one of the most important things is make the reader feel like they're living the experience in the book where does that symbolism come from they wrote down the key elements of a gentleman Moscow in a period of about an hour and a half wow I plan design and outline before I start
writing I can then reduce the interaction of the analytical side of my brain and that's where you start to get poetic surprises I'm very interested in this feedback loop of you describe something then you see more you see more and then you describe something so it process beginning to build in the layers
of the language to suggest a bigger truth that's a beautiful answer I got to say I'm really excited for this conversation because I feel like more than anyone I've ever interviewed the number of things that I have to learn from you is so big and the place I want to start is with your ability to describe things in detail and
your vocabulary especially with with French words you know the mat there you know the OA like whatever I'm just making stuff up but your French vocabulary in particular is really rich certain aspects of the FR French language enter American and English usage over time and uh and that you
encounter it over time and so you absorb it in one way or another certain Italian words certain German words certain Spanish words become a part of the broader uh the broader vocabulary that surround you so then you try to make use of your vocabulary from whatever angle you have you know and I I
guess way of thinking about it too is that um you know baseball has its own vocabulary uh the city streets have a vocabulary Finance has a vocabulary uh there's ethnic vocabularies Italian American or Or Hispanic American or what have you uh and um and so as a a writer you're you become very interested I
think in general in these vocabularies you and you you pick up the words that strike you as interesting or unusual or what a cool way to put that or or what a surprising you know what a perfect word for that feeling or for that you know uh that to designate that person so you're
you start to tune your your ears towards picking up interesting language including technical language you know which is becomes fascinating or biological language you know the language of physics and and so when you're writing it's become second nature to constantly be applying different
vocabularies to different purposes uh because you think it will better evoke uh the situation you're in in the case of a gentleman Moscow the main character count rosov is an aristocrat born in Europe in the late 19th century so it would be very natural for him to make use of French language in what
other whatever form and in fact uh all of society in Moscow in 1900 spoke French none of them spoke Russian I mean they would knew how to speak Russian but they never would have spoken Russian to each other they only spoke French and so uh that would have been true throughout the late 19th century so you you want to
evoke that now I don't speak French but so you then as I say you start to draw on every little bit of French you know and kind of weave it into uh the language because it sort of helps bring uh into sharpness the notion of this would be a person who knows these things and has the sensibility yeah well
what's interesting with that is that there's a aristocratic tenor in that book and one of the things with the aristocracy is there's a forbiddenness that when I look at societally if you're not from that there's almost a distance that people have and I've noticed that it's only in
very particular places where I've really been able to pick up you know on on that language sometimes I go to the met or when I'm in Paris I can really pick up on that language that way of living but it just seems like there some intentionality but then you contrast that with hey here's a group of guys on
the Lincoln Highway in 1954 that's a totally different language yes that's right and and again so that's you're the training of being a young writer is you're listening to those different kinds of of voices but but uh it's not necessarily the spoken language that you're NE you know you're you're
principally interested in so uh I'll get very interested in uh if I'm writing Lincoln Highway set in 1954 uh one of the things that I did in sort of I'm not a research driven guy uh but one of the things I did for in advance of writing that book as I went and read uh three novels that had all
been written uh around 1954 that were all set in about that time so planning o Connor's uh first collection of short stories uh A Good Man is Hard to Find I I read um James Baldwin's first novel uh Go Tell It on the Mountain I read the man with a gray flannel suit and I read uh Raymond
Chandler's uh long goodbye which is all now what's interesting about those four books is that they're all written within about 12 months of each other and they're 18 months of each other most of them are kind of set right at that time um but goel on the mountain is you know
a young black writer writing about Harlem you know Raymond Chandler's work he's it's towards the end of his career and he's writing a Noir said in Los Angeles of the time having written about crime in Los Angeles for 30 years man with a great flannel suit is about the S of first generation of veterans that
came back from the second world war and became businessmen wearing and that's why it's called that because it was the guys who rode the train from Connecticut into the city every day dressed identically uh you know to go and work in Madison Avenue and return home for martini and while their wife was taking
care of the kids that whole generation was he really depicted that for the first time uh kind of in in the development of American culture and then fenio Connor is writing uh Gothic tales in the South now so in this 18-month period these are four different American Classics which have a totally different
language about them different they're using a different vocabulary they different semantics they're concerned with different things thematically but they're all profoundly American you know and that's the nature of being in uh the American Melting Pot as a culture so as I say I read all those books in the
years before reading Lincoln Highway because it's sort of a way of of triggering for me a reminder of some of the different sensibilities of that time yeah you're talking about listening and reading and having an ear for times when people describe something in a way that you've never
heard it described that way before I was just reading your essay on Nighthawks with hopper and it had that exact thing happen where in the bottom of one of your paragraphs you were talking about how it described cribes uh the mood was Melancholy but it's not a sad kind of melancholy and then you use that
sentence and then for the rest of the piece you talk about how in a city the Solitude The Melancholy is actually nice because it's placed in the context of New York City and my mental thought was wow you've just placed a new emotion in my mind that I didn't know existed and when I think about what I strive to do
as a writer it's that's what it is when I was in writing education you know learning in school and whatnot I always thought about impressive writing as big words or trying to sound loquacious or this elegant Pros but actually what I really value is that descriptiveness and that novelty through specificity and a
Vibrance in the language and I read that sentence and I was like that's what that was as a writer you you you you keep returning to this idea of description and and and it's certainly a critical aspect aspect in the broader uh challenge of writing fiction but one of the most important
things is to make the reader feel like they're living the experience in the book to some degree that they feel present and uh and as a result become interested in the characters and connected to the characters they can see things unfolding their their ideas uh their thought processes and Fe and
feelings are uh are sort of turned on by what they're what they're reading about now all that really depends upon making the reader feel present in the moment and so one of the most valuable tools to achieving that in uh an effective writing is through description that is sharp enough and concise enough that the
reader can see where they are know where they are not get bogged down in it and then begin to sort of themselves move throughout the room and listen to how things unfold you know so in the case of of a of a gentleman Moscow you know I know that book is going to take place
