“Good luck, son,” I said.  “Let me know when you’re done.”  I’ll admit it, I doubted him. It was his first book.  He’s young. Writing a book is hard.  Who knew what the kid had in him?

Turns out about 300 pages. In just two months Cole produced a sharp, witty, and well-researched book: Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan’s Army Conquered the Web. I mean, I don’t even have a tumblr and I liked it. But still, it plagued me.  How did he get it done so fast? Cole agreed to talk to me via email about how to write a book in two months. (Hint: it’s not Adderall.)

The Rumpus: Why did you have only two months to write your book?

Cole Stryker: My publisher initially told me that I would have eight months to write Epic Win. But throughout the spring, Anonymous exploded into the press with a series of heavily publicized attacks and hacks. It became clear that riding the wave of that publicity would be essential for selling the book, which would otherwise have been a quiet release about an obscure topic. Lucky for me, the public awareness of 4chan and Anonymous has expanded this summer, far beyond my expectations and journalists are scrambling to talk to experts on the subject.

Anyway, Overlook wanted to be sure to get the book out by the end of summer so that Epic Win would serve as a definitive statement about this still very mysterious subculture. So, I signed the book deal in the end of April, started writing in May, and finished my first draft by the end of June. I then had less than a week to clean it up (along with the help of a wonderful editor and copyeditor, of course). I thought it was insane at the time, but in hindsight I think Overlook made the right call. The timing could not be more perfect.

Rumpus: I asked some of the fastest writers I know, and we all agreed writing a book in two months is fast.  Can you talk about the breakdown of writing versus researching versus interviewing? What was the most time-consuming part of it?

Stryker: A few months before the book project began I moved from an expensive, tiny, windowless room in the Lower East Side to a massive place up in Harlem. When I tell people what I’m paying in rent they usually respond with a steely glare. The point is that I pay so little in rent that didn’t have to actually work at all during the two months of writing. I have two big windows that let in lots of sun, a comfy leather chair and a hi-fi setup. I’ve never been interested in that urban writerly cliche — going to coffee shops and sitting in the park with a laptop — because my writing environment at home is so ideal.

Still, it was crunch time from Day 1. I started the process by making a basic outline, then a list of about 75 people I wanted to interview, and sent out emails. While I waited for responses I started copy-pasting every interesting bit of information on 4chan and Anonymous that I could find into a huge Word document, that I then used as a checklist of all the stuff I wanted to cover. Then I put together another doc made up of questions that I didn’t think anyone had answered yet. These became the basis of my eventual interview questions.

From there I just started writing every chapter at once, because each new discovery in my research affected the content needs in three or four other chapters. There were moments when I felt crushed by the weight of this disorganized jumble of material that had almost no structure. Putting everything together into a cohesive narrative was the toughest part. My book is so broad, it felt like I was juggling three different books and trying to squeeze them into one story.

Rumpus: How many words a day did you write?

Stryker: I wrote about 1,500 words a day. I barely left the apartment.

Rumpus: I can’t imagine you transcribed 75 interviews.  That would have taken forever.

Stryker: I’d say about half the interviews were through email, half by phone and half over Gchat or IRC. Transcribing audio was the most tedious aspect of writing the book, but when it came to interviewing some of the heavy hitters, they understandably preferred to chat rather than type out long responses to my questions. I liked the way that gchat interviews captured the spontaneity and light tone of a personal conversation while allowing the subjects to think about what they were writing. A happy medium between email and phone interviewing.

Rumpus: Did you take Adderall or anything like that?  Did you sleep less?

Stryker: I didn’t sleep less. I’m useless when I’m tired, so I generally get at least nine hours every night. I’ve never tried Adderall; I don’t even really drink caffeine. If I ever indulge in a cappuccino I end up spending the entire night playing violent video games because it’s the only level my brain can operate on when I’m being kept awake artificially. Then of course I’m dead the next day, so I just try to avoid anything of the kind. I know, I’m a 90-year-old lady.

Rumpus: Have you always been a fast writer? You used to work in advertising, as have I, and I think it really trains you to be a fast writer because you have to turn pitches around so quickly.

Stryker: I suppose. I spent four years as a copywriter before I moved to New York and transitioned into journalism. And I’ve been blogging daily since 2002. So I guess that has given me an ability to crank out copy quickly. In addition to training for tight deadlines, advertising has also helped me learn how to communicate big ideas to an audience that might not be engaged at the outset. In copywriting, every word counts. Once you build that skill of writing a tight sentence, long form is cake.

