - and his run on 'Immortal Iron Fist' with Ed Brubaker was pure, yummy martial-arts-fantasy deliciousness.
Comic books were just the means for me to tell the story.
I have a deadline. I'm glad. I think that will help me get it done.
I wasn't involved, except to the degree that they sent me drafts of the script as the writer turned them in. They asked me at one point to write a memo about what I thought of it.
People keep saying, 'Oh, you're getting all these great reviews, that must make you really happy.' I guess it does, but mostly it's just a relief.
I love Richard Yates, his work, and the novel, Revolutionary Road. It's a devastating novel.
It is unusual for Joe to be that way, but that's what interested me.
Louis Pasteur said, 'Chance favors the prepared mind.' If you're really engaged in the writing, you'll work yourself out of whatever jam you find yourself in.
As soon as I read that, it clicked: that's my theater of war. It was exciting to think that I could write about World War Two from a totally new place.
I have a good memory for words, and when I come upon a word I don't know, I remember it, or try to - it's almost like a tic. I also just have a good feeling for how words are made and formed in English and the etymologies that give you prefixes and suffixes.
It's always thrilling to encounter the sweep of time in a work of fiction in a way that feels authentic and real.
I abandoned my second novel completely. Writing 'Kavalier & Clay,' I had several moments of utter collapse. Same with 'The Yiddish Policemen's Union.'
I remember tearing up the first time I read Nabokov's description, in 'Speak, Memory,' of his father being tossed on a blanket by cheering muzhiks, with its astonishingly subtle foreshadowing of grief and mourning.
Joe is the hero and Sammy is the sidekick. That's how I feel about it.
What's going to be hard for me is to try to divorce myself as much as possible from what I wrote. I'll have to approach it simply as raw material and try to craft a film script out of it.
It's good to have it over with. I worked on it a long time, and I didn't know what people were going to think of it. Would people like it? Would they buy it? So far it's been doing pretty well.
Moby Dick - that book is so amazing. I just realized that it starts with two characters meeting in bed; that's how my book begins, too, but I hadn't noticed the parallel before, two characters forced to share a bed, reluctantly.
I wanted to give readers the feeling of knowing the characters, a mental image.
It was an incredible resource. I'd sit with a big stack of bound New Yorkers in the library and read through, especially the 'Talk of the Town' sections.
He comes to this other world and he has to reinvent himself. Again, it felt natural, even though I'd been working really hard trying to come up with something.
So it was scary, but that's how it goes. To my great delight, I discovered that it did all belong.