you know whatever it's almost 30 years Inside the Hotel the reader rarely leaves the hotel so I know it's extremely important when I was writing that that to lay out the geography of the hotel early to give people a vivid sense of the key rooms early because once i' done that then as events unfold
the reader kind of can feel like they're walking through the hotel themselves and uh now the to do that though there has to be that balance there has the balance between it can't the description can't be so spare that it could be anywhere um but nor can it be so specific that I feel like I'm being bogged down in cold
cumbersome descriptions of the space so you do have to kind of as you're working through the writing of that description so adding details taking details away is narrow in on the few elements that will really help bring uh that space vividly to life for the reader and how do you think about
that pacing what I found when I've done video editing in the past is that my perception of the speed that a video needs to be at is very different in my 50th run through the video as a consumer's perception of where it needs to be in their first run through the video and over and over people would say
to me your videos are too fast your videos are too fast how do you manage when you're trying to have that felt sense of the pacing of a novel how do you manage that pacing when you're so in it and so familiar with it yeah uh I mean that that is a uh that's a whole art form in itself because really what
you're asking about is editing and so you know writing and editing are are two closely interlined but different skill sets and uh the editing process is the ability to go back and take a look at something you've already written and try to hear it a little bit differently and
hear read it as if it's for the first time to gain a sense of uh is this slow for me like do I find this section boring that's never a good sign never a good sign right because if I find it boring on the third read then the you know reader is definitely going to run the risk of finding boring so so
you do have to kind of train yourself to constantly looking at it a little cold a little bit more coldly and find what that right Tempo is I mean you know you talk about Pace or Tempo would mean you know the same idea is do I feel as the reader um compelled to move on now now I
I I don't want to a associate what I just said with a page Turner which which is its own art form and is a value and there's parts of a book that can be page turn but but uh a page Turner in in the classical sense is really something where really driven by the action you know uh you know so Lee child writes
page Turners and Turners in his in his Jack Reacher novels you know where you're constantly want to know what happens next because there's a new crisis or a new danger or we want to beat up the next guy or whatever it is and uh you know that's a certain kind kind of urgency that can exist in in uh
writing but as a as a novelist writing in a literary style that's not the one you're looking at so what you're need to be creating is a sense of urgency for the reader which may be without any action at all right it may be that uh you're drawing the reader in who gets interested in the psychology of the
character and so they want to understand what are they feeling and what are they going to do next and but even though there's no there's no action involved you know and or what how is the writer going to put this next you know because the the the the phrasing of the senten
is compelling so there's all kinds of ways that you're trying to make sure that the writing is is drawing the reader forward and but that may include a willingness to have Parts which are slow right right tactically as you're trying to work on the descriptiveness of a sentence or of a paragraph how does
that happen is it the kind of thing where you sort of live in it you're just trying to make it better make it better make it better or do you find that stepping away from it for maybe a few months you come back to you're like that's off that's off and it instantly comes to mind all right well let's take
a step back so what I do is uh my novels have always begun with a very simple premise they have like a sentence where I'm like oh yeah okay guy lives in a hotel for a long period of time that's interesting and if that idea kind of grabs hold of me I'll start to think it out a little bit and usually uh like
when I had that notion which led to a gentlem in Moscow within the first couple of hours I know a lot about it so I started with a guy gets trapped in a hotel for a long period of time and then right away I was like oh it could be set in Russia he could be an aristocrat he
could be sentenced to house arrest in a luxury hotel across the street from the Kremlin uh you know it could span the from the revolution to the Cold War so I knew all that very quickly like in a matter of minutes where were you when you had that Epiphany I was in Geneva and I was in Geneva in a hotel and
that's why I had the because I was in a hotel and and recognized a guy in the lobby from the year before in the hotel room upstairs I wrote down the key elements of a gentleman Moscow in a period of about an hour and a half wow in the course of the next three days I wrote the scaffolding for almost all the
key events of the novel okay but then what happens is that uh if it really grabs me as it did in that case I'll start to fill notebooks and the notebooks I'll be asking myself you know okay there's going to be this section of scene where the Count's going to meet a young girl and uh that's going to be his
first friend she's kind of in the hotel too it's going to be in the restaurant and uh okay so you know what what's going to prompt the meeting what what are they actually going to talk about in this first meeting and and so in my spare time I'm just I'm dwelling on that and uh I used to do while I was walking
to work let's say you know i' I'd be like oh yeah okay what's going to happen in that scene and I start to visualize it in greater and greater detail I can see the restaurant I can see the girl I can see them dining I can see their interaction so that the humorous element element of it I then can start to hear
the conversation start to imagine that in Greater detail I see the food coming I see the waiter all these various elements and uh and then I in Notebook I'll start to write that scene and uh write it out by hand um now I don't necessarily when I'm doing these notebooks work chronologically from
chapter one to the end of the chapter it's kind of whatever grabs my whatever I want to think about that day it's but I I now know that there's all these various elements that are going to be have to be investigated um and I will do that for a couple of years so at the end of a couple of years
I'll have a couple of notebooks filled with handwritten uh descriptions of what happens in the book and only when I know everything that's going to happen in the book and I can visualize it all do I then start writing chapter one uh now and then I'll write the book over you
know a year and a half or something like that and then I go back to the beginning and start to revise it from beginning and end and I'll do that you know two or three times so I lay all this out because it's an important to inform your my answer to your question or to inform your question which is that is that I
don't walk I don't sit there with a blank page and not without a sense of where I'm going and start to try to investigate it as I go right is I am sitting down saying okay the chapter is you know it's the seventh chapter this is where they are this is what's I know exactly uh where it's set what it looks
like who's there what their backgrounds are what their personalities are like what they're going to talk about I know all that and so then when I'm writing the chapter it's I don't have to solve for those kinds of things instead it's really a question of what are the best ways to
bring this to life in the language and what's the best way to craft the Poetry of this now I'll point out here and I kind of implied this a second ago but I'm as I make it clear I'm an outliner that's what I am I plan design and outline before I start writing that can sound like it's very uh that can
sound very left brain meaning very analytical very precise very or organized um the reason that I do that though is in order to free up the right side of my brain when I'm in the writing process the right side being the more subconscious more dream oriented more poetic side of the
brain if I have not figured out all these details what does the room look like who's there what's their background what happens if I haven't figured out that when I'm writing that's the part of my brain that has to be in full action figuring out problem solving all these little elements of the story um and it