Rumpus: Is there anything you wish you’d had more time to work on?

Stryker: Oh absolutely. I can’t even think about it. I would have liked to spend more time in the trenches with Anonymous. I interviewed a handful of them, but it would have taken months to ingratiate myself with the group to the point where I could have gotten some amazing behind the scenes stories. I’m hoping to do some follow-up work that may manifest in some magazine articles or potentially another book.

Rumpus: Did anyone from 4chan have any negative impact on the writing of this? I know you got banned from it when you posed some interview questions.

Stryker: Not substantively. I received nothing but vague, empty threats, which was expected.

Rumpus: I wonder if the time you took to write it somehow reflected or complemented the subject matter, which is to say if 4chan is constantly in motion, in order to cover it, you had to be as well.

Stryker: This is accurate. My story shifted rapidly as Anonymous became ever more politically minded. Lulzsec and other Anonymous splinter groups, which grabbed headlines throughout this summer, did not exist yet, so I was able to incorporate those into the narrative in the form of an epilogue that I wrote several months after I turned in the final draft of the book.

Rumpus: Do you think you’d ever try and write a book this fast again?

Stryker: Not if I can help it, but it’s quite possible that there will be an Epic Win 2: Electric Boogaloo. So, in the interest of timeliness…we’ll see.

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I’ll just come right out and say it: I enjoy books so much more when there’s lots of sex in them. And there is so much sex in Hannah Pittard’s smart, affecting, and beautifully crafted debut novel, The Fates Will Find Their Way.

Inappropriate touching. Masturbation, both public and private. Some grateful fucking. The fetishized hemlines of private-school girls’ skirts. All the boys keep staring at the hot Russian neighborhood mom’s ass. It’s the male gaze times a million—everyone seems to be quietly violating everybody else, in one way or another.

The intertwined tale of a vanished teenage girl named Nora and the hometown boys who loved her—as told through their omniscient perspective—The Fates is The Virgin Suicides for a new generation. Pittard’s depictions of sexual activity are spare and straightforward, but they feel extremely (and credibly) dangerous. Take this scene between two teenagers:

“Just let me see it,” he said. “Just let me see it.”

She looked away and he pulled down the fabric hard, just enough so that her pubic hair was exposed.

He made sounds. She closed her eyes. One hand held down her pants, the other hand was around himself, working.

“Look at it,” he said.

She looked at his face instead, but she was crying a little, hoping it would be over, wanting him to have whatever he needed to finish.

It’s tricky territory, all this underage sex going on in the book. Some of it is innocent, and some of it is sexy, and some of it is disturbing. (There are also references to pedophilia and rape, although they are not rendered explicitly.) That’s sex in America, I guess. We’re a bunch of demanding hypocrites, greedy for stimulation, while we judge everyone around us for wanting the same exact thing—even (or especially) if it’s in a different form. I have done it, and so have you. Can we please have one day where we don’t lie about it?

Hannah Pittard

Pittard seems hell-bent on making her Greek chorus of narrators tell the truth about their own lives, even as they’re mired in fantasies about Nora’s. She tells the story in tight chapters that bounce back and forth between the boys’ youthful existence, their present-day lives, and the imagined possibilities of Nora’s life. Did she hop on a flight, never to be seen again? Did she hitch a ride out West and start life anew? Were there darker forces at work? “It’s the stuff of fantasies, not of real life,” the collective voice says of one possible scenario.

In fantasies, you can get into strangers’ cars. You can have sex with men you don’t know. They’ll love you and pet you and whisper things that high school boys don’t know how to whisper. They’ll fall hard for you and do anything you tell them to, including take you home whenever you want.

Each possibility is teased out deliciously, and the reader uncovers another side of Nora with each of her appearances—“real” or in the boys’ imaginings—in the book. And what of these boys, trapped in their hometown? They grow into men, still trapped: “It seemed, some days, that life was nothing more than a tally of the people who’d left us behind,” they say wistfully.

Meanwhile, we find out the deep, dark secrets of the boys themselves, from childhood to adulthood, together and individually. For the book to work, their collective voice must ring true, and Pittard nails that honest, smart-ass youthful energy. “We never understood why Minka Dinnerman’s dad kept a copy of Hustler tucked in the recess behind the base of the toilet in the first-floor bathroom of the Dinnerman house,” she writes.

