I remember, even in college, reading Cliffs Notes about a book and thinking to myself, 'Geez, that sounds like a good book. I should probably read it.'
A woman at a bookstore in Brattleboro, Vt., put Castle Freeman Jr.'s novel 'Go With Me' in my hand, and I took it to be nice. 'Yeah I'll probably read five pages,' I thought. But once I started, I could not put it down.
I always thought of Caesars as the gold standard. I had exactly one date in high school, and my father knew someone who got us comped here for the Sammy Davis Jr. show. We heard 'Candy Man,' 'Mr. Bojangles' - the whole list. And then my date and I went off to the dance - homecoming, I think - where she pretty much ignored me.
I had a string of really awful jobs in Manhattan where my whole point was to do as little work in the world as possible so I could hoard time to write.
My grandfather was a pawnbroker, and when I was in first or second grade, my parents opened their own store. I probably learned to count by putting pawn tickets in numerical order in the back room of the shop.
'Death Of A Salesman,' 'Streetcar Named Desire,' these are the things that, when I was growing up, made me want to be an artist.
Something I found while writing 'Alice & Oliver' - a book that is unquestionably a work of fiction, but which also borrows details from my own life - is that writing the truth often requires invention and imagination.