puts pressure on or dampens the poetic side of the Consciousness so the more I know the more I can then reduce the interaction of the analytical side of my brain and free up the poetic side to take over and then that's where you start to get the poetic surprises of unanticipated ways of putting something
or or actually you know he's going to look not at this he's going to look at that or she's not going to say this she's going to say that you you start to go with your instincts and and you start to build out something which is is both fits the story it's completing what you need to in the support in the
story but it's also a more poetic and Lively somehow artistically true version of that events uh in as you're drafting it then the the redrafting process is you keep cleaning that to make it sharper and sharper and sharper yeah that's a beautiful answer that's a beautiful answer one of so so so then
what comes to mind is there's a there's a short paragraph I want to say it's two or three sentences early in a gentleman in Moscow and I'm laughing because the civism is so good I think that there's the count up in the room and I want to say it's like the butler comes up and
the language that you use is that the butler must have ran up because the coffee wasn't a single degree cooler so like something like that yeah does that come out when you're writing was that planned where does that symbolism come from in a sentence like that something like that is very often um if you look
at a gentleman Moscow as an example that book is written in the third person however it is not written in the third person omniscient voice you know so the third person person omnicient voice that would be used by Dickens or Tolstoy Henry James that's a narrator who knows
all they know what's happened to all the characters in the past they know what's going to happen to them in the future you know their inner lives and is telling you from high above these are the events um so that book is written in a third person but one which is not omniscient it's really more of a third
person which is closely attached to the inner consciousness of the count so it is really the narrator mostly tells you what the count would see and tells it in a way that is consistent with how the count would feel about it and uh follows his foibles and makes his mistakes has
his sense of humor you know all these kinds of things that's all built into the narration so the reason I lay that out for you is that a lot of the times when you have a detail like that that's something that's coming out of bringing that voice to life so meaning that I've begun to understand the count understand
how he thinks uh understand sort of uh what he would care about um I understand sort of sort of the comic aspects of the way that he would describe things so that's less of a question of how would you describe the coffee arriving in the morning and more of a thing of saying uh what would the count notice and the
count would say oh you know there you are you know as you say the waiter he clearly ran up the stairs because because he would care about how hot the coffee was you know as someone because he's constantly talking about things like that about quisine and he's used to being served promptly you know in his
life as an aristocrat it's the kind of thing an aristocrat would care about right because they don't have to care about going to work right but uh but so and he but he also he has a certain enthusiasm him in his personality for things like that and he has great respect for others who do things well
and so all that gets kind of bound into that you're like oh yeah this is perfect he'll say you know he'll be he'll be really focused on The Temper of of the coffee you know because that's what suits his personality so as I say sometimes you you I wouldn't have thought to write that passage or
describe it in that way it's really grown out of putting myself in the place of that character and I would say more broadly than that that is true of most of at least 90% of the passages in any of my work which readers will come to me and say this was the very moving to me
this passage where this was the most beautiful passage I wrote it out or this was so insightful you know that I sent it to my daughter or I read it to my husband or whatever it is 90% of the time when someone comes to me and says this about a passage it is something which I would never have said in the
course of my my own life it wouldn't have occurred to me I wouldn't say it to my children I wouldn't mention it to a friend what's happened is that I have imagined for a moment that I am this person who I am not who has a different background and has a different personality I have then put that person
in a situation in which I've never been and while in that moment that person with that background that personality looks around and says you know the thing about it is D and usually that comes really fast and you know like oh yeah bam and we down I'm usually I'm like well done count you
nailed that cuz that's what it feels like it feels like I've heard it from this personality in this experience you know and so and that's of course uh that's one of the ideal states to achieve in in narrative writing you know which the modern parlan's flow or whatever but where you get deep enough
into it that it is happening for you you're watching it happen I got to ask what do you make of this idea of the crazy artist the person who can't function and is just horrible to other people around them you are a well adjusted guy you you worked in the finance industry for 21 years you went
to Yale you've done well in a lot of different places you're now talking about your writing process you're very structured you're organized you're systematic you're disciplined you showed up on time today you're well dressed all these sorts of things what do you make of that Trope where does that come from
and if it's a Trope that has some truth to it how have you been able to avoid and resist that I you know I don't I don't remember you know there is there is a very clear history around that which others have written about and I don't remember where it began but I think it might have been with the the
romanticists or the Romantic tradition but you know the sort of notion of the struggling artists kind of became this popular uh Concept in Europe and then uh and once that sort of you know the the uh the Romantic Poets writing about broken hearts and about loneliness and about sort of these tragic turns of
events and and sort of the the suffering artist was was sort of was bound up in that and then there were sort of a series of figures in history that kind of magnified that like van go you know where oh yeah you cut off his own ear out of love and then you know killed himself like oh my God you know and so
that's what it takes to you know make a painting like van go and um and of course like any of these kinds of tropes as you say you could have done a a scientific assessment of all the great painters of that time and and you would you would have found a much more broader
distribution of the reality of their lives right you know matis and Picasso weren't like you know neither were you know suicide committers you know right uh you know they they live they lived very well you know P was with a new woman every few years you know there's always he was a difficult guy to be with
but but he but he led a very and enjoyable life so so I think that there's there's uh there's different versions of all of these the there's there's all kinds of personalities that are feeding into all of the Arts whether it's written or the the musical the Arts the the graphic arts there are are
people who are who are who are less extreme and less volatile I I think you know it's also it's you know when you're younger as an artist it's sort of attractive to imagine uh that's an attractive version of of the Arts you know is to be sort of fighting against uh common behavior and fighting
against what are the expectations of you fighting against social mores and and uh and being alone in your in your at in the Attic or the Garrett you know like in labem you know that's that's makes it all the better you know and um and but but I think for a lot of of artists you you also kind of grow out of that a
little bit you know you realize well actually that's not really necessary and it's always not that's always productive you know that that kind of tortured version of art doesn't isn't always get you to get the work done if I talked to uh you I've had the luxury of getting to know many of my accomplished