Mrs. Dinnerman was the hottest of all the moms. In some ways, it was a shame that she had to be called a mom at all… we all thought it was kind of weird—Mr. Dinnerman’s greedy and unappreciative need to have more than one hot naked lady in his life.

If The Fates has any flaw, it is that Pittard poses perhaps too many questions, and these questions sometimes get in the story’s way. But these questions, distracting as they can be, are at the heart of this novel. And they are worthy of reflection, not least because they are surrounded by so many wise, lovely, and yes—sexy—passages.

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David Goodwillie

American Subversive, which the Associated Press calls, “a triumphant work of fiction,” tracks dueling perspectives.  One is a Gawker-esque blogger who receives information about the identity of a terrorist whom he investigates, and the other the terrorist herself. It’s a taut literary thriller, difficult to put down, buoyed by wickedly incisive commentary on the state of our union.

Kapitoil’s narrator, Qatari citizen Karim (whose voice the Houston Chronicle describes as a “carefully articulated…thing of beauty”), works in the World Trade Center just months before 9/11, and invents a software program that predicts oil futures based on the media’s coverage of terrorism. Wayne has written a surprisingly – given the subject matter – heartwarming coming-of-age tale, rife with clever wordplay and smart cultural analysis.  Kapitoil is a fully addictive read.

Goodwillie and Wayne – don’t they sound like they should be a super cop duo? – recently discussed via email the still-looming threat of terrorism, the agendas of Fox and MSNBC, and promoting yourself via Twitter, which, shockingly, neither one of them seems to particularly enjoy.  (And catch them both across the country soon at numerous events: Goodwillie reads in New York City today, April 22, at Barnes and Noble Tribeca at 7 PM, while Wayne tackles California next week, starting in Los Angeles on April 26, at 826 LA East at 8 PM.)

Teddy Wayne

The Rumpus: Both of your books take place in New York City, where you both live. I know you were both here for the World Trade Center attacks.   How do you think New Yorkers feel about terrorism nine years after the fact? It seems to me like people don’t talk about it that much, that there has been some sort of shift that perhaps has something to do at least in small part with a collective New York bravado.

David Goodwillie: There’s a certain fatalistic attitude towards terrorism in New York – especially in Manhattan, where I live.  We’re aware of our esteemed position as target number one, of course.  For years now, we’ve seen SWAT teams on the subways, police boats in the harbor, bomb-sniffing dogs at Penn Station.  And most of us experienced 9/11 in some first- or second-hand way.  But the truth, of course, is that no one thinks or talks about it much.  It’s a bit like Fight Club: for a New Yorker, the first rule of 9//11 is that you don’t discuss it.  We leave that for outsiders.

Really though, when it comes to terrorism, we’re all just too busy to deal with it.  Terror today is something of an idle man’s game; it’s participants–from Bin Laden to McVeigh to the Unabomber–are usually rural types with time enough to develop dangerous ideas–and deadly weapons.

And that goes for regular citizens who obsess about it, too.  After 9/11, it was the people farthest away from New York and Washington that were screaming the loudest about patriotism and revenge.  There’s so much going on in the reality of every-day New York that potential threats–even doomsday kind of stuff–naturally take a backseat.  Even when something does happen here–the anthrax attacks, say–people push it out of mind quickly.

Teddy Wayne: I don’t think New Yorkers are any braver or even much busier than people in the rest of the country. We have short memories, for one, and we grew weary of the constantly shifting rainbow-colored threat warnings of the Bush years. Most important, people are more concerned now about getting laid off than they are about getting bombed.

But it seems almost inevitable that another attack of some stripe will occur in New York.  We live in a relatively open society.  It takes just one person with access to even mildly advanced weaponry to cause mass destruction, and New York is a symbolically potent target. And it’s increasingly likely that such an attack will come from an American citizen, as in the recent kamikaze mission on the IRS building in Texas, and that is essentially impossible to defend against.

Rumpus: Both of your books explore the relationship between media and terrorism. How much do you feel like the media stokes the fires of terrorism, and how much do you think terrorism needs media in order to survive?

Wayne: Here’s a new Zen koan: If terrorists blow something up in a city, but no one reports on it, does it make a sound? Well, yes and no. The terrorists still certainly cause terror among the populace, but their larger political goals, which require media attention, may go unheeded.

