Fiction And Poetry Are My First Loves,

My Friend Ronald Gottesman Says...that The Cause Of All Our Trouble Is The Belief In An Essential, Pure Identity: Religious, Ethnic, Historical, Ideological.

I Think That Those Of Us Who Are Ordinary Disappear Easily Into The Backdrop Of Life And We Take Things For Granted. We Often Wake Up In Our Lives And Wonder How We Got There. But The Characters I Create, The People I Am Drawn To, Are Quite Extraordinary (and Not Always In Wholesome Ways), And They Offer Us The Chance To Understand Who We Really Are And How We Became Who We Are.

Nigerians Are Everywhere. There's An Old Joke, Particularly About The Ibos, That When You Finally Land On Mars, You're Going To Find A Nigerian There Who Has A Shop That Is Selling Coca-cola--who Took A Speculative Trip 20 Years Ago And Has Been Waiting For Everyone Else To Arrive.

Unlike Other Books Or Tv Shows Or Sometimes Life, My Narrative Worlds Are Stripped Of Implicit Moral Centers. There Is Only What You Bring. That Makes The Characters Risky In Every Way And The Narrative, A Journey Of Change For The Reader. But I Make The Journey As Fun As I Can.

I Think A Book That Is Over 400 Pages Should Be Split In Two. I Don't Know That There's Anything That Interesting That Can Go On For 700 Pages. I Think That Is A Little Bit Indulgent.