peers uh in in the you know current writers across the United States and and more often than not if you ask them how they work the vast majority work in the morning you know and and the vast majority punch the clock so you know they'll say I am at my desk at fill in the blank you're a 8 to 12 guy yeah I'm
kind of an 8 to2 guy so when it's 8 8:30 you know some are 6 some are n or 10 you know whatever but the vast majority it's the it's the first thing they do and they do it at the same time with little uh variants and um and not and they're they're because they've learned you over decades that um
inspiration is what comes to them when they're at their desk right it's not something that you don't wait to become inspired and then go to your desk because if you do that you will never make any progress you go you sit down and you do the work and eventually uh fine things will surface
out of that and then your job is to kind of weed out take the fine things and magnify them and take the sloppy stuff and set it aside you know um but It ultimately is is time at the desk there's a lot out there obviously if go follow your passion and just work work work I mean you worked a job for 20
years and then you wrote a novel that didn't work and then you wrote Rules of Civility while you're working a full-time job that comes out and you're like okay now I will go become a full-time writer would you recommend that path to other novelists or would you tell people hey go for it while
you're young that's a good time to do it I think you got to do that you got to figure that one out yourself you know I think as a writer I mean because as you say I I I did not I've been writing since I was a kid and I wrote in college I wrote in graduate school I had stories published in the parish review in my 20s
and at that point I could have said all right I'm going to now commit myself to this craft and uh and and maybe I should have you know it's there's no way to know right and um and if I had done that uh I may have I may have written 13 books by now instead of five you know or
four whatever it is um so but I I ended up done going this other path and uh which worked out for me but but there's a lot of people who if they choose not to follow their art now they're either miserable or they enter a career which is not productive for them or doesn't reward them fin finally or doesn't
satisfy them intellectually and makes them Miserable as a person so you know there's a lot of variables in there you know uh so it's it's hard to know which is the the right thing for different people but but there's there's plenty of artists that I know uh a talented successful artist who started later you
know uh you know I just mentioned uh you know Lee Childs and obviously he writes very different kinds of work but I know Lee and uh because he's writing suspense but uh he didn't start writing at all in any respect until his late 30s I think because he got fired he was a television director
and he got laid off and he's like I I got to find a way to make money and you know and and he went and stumbled into like I think I can do this and um so so there's but meanwhile you know you have someone like Coulson Whitehead who I'm sure started very young and was doing it
very actively in college and the minute he got out he was writing uh you know full-time probably and the best he could um so so you know there's different roots and and you have to kind of decide works for you as the individual yeah you have some experience describing hotel rooms and one thing that was coming to
mind as you begin to think about what you would say is that you could almost think of seeing as people would think about it they would say okay so when you're looking there's like a scale from zero to 100 and as you begin to maybe describe things you can get to 100% but I would almost argue that a really good
description like gets you past what your mind could ever do on its own and I I feel this when I read David Foster Wallace like if my brain David's perels 100 David Foster wall say goes to like 500 and I even feel it now when I'm on a boat because I read his cruising out shipping out essay I see things that I
would have never seen before and I'm very interested in this feedback loop of you describe something then you see more you see more and then you describe something let's say that you're going to write a story or what have you or a chapter in a book and and the scene is a young girl
is coming downstairs uh it's approaching dinner time it's the 1960s early 1960s she walks into the kitchen and the mother's uh you know making dinner and um you know this music on the radio and if you said okay take some french guy or German writer and say uh you don't know they haven't they didn't spend any time
in America we want you to write this story this scene and here's you know some life magazines and here's you know Wikipedia pages about America in the 1960s and about Suburbia and you know then you what happen is is you have the risk that the the writer would write a sentence that says something like you
she came down the stairs and went in the kitchen as her mother took uh the bird's eyee uh frozen peas from The Frigid a and uh the Beatles played you know love love me do on the radio it's just cliche it's just like well it's all yeah and it's the sort of like okay we get it
frozen peas Frid a The Beatles it's 1964 everything I expected yes so you take a step back and say well what instead of that instead of putting in these landmarks that tell us where we are and what to expect of it whatever what as you say what we already expect ask yourself what would the girl see so
let's say you know she's s years old or something like that 8 years old when a seven-year-old or 8-year-old comes into the room in 1964 and they see their mother making dinner you know what what would she see and I think that like for me uh if you put yourself in that position the first thing that would
really stand out is uh is the the amazing thing that of what Frozen how frozen peas work which is that uh when you take frozen peas out of the freezer and you open them up you can slide the entire brick of peas out like they they come out like a brick all bound together and if this Frozen was sort of
incredible thing When We Were Young that you would see your parent do this and then they would break the the Brick of peas over the pot and you know the child would see this and then inevitably some of the peas would go bouncing across the counter and you know the kid would go
and and would You' try a frozen pee at one point you know you without your mother watching you take the Frozen pea and you're like oh that's what a frozen pea tastes like and some kids would love eating frozen peas and and there's a very specific texture and you know uh Central experience to eating a fro
anyway my point being that this is what the child would see right so if you're trying to bring this scene to life from the perspective of the child you wouldn't mention frigidere and Bird's eyee and you know the Beatles it would be this other stuff now we can add make this more interesting in and by saying
well let's say and it is from the girl's perspective and this is what she's witnessing let's say that uh earlier that day uh her mother has discovered that uh her husband is cheating on her and she was doing the laundry and she finds a a note in her husband's pocket or you know
and and realizes that she's being cheated on and so the mother is feeling uh vulnerable you know angry uh frightened you know that her husband might leave her that the family would be broken up um or alternatively let's say that on this day she has cheated on her husband for the first time she goes to
take the car to the uh Car Wash and she ends up in the back seat of the car as it's going through the thing with the guy from the car wash and she's feeling sort of dangerous and sexy and excited and Alive you know and all these things are going through now either way when the girl walks in the room she would not
know that this happened okay and maybe years from now later in the book she's going to discover that that was the day that you fill in the blank mom was cheated on or Mom cheated whichever one so when writing that scene uh in addition to the child seeing these little elements like the frozen peas
that bring it to life in this Vivid way you'd actually have to write the scene very differently with a different language and a different Tempo a different tone depending upon which of the two things the mother had done earlier that day because although it would not be known to the girl somehow