I think the media, especially TV, love reporting on terrorism, just as they love reporting on elections, scandals, and any other spectacles of fear, distraction, and sin. But what’s more dangerous than a source like Fox News–which preaches to the choir and which, if you can’t decode its blatant agenda, you’re probably not a very astute observer of the political scene to begin with (not to say that MSNBC doesn’t have its own equally blatant agenda)–are when seemingly moderate, supposedly “objective” news sources spin events in far subtler ways.

Goodwillie: I almost can’t watch television news anymore.  Even places like MSNBC–which I’m aligned with politically–have become as bad as FOX.  Keith Olbermann makes me want to shoot myself.  (Although I do have a soft spot for Rachel Maddow.)  To say nothing of the half-hour “health and weather updates” that constitute the network nightly news shows.

I remember tuning in to one of the cable news stations–I think it was CNN–to see what would happen when the Tsunami waves hit Hawaii after the earthquake in Chile.  The anchors and reporters built up the tension for an hour as a countdown clock – the weather people had the Tsunami’s arrival figured out to the minute – approached zero.  And then…nothing happened.  The sea stayed calm.  You could sense the media’s disappointment through the screen.

Finally, the anchor cut in and addressed the situation, saying something like, “It’s not that we were rooting for a catastrophe.  I don’t want anyone to get that impression.”  But of course they fucking were!  They were begging for those waves to roll in.  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I hope the farce that TV news has become (I don’t think CNN will last another two years in its current form) gets people to start reading newspapers again.  Not that things are much better in print.

Rumpus: This is not related to terrorism necessarily, but it is connected to being in assault mode. You are both debut novelists in a time when people seem to care less about books, or are at least buying less of them, there are less review outlets, and, in general, there’s a real struggle to be discovered or heard.  In a sense you have to have a “take no prisoners” attitude about promoting yourself and your work. Can you talk about what your experience has been like?

Wayne: Indeed, one has to “terrorize” friends and acquaintances with news of your book. Or to “bomb” social-networking sites to get the word out. You might even say that I’m currently “holding the editors of the New York Times Book Review hostage, and I’m completely serious, this is no longer a joke playing off various terrorism-related words, and if my demands are not met within 24 hours…”

There’s a fine line between promoting yourself and distastefully chasing after notice. After a point, it becomes less about your work and more about you, and I think that difference is evident to astute observers. Then again, the people who are most brazenly exhibitionistic do get more exposure, for better or worse. I’m of the Conan O’Brien mind that if you do good work and are good to others, people will respond. (I did, however, recently and reluctantly acquiesce to Twitter.)

As for the future of publishing, I’m mostly pessimistic. There will always be serious readers, but they’ll be further ghettoized. On the other hand, e-books will eventually democratize the process, as Web sites like the Rumpus are already doing. If you’ve ever wanted to get published in some form, there’s never been a better time. If you’ve ever wanted to get paid for something you’ve published, there’s never been a worse time. (These are Dickensian times, in more ways than one.)

Goodwillie: Teddy’s pretty much right on with his assessment.  Most literary authors would love to pull back a heavy curtain every three or four years, place their book on a pedestal, then retreat, pulling the curtain closed behind them.  A few – DeLillo, Pynchon, McCarthy – still can, and do, but the rest of us mortals have to run around on stage holding the damn thing up while spotlight dips and dives every which way. (I realize this metaphor expired a few lines ago and I apologize.)

I have also agreed, reluctantly, to use Facebook and Twitter and anything else that holds out the possibility of spreading the word slightly farther than it might otherwise go, and of course it’s all hideously contrived and, I fear, pretty much useless.  Books catch on or they don’t.  Good reviews help a little bit.  So do bookstore placement and print runs and advertising and a dozen other things that are pretty much out of an author’s control.  The process still works, barely, and good books somehow still get noticed, though discerning readers and reviewers are more responsible for this than publishers, who, with a few exceptions – like mine of course – will pretty much publish anything if they think it might sell.

I will say it’s nice to have a novel out there this time around.  My first book was a memoir, and I never felt completely comfortable waving it around up there on that stage–pimping out the story of my life and everyone in it in the name of literature.  Of course, compared to the rest of the reality-based entertainment world—”The Jersey Shore,” “The Housewives of New York,”—my dalliance with self-analysis was probably just fine.  I don’t know.  The world’s a weird to place to be living in these days for anyone who thinks about it very much

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And then I was thinking about how hard it is to write a book with an unhappy ending these days, or rather, how hard it is to write a book with an unhappy ending and hope to get it published. Maybe it’s because the people who are making the decisions believe that people don’t want to think anymore.  Maybe they’re right, but I hope they’re not.

