Man Makes Plans . . . And

I Wanted To Give Readers The Feeling Of Knowing The Characters, A Mental Image.

A Story Begins With This Nebulous Feeling That’s Hard To Get A Hold Of And You’re Testing Your Feelings And Assumptions, Testing What You Believe. They End Up Turning Into Keepsakes And Mementos –like Amber In Which A Memory Gets Trapped.

Novelist Time Is Reptile Time; Novelists Tend To Be Ruminant And Brooding, Nursers Of Ancient Grievances, Second-guessers, Tuesday Afternoon Quarterbacks, Retrospectators, Endlessly, Like Slumping Hitters, Studying The Film Of Their Old Whiffs.

Anything Good That I Have Written Has, At Some Point During Its Composition, Left Me Feeling Uneasy And Afraid. It Has Seemed, For A Moment At Least, To Put Me At Risk.

Undressing Her Was An Act Of Recklessness, A Kind Of Vandalism, Like Releasing A Zoo Full Of Animals, Or Blowing Up A Dam.