it would have to be evident in the behavior of the mother that the girl senses in the room without even knowing that she senses it so that as I said say later when you find it out you could go back and read that section and say it was all there that's what was going on that night you know and that's why this
felt a little offer than whatever you so as a writer then you go go into this situation of of as you say there's this iterative process of of trying to observe accurately and trying to write it carefully but then beginning to build in the layers of the language your word
choice and the Poetry of the language to suggest a bigger truth which is not simply what am I witnessing but what is the full emotional content of not only the mother but of everybody in the household and how is it in there in that space and then how is that kind of suggested by the historical context you
know that we are middle class or upper middle class or lower middle class that we're in Ohio versus you know suburb of Los Angeles versus Baltimore all that has to be in there too you know what I mean so through the writing and the rewriting you try to get as much of that right at the beginning by hearing these
elements in advance by sort of picking the the tone and the vocabulary that suits this destination that you're going to bring to life but then you through the editing and the re-editing you refine that and make sure that you're getting it closer and closer to where you want it to
be I'll add something here which is that the way I think about it for myself and I think that all writers approach these things very differently but the way I think about it for myself is that uh I write the first draft for me and for me Al so in the writing of it I'm like whatever I want to imagine uh what
whatever whims I have whatever tickles my fancy uh however deep I get into the fascination what I whatever I think is hilarious um whatever you know I can go on at length you know as I am doing right now I just let it all whatever happens happens I don't regulate it in any way and uh but then once the first
draft is there and in reasonably good shape I then kind of turn the lens around and I say okay having written this for myself full of of vanities and digressions and and investigations and you know asides and what diversions everything what now I want to think about it not from my perspective but
from a reader's perspective and and this is it's not about you know trying to sell books it's it's that looking at it from the reader perspective is a way of saying what I'm going to compl complete the the the F fill the Covenant here do my half of the Covenant when a reader buys my book that means they're going to
spend money and then more importantly they're going to spend time consuming the book and so that is an investment by them into my art and so I owe it to them I have certain things that I owe them in exchange for that and one of the things I owe them is to ensure that I've taken
that initial draft and I've weeded out the redundancies the the things that are cliche the things that are boring the things that have that are only there because they satisfy my whim but actually don't play a role in the story as a whole so the re the editing part for me a large portion of that is taking
things out being getting it leaner and leaner so that it really is around the the pure economy of the elements that belong in this story and in the language that serves this story and then everything else gets pushed out to the side you know how much of what you just said do you feel can be taught one of
the things that I very much observed was as you were talking about the peas you spoke about your experience with the peas and you had a deep sense of trust and conviction about your experience with the peas that your experience would be valid real enough that you could
trust that and put it in your story and that your own personal experience would be part of that and I would imagine that there's probably a permission that a young writer needs to feel around maybe people are they don't feel that their experience is worth writing about or something but out of what you said if
you're teaching a class at Yale or something you're going back and you're going to do spring semester a writing class how much of what you said do feel can be taught and to the extent that it can or can't be taught how would you structure that class to help your students the people who were in the
shoes now that you were in when you were in school I am the wrong person as this question so and and that is because uh there are many very talented accomplished writers even here in the city who do what you say meaning that you know Michael Cunningham you know pzer priz winner
writing of the hours he does teach at Yale Gary steinart teaches at Colombia uh Jeffrey eugeni Pitzer Prize winner teaches it at in uh NYU and so and they are great American novelists who are also teaching and so they could tell you I can't right because I have not actually uh taught and so uh you know I
I could I could have guesses about what's teachable what's not teachable you know um but you know for me uh the most V you know I practice is the most important thing right so uh uh it's about gaining command of elements of craft and teaching can highlight for you uh how the elements of CRA what the
elements of craft are how they work how they inter interact uh teaching very valuably gives you a requirement of actually doing work like if I look back in my own study because I did take writing classes at eel I did take you know I went to a graduate program in writing in Stanford um so you I was in
workshops and the most valuable thing that comes out of those by far is the fact that you are handing something in huh so get you to get things done um and you begin the process of exposing yourself to how other people talk about your work analyze your work which is fine you know um but but mostly you're
you're you're you're learning elements of craft through repetition and if you think of the elements of craft and it's a very long list in in novel in the writing of novels but the obvious things of like plot setting dialogue uh tone of voice perspective the more Arcane things what
like metaphor or simile or Illusion or allegory uh you know these are all elements of craft and so um the best way to sort of gain command of them is by constantly writing stories where you are making use of these elements of craft then I would go an added step for me which is to say that not all writers
would believe would agree with me on this and not all writers who teach would but I'm a believer that Young Writers should write from all kinds of different perspectives so you take on different personalities you write about different places you write about different experiences you you imagine yourself in
the position of someone of a different gender of a different age from a different social class of A different race from a different country and you write uh about some circumstance that they're in and and that starts to hone for you um the ability not simply to command an element of craft like
dialogue but to do it uh in a different way for a different person each time you know that you're writing s if you're during a setting you're writing a story about an 80-year-old woman who was uh had parents were very wealthy married well but is now relatively has lower income living in a big apartment in the
Upper East Side you know or you were writing about you know a kid uh you know from uh you know the east east side of Chicago um you know who's you know you know single p parent family or whatever and they're going to describe a room that they're in they would approach describing that
setting very differently so in that sense there's no when you gaining command of The Craft of setting it's not like it's a single thing where you're like ah this is how you describe a place or a room or an environment because that's going to change every time you change the personality and the
background of the character so what becomes valuable as a young person is constantly shifting the ground under your own feet so that you actually get sort of a meta lesson which is not how to do setting but how do you start to see the elements within setting that can be re-approached in different styles to
accomplish the evocation of a different kind of place from a different interior mindset right yeah what's coming to mind for me is just the malleability of descriptiveness we think of things as these things that are they're concrete this is how it is it is a physical object it can't change and you're
challenging that notion you're saying that the same table by people from from all different social classes they could look at that table and see different things abut one person could see a Nick in the wood and say oh this wouldn't have been good enough for Grandma another person could say oh my goodness