Because then I was thinking about how it is really important that we have books and movies and art and music that are sad or tragic or full of doom so that we have some perspective, and can then appreciate when things are good because we have a deeper understanding of when things are bad, and also perhaps feel more connected to the universe at large because now we know we are not alone when we feel bad, that there are other people out there who suffer too.

Something like that. Was what I was going to write.

But then I read Ron Currie, Jr.’s  Everything Matters! which sort of says all that in a really exquisite way, without, of course, saying it at all.   And somehow he made an unhappy ending feel sort of happy which is sort of magical and enviable.  He said what I wanted to say, and did what I wanted to do.  I’d shake his hand if I met him.

Holy cow, did I love this book.  I loved the concept: on the day super genius/prophet Junior is born he learns exactly when the world will end (approximately 36 years later), and the book follows his life leading up to that point.  And I loved the execution: poignant writing, very, very funny writing, buoyed by a mixture of voices – from the voices in Junior’s head, to the voices of his family and loved ones – all of which were deftly captured.  Also I love all things apocalyptic in general, because as a child  I, just like Junior does in the book, watched a movie about nuclear war on TV – in my case the 1983 classic “The Day After” – and it changed my brain forever.  I am not always thinking about when the world is going to end on a daily basis or anything, but those kinds of stories trigger a bizarre pleasure center in my brain.

So I might be biased, but I think I can recognize a good book when I see it.    Everything Matters! is sharp and funny and, dare I say, an important book to read, if at the very least because it reminds you that we have a purpose on this planet, which maybe we don’t hear a lot of these days.  Pilots land planes gracefully in the Hudson, ex-presidents retrieve captured journalists in foreign countries.  Doctors save lives, aid workers feed the hungry. For some people, it’s so obvious.  For the rest of the planet, we might need to read a book to remind us.

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At what point in a writer’s career does their writing become able to be characterized? I mean specifically the point where you get to add “ian” or “esque” at the end of someone’s name, or “so” at the beginning of it. As in, “it’s the most Updike-esque of his works” or “those stories are soooo O’Connor.”

Kate Christensen is about to release her fifth novel, Trouble, after last year’s triumphant, PEN Faulkner-winning, The Great Man, and this new book is feeling pretty Christensen-ish to me. The writing is lush, witty, and extremely clever without being the slightest bit pretentious, while vividly etched characters consume life willfully and voraciously, as two female friends in their 40s escape their lives and take on Mexico City. Trouble is simultaneously bittersweet and exhilarating, and will fit nicely in one’s beach bag, this summer. Try not to get it wet, though, because you’ll probably want to share it with a friend.

Kate kindly answered three questions via email over the course of a stunning summer weekend in Brooklyn, NY.

Rumpus: I think my favorite thing about this book is that the narrator is unapologetic about wanting to fulfill her desires. I know that sometimes women – more than men, for sure – both in real life and the fictional world definitely feel a little guilty about making themselves feel good, whether it’s with sex or food or following their dreams. It’s so refreshing to see a character having a good time. Did you set out to write something inspirational? I recognize that some people might not find a narrator who leaves her husband to pursue, amongst other things, her sexual desires, as a role model, and the narrator is indeed flawed, but still, the whole time I was thinking: Hallelujah.

Christensen: I set out to write about two very different types of women — Josie is tough and selfish, although she generally tries to do the right thing; she’s empathetic but naive. She has limited awareness of herself and other people, even though she’ a therapist; and this myopia protects her in some deep way. Raquel is also tough in her own way, but she’s far more vulnerable and self-aware than her friend, and this is what destroys her in the end. I wanted the difference in their fates to feel poignant and complex, not attributable to only one thing — as Josie comes back to life, she becomes increasingly self-involved. As Raquel falls apart and spirals down, she becomes increasingly clear-eyed.

