I am at my worst trying to write about things that overlap with my life.

People define themselves to some degree by the music that they listened to as teens. My mom had Elvis. Me, I had 'The Who' and later punk rock. Kids who came up in the '80s had other songs and bands. It's a way of placing ourselves culturally and temporally.

My last novel, 'The Keep,' was very explicitly technological, about the quality of living in a state constantly surrounded by disembodied presences, and I was thinking very much about the online experience.

Jennifer Egan Quotes