and just be flabbergasted by the sight before their eyes I think guess exact it could strike a memory for them I I my my uncle had a table like that when the you know when my parents would play poker and I was waiting to go to bed or you know it would be like that kind of thing
right as you say it can it can trigger any kind of of emotion of a memory and it's with in the landscape of the room you know if it doesn't Clash does it stand out does it doesn't make the room you know you're right so you're you're you're sort of you got to train yourself in the malleability of description as
you as you say uh is is and so going back to the question you know can various these things be taught you know I suppose sure you know and but most importantly it's it's it's mastering craft through repetition you know and and through constantly approaching things in New ways and then gaining a
greater and greater command over what works and what doesn't now tell me about the flip side of this which is how you consume differently because this to me is the fun part about getting into the game in anything whether it's I played golf at a high level learning to paint a
bit learning to write is once you start doing the thing you start consuming the thing differently because you start deconstructing what's going on and all of a sudden you develop a critical eye what do I like what don't I like what do I think is refined what do I think is sloppy and all this happens at a very
subconscious level and I know that you've been in this writing group for like 20 years you're reading over and over again wou sorry a reading group thank you is that where that consumption happens you're doing this a lot on your own what is how do you consume differently you certainly hit on an
important thing which I think the vast majority of serious writers of fiction would have a similar story to mine which is that I began I became interested in writing when I began to read those things happen simultaneously you know first grade grade and uh so from that point you know what happened was uh my
first grade teacher Mrs gum brought to the class a well-known juvenile poet from New England named David McCord meaning he wrote poetry for the young and he read his poems to the class and uh and then we were given you know copies of his books at the end of class which he signed and you know we got to
bring them home and uh and I just remember being like this is the coolest thing this is it you know I just love this I love I love everything about it I loved that he was writing these poems and the way he used language I love that he was reading them to the class and how attentive we
were all were uh I loved going into the book I mean the whole thing and that's when I really decided I want to be a writer and so from that moment forward reading and writing were things that were happening side by side you know where You' you'd start to read and get interested in somebody and get deeper
and deeper into it and and you'd walk away with with new insights about writing from that investigation and so when you start as a kid you're reading The Hardy Boys and you're reading Ray brury and then you're reading you know sci-fi and you're reading a of the Christi Mysteries and you know all these
kinds of things and James Bond Ian Fleming and you get into something and sort of take things away from it as you're saying but then you kind of shift into high school where you're reading things of of Greater literary merit of more intricate construction and you are absorbing it as you say with a
critical eye how does this work how why do I love this so much how you know how did that just happen oh my God that chapter is amazing this character is incredible this language is so so fresh like surprising how this person is putting things is really like amazing I always read with a pen and so and then
of course you know I studied literature yeah I studi literature at Stanford so you know you're you're getting the point where you're shifting into an active mode not only reading with a pen and figuring out how the whole book is constructed but then you're writing
about that you know where you're writing essays on you know structure in Hemingway or or you know whatever you know the Poetics of Melville or you know whatever the various topics are that you're tackling as as a student and so there's a very thin line between your own approach to writing and and uh the
way in which you read you know they they are influencing each other in a in a in a very profound way and um and you get to the point where you do see things out of practice you start to see things in the structure of the book you see through the book in a way and you say Okay I I get how this is structured
and you know in what he's what he's doing here what she's doing here and um and you learn from that you know I have written in my notes what does this mean I am not this person exclamation exclamation point Exclamation point Exclamation point meaning the context there is that you share drafts with very
good readers and I'm like I am not a very good reader so what what does that mean what it's referring to is that when I write a a a book I don't share the first draft with anybody until I'm done and then I give it to a handful of readers and so and that includes my editor in New York uh it may include my
editor in London it may include my agent U but it'll include three you know uh friends who are good readers you know and so they they may be writers they may be an editor they may be an a a literary agent they may have just studied they may have a graduate degree in literature
but they're people who read thoughtfully carefully and and who therefore will give me thoughtful careful feedback you know people who I trust as a reader and and that you know those are the people I will turn to um the group that you mentioned which is a separate thing is 20 years ago I uh three friends and I
began a book group in essence and and we've been reading novels together for the 20 years and uh we read a novel a month basically and we do projects where we'll take an author and read you know three five seven of that author's Works in a row chronologically or or will read uh a series of books set in the same
place or uh written around the same time by different people or that thematically are interlined but we kind of you know do these projects and do investigations and then you meet to talk about them so yes those are also places where we will at length break down our impressions of
uh the strengths and weaknesses of a particular approach of a narrative voice of you know elements of style that were surprising to us and that that we admire or that we would love to duplicate or whatever all that kind of stuff who's somebody who comes to mind that you learned a lot from oh the whole the
whole project has been amazing I you know I don't there were very few wasted efforts in that but part of because you you're in control of it you read the first two by an author and you're like uh not for us learned a little something but it's not our thing but then some you're like three four five six because
you you're gaining confidence that this is a rewarding person uh to read the work of and and so uh so you kind kind of it s regulates in that sense that that you're reading work that is uh that rewards you yeah I don't know if you're comfortable sharing the name of an author but has there been somebody
who you learned a lot from who was very rewarding whose work you didn't particularly like L well first of all we we almost only we predominantly read dead authors you know so I would say that 90% of the authors that we read are deceased the reality is that is that if you think of
time or history or whatever you want to call it history is not very good at capturing all that is great in art it is not good at that so there are many great Symphonies that have been lost uh permanently there are many great painters that died unknown and their paintings are gone there's novels that
have been written that no one will ever read so history is not good at capturing all this great art but history is very good at uh at discarding all that is mediocre in so and the amount of time that that takes it's like something like 50 years so over the course of 50 years what will happen is a lot of stuff that
was prominent will be fil refiltered and refiltered and refiltered and you'll end up with a smaller group of of things which have survived that test of time and so like if you think about it right now if you go back and look at the best seller list for 1974 1973 there's a lot of that that would