If I’m saying anything, to answer your question more directly, maybe it’s that in order to allow yourself to get exactly what you want, you have to be a little clueless, a little naive — willfully so, maybe. I’m not judging either character, it’s not my place to judge my characters because they’re all parts of myself, but I do think objectively that Josie can be maddeningly obtuse, which enables her to see what she wants and needs to see. Raquel has no such luxury of selective understanding: she sees her own situation with blistering, unmediated clarity. Josie suppressed her own desires and needs for years: she couldn’t face the fact that she was stifled and frustrated because she lacked that degree of self-knowledge. Her sudden realization that her marriage is over is uncharacteristic, which is why it startles her.

The rest of the novel unfolds from this one unexpected moment of insight, which gives her the impetus to go off in search of pleasure, sex, adventure, decadence, independence. Raquel is paying the price for her own past; she’s lost her internal sense of entitlement to joy or pleasure. She’s washed-up, heartbroken, and shamed, and she knows exactly what she did to get herself into this state. It’s the irony at the heart of the novel for me: self-knowledge doesn’t necessarily lead to happiness.

Rumpus: I also enjoyed your investigation into female friendships, which can sometimes shift at a moment’s notice, even if you’ve known a person for years. I often talk about taking “friend breaks” with people, which is some rough stuff, but usually works out in the end. I just think they’re really tricky things, female friendships. Again, you’ve expressed different layers and possibilities than aren’t usually acknowledged in literature. Can you talk a bit about what drove your decisions with this topic, and, if possible, a little bit about what you have learned about female friendships in your life.

Christensen: Female friendship can and often does go as deep as marriage or family, but it lacks the codified structures of those more “official” relationships. Therefore it can be either a glorious, carefree bond or a nebulous and swampy world of painful misunderstanding and thwarted expectations — there are no rules about what we owe our friends, and often it feels as if each friendship is sort of made up as it goes along, improvised from scratch.

I’ve taken “friendship breaks,” I’ve flat-out dumped friends and been dumped myself, I’ve struggled through painful situations with friends, and I’ve learned, over the years, that friendship must be seen by both people as entirely voluntary, entirely based on mutual choice — although friends often feel guilty or resentful about letting each other down and say or do things they’d rather not say or do in order to avoid hurt feelings, there really are no obligations, no real responsibilities, that attend friendship.

So in a way it’s the purest of bonds — both people are there because, ultimately, they choose to be together, with every lunch, every walk together, every conversation, it’s a reinforcement of that choice. Over the years, a friendship becomes ingrained, but a friend isn’t someone I feel I can ever take for granted.

I wanted to write about this somehow — raise some questions about female friends who’ve known each other through the decades and have stayed close despite divergences in their lives. I find these friendships deeply moving and inspiring — at the end, after her poignant rapprochement with Indrani, Josie thinks about Raquel and wonders whether she failed her; she realizes, both from what happened with Indrani and what happened with Raquel, that the way to be a true friend is not to judge or proscribe, but to empathize and be as fully present as possible – this is what true friendship is made of, no mater what the outcome.

Rumpus: You told me that you were reading Blake and Cervantes right now in preparation for writing your next book. What books did you read in preparation for writing this book? Is this something you’ve done consistently throughout your career as part of your process? And how deliberate are these choices? I have, on occasion, gone to bookstores where I know the employees well and highly value their opinion, and given them a very general idea of what my book is about and then asked them to recommend a slew of books of to me. But it’s always in the very nascent stages of my book, just a hint of an idea, and I think partially I just like hanging out with people who work in bookstores. I suspect you are more purposeful than that.

Christensen: Really? No, I don’t think I am; your approach sounds quite purposeful and open-minded and smart. I do research for books in a haphazard, intuitive, quasi-grumbling way. I KNOW Blake and Cervantes are crucial for this next book, and I don’t know enough about them, so I will spend my weeklong summer island getaway as a working vacation, immersed in Don Quixote and as much of Blake as I can gulp down. I know I’ll be a pig in shit, though. In fact, I can’t wait.

For Trouble, I didn’t really do any ancillary reading — it was a visceral experience to write that book. I did a lot of research on Mexico City itself, a place I’ve been to many times; I have friends who live there or have lived there, and I made them read the manuscript and picked their brains. I derived inspiration entirely from my own imagination and experience this time around.

I wrote the novel in three months and didn’t stop for breath the entire time. It felt deeply necessary in a personal, not a public, way, so with this book the critical reception doesn’t matter to me as much as it did with, say The Epicure’s Lament, which was a labor of tremendous literary love — I was inspired by Montaigne and MFK Fisher most of all, but also many other novelists. It’s mysterious, where novels come from.

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