have been highly regarded the time which people do not read anymore for a variety of reasons and there's some that has survived and and that's a very telling distinction um so in a world where where we have I'm turning 60 uh this year you have limited amount of time we both have
we all four of us have active lives we want to make sure that if we're going to sit down we're going to read carefully we're going to meet and we're going to discuss it in detail we want to make sure that the work is rewarding and the best way to to ensure that is by drawing from the past amen so anyway so most of
them are so you know uh there's certainly people where you read and you're like oh I would that's not not my style but you know that's very interesting Mami was not for me you know uh you know and there's people who would adore Mami and and people at the table adored Mami you know but he wasn't
really for me and there's things that he was doing that intrigue me and certain things that I'm like oh that's pretty cool but I I don't know if it suits me you know um and those things he was doing like I'm like I'm not interested in what you're doing with that you know so you know but but uh but at the same
time he's you're like this is a very accomplished writer so you're you're willing to go along for the ride and you try to see and understand what he or she is doing you know from their perspective or what they're trying to achieve artistically uh and some people can be quite uneven you know the
um writers have different approaches to things if you look at at Don Dilo you know he's an amazing writer uh uh you know one of the great living American Writers and he is you know he's you know he's he is near the end of his life I don't mean that as a criticism I hate to say that about mean he's he's old right
but uh but if you looked at his career um his first three novels were published in three years and they're super uneven and they're totally unsatisfying in how they end you know and you get this sense that he's just moving through them really quickly as he's exploring things
that he's doing you know and and figuring out what what is going to be the landscape that he operates in and how's he going to use language and what are the themes that Intrigue him and you work your way towards White Noise and you're like oh that's a masterpiece you know and and and and underworld even
better you know uh you know Philip Roth was a little bit like that for us you know we we we read uh Roth's work and and his work just gets stronger and stronger over time you have novels who go in the opposite direction you know I'm I've mentioned a bunch of guys here I mean we read women too and but but you
you at like Hemingway I mean some of his late work is unreadable it's just terrible it's amazing he wrote it whereas uh some of his greatest work he's not 30 years old right and so you can have that but you can have Roth where he's you know moving along writing great books and very highly regarded and
suddenly late in life he's writing this series of of longer increasingly long and complex Works um you know like American pastoral and things like that so so within that Within that UA you may say you know this was uneven this I didn't like at all but oh my God over this over the Corpus this incredible
body of work is being developed and then there's a couple of real masterpieces embedded in here you know and he's he or she has evolved over that time frame how often are you looking at specific sentences like I've seen you talk about calvino's first sentence you're about to
begin reading Italo calvino's new novel like hilarious hilarious it's the greatest first of all it's so self indulgent it's hilarious so like when you read something like that what pops into your brain yeah no we we I mean our group will definitely do that I mean we'll talk about themes and the
characters and the bigger things more often but but we will interrupt so someone will say wait a second I just want to you know when we're talking about how well the art the writer writes you know somebody will say and you will all turn to that page and we'll read through the paragraph or whatever and
and admire the way that something is constructed you know and I remember in in the case of Roth particular uh there's sections where um and I can't remember which book but as an example where in a paragraph it'll begin from the perspective of one character and then kind of shift into an omnicient
version and then it will shift into the mindset of the other character who who you know you kind of turn around like this and without it ever breaking and without there being a disruption it's just this very fluid thing which uh is very unusual you know and uh and very skillful and you're like oh that's nice
you know and so you'll stop will'll stop and sort of dwell over how that was achieved and um and then again you sort of pack that away and say yeah that's an interesting thing to you know to to draw out at some point is to think about a shift in don't be married to the why
does it have to be uh you know omnition third all the way through what if all of a sudden it's from this other perspective or if most of it's from her perspective why can't I suddenly have it shift in this scene where we hear from his perspective you know you got to be careful you do that because it could be
jarring for the reader and the reader may be like what you know but if you pull it off it's it's a great you know uh as a great element to the storytelling yeah how what's your relationship now with poetry you're talking about learning poetry when you were younger and what how does that factor into your
work because there is a poetic element for sure but you haven't spoken about it yet I you know and I'm not I am not a uh I am a a reader of poetry but not a great one and I have you know I've read poetry over the course of my life I love Whitman I love Dickinson uh I I love um TS Elliot you
know there's a variety of poets that I've L reading and you do learn a very different thing from them than you learn from Reading Joseph Conrad or uh you know or Henry James or Edith Wharton or you know Tony Morrison but but within the scope of narrative there are writers who tilt to the Poetics so Tony Morrison
actually is an example where some of her work uh the sentences are pushing towards poetry and uh so you're you don't have to necessarily read poetry in order to master the you know poetic sensibility you know you can find that in the way that certain novelists write and um and there there is I don't you
know where poetry where Pros ends and poetry begins is a very mysterious thing you know and uh and it's also something that you that I think in for me in writing narrative you have to kind of dial it in and dial it out you know if you wrote in a purely poetic style from beginning to end in the narrative it
could be very difficult for most readers to get into the material because poetry can be very demanding in terms of it can means there are four things at once and you're kind of like saying wait where is this happening and what what isit is it her is it him and is he angry or sad or
you you can't quite tell with poetry you know and that's part of it you start to break it down well if you had that feeling over a long period in the course of a novel it would eventually be like enough you know you you a novel kind of the deal with with a novel is that there
is this invitation to let you get settled so you know where you are and then there's the trying to Dr not to fool you but to lure you in to say okay now things are going to get a little bit more out of control or a little bit more poetic or a little bit more dreamlike and but stick with me you know because I
think when you come out the other side of this passage you're going to be like yeah that was worth it even though I don't fully know yet what it means but the more I read I can go back and reflect on that and say oh yeah you know that feels that's in harmony with these other events you know what I mean so so
there's sort of between the pros and the poet poetic you have to I think sort of create a balance in know when to shift and shift back and uh in order to to not drive your reader nuts yeah and then let's go into something a little bit more concrete now and talk about manifestos I know you like manifestos
you've read manifestos I love the futurist Manifesto I love the energy and almost the the sheer braggadocious arrogance of a Manifesto It's like this is the way it is this is how it needs to be there's an energy even I can feel it in the way I'm speaking it's like this
bodily lionesque Roar that is inside of a Manifesto what sorts of manifestos have you read well I mean I've read you know I kind of collect them in a way and so I but but I I I would not my description of them would not be different than the one you just gave so I do not need to elaborate much on what
you just said and and I and I and my my love of manifestos began not surprisingly as a college student because that's what manifestos are written for college you know I mean for 19y olds you know and that's and that's why revolutions are populated with 19y olds you know and uh and they also Al
historically countries where there's a large population of 19y olds are at risk of Revolution you know because you know nothing and then all of a sudden somebody comes in with some super strong opinion and now you're like I know everything this is the way yeah it turns on every light it stimulates every
electrical nerve and but so but but artistically I think what was interesting to me about is reading those first manifestos as as a younger person was you know what the surrealist Manifesto of Breton or or the the the Communist Manifesto is amazing is it's it's as you say it's this
assurance um it's the idea of taking language and and tying it towards action you know that that this is not I'm not going to describe something for you this isn't a parlor game I'm not trying to satisfy you with some story of woman having tea you know this is about the world right now you know and and the way
you look at things and it's wrong you know and this is right and you know and and you know and you need to look at it that way so as you say this is this great sort of urgency so the the lesson though to me is is you is as a writer is wow that's a really interesting energy to introduce into
language you know and and and the way in which that self assurance can translate into energy is very interesting and you actually could use that in a domestic novel in different ways at different moments in time uh to your advantage you know but it's it's again it's s of that going back to the way where it began
which is that you're constantly kind of gathering uh as a right I think different languages that you could use later and we talked about technical languages and and and you know uh lingos and and slangs well the manifesto is a type of language you know and and if you look at all the great artistic
manifestos and the political ones they overlap a lot in terms of style you know they're learning from each other and they they uh so anyway it it's its own form of what's tactically going on to get that bum bum bum bum bum almost that how does the writing lead to that Crescendo where it comes in at the end
goes like what is actually happening technically you have to go scan you have to go scan at each one but you're right it's very staccato you know and it is and it's it doesn't slow itself down it doesn't bog itself down in examples um it's pushing forward at all times the
next idea and the next idea and the next idea uh and it doesn't over elaborate you know so there's like seven declarations you know in 14 sentences you know whatever that kind of thing but but uh but yeah I know I'm I'm very fond of that whole category of language you have this I think it's your second most
popular tweet ever you know what it is no I I'm I am not I am not much of a tweeter and and and I don't have much of a following but go ahead you you you show this art nuuvo door and you're like I want to write that I forget exactly what you said it's like you show a door
an art Novo door you're like I want to put that on paper and I have no idea what you mean and I also know exactly what you mean at the same time yeah I don't I know what you mean yeah no you know I think that that uh the a part of of of the life of a writer is is you're constantly listening or looking or and
and your mind is is moving on from what you're looking at and what you're hearing to um imagine something Beyond it you know so I mean I was I was being a little bit of a uh tongue and cheek there the the the this is this art Novo door uh of incredible intricacy super elaborate um and so you just imagine I
don't know what's behind that door whatever world is going on behind that door uh you know it's enticing whatever it is right but uh but I think more broadly uh you know you go to a restaurant and you see two people talking and they look very different from each other and you know they're not
it's not a business meeting and you know and you're like oh that's interest you know what's going on there you know the petite woman of 20 and that 60-year-old 300 lb guy in a suit like what is that you know is that her uncle is that you know is that she an intern is you know you know what is is you know
what what is that you know it's going on in that situation but but whatever it is like you're constantly looking at these little things you know I have um a collection of short stories which is coming out in April called table for two and and a number and there's a noela in
in that collection as well but there's six New York stories in there and I think almost all of them maybe five out of six begin began in real life with seeing a very small thing and being like Oh you know I wonder what that's all about or what if you know what if this you know a lot about what if into that
and a good example is there's a there's a story there called The Bootlegger and it's uh a guy a young professional and his wife you know in their 30s sort of yuppies end up at Carnegie Hall uh very excited their first time they subscribed grabed Carnegie Hall and he's the husband is a little bit full of himself
and they sit down and he realizes that the old guy in a trench coat sitting in the seat next to him is recording the concert and uh and it starts to drive him crazy and and the way car Hall works is that if you subscribe to a series it means that you have the same seats every
time you go to see a a particular type of performance and whoever is sitting next to you is the same person so he knows that if he comes back it's going to be and he comes back and it's the same guy recording again and it and it it totally uh spoils the concert for him and eventually he does something about
it okay so uh and and goes and speaks to security and all kinds of goes goes you know goes wrong and both between the old guy the Carnegie Hall him his relationship to his wife his own feelings it all kind of gets you know out of it mushrooms out of control is um that happened to me I mean I was with my
wife in Carnegie Hall the guy sitting next to me had the you know was was recording the concert and and it and it spoiled the concert for me and like all that is in like the first page of the story in essence but then everything else is what I didn't do you know but but you know I I just remember being
there in Carn Hall fantasizing you know as the as the concert was being ruined by my my you know awareness of this guy sort of you know breaking the law in carneg Hall of recording acting like nothing's happening you know is that it is that I without listening to the music that I was paying there to hear the
music I was fantasizing about I'm going to go and tell security and then this would happen and this would happen this would happen you know so so you know you have these things so it goes back to this as I say the the door in a way was sort of a cheeky metaphorical version of
the same sort of thing which is that you take this little moment that you witness you something you've happened or it's an idea that comes to you like the guy trapped in a hotel and then you kind of go through that door and you start to imagine what if this happen what up this
how about that how about that and you know in my own work I've often thought about it as um particularly for the bigger projects is that I call it and I this is I guess it's not a coincidence I call it the opening of doors which is that if I have an idea for a story all the way it almost happens as I begin to
imagine what the story might be it's as if you walked into a mansion or like whatever an elaborate hotel or or whatever a mansion could be abandoned or could be you know fully running and all the doors start opening up you know where you're like oh yeah there's a room for that and a room for this and room
for that room for that's the feeling of when a new idea you I can tell it's got promise is because when I'm like okay what happens in this story and I'm like oh this could happen this could happen this could happen this can happen this could happen this can happen and without
even finishing what each any one of those individual ideas are they're happen it's it's they're they're firing like synapses it's unfolding it's unfolding and then you're like you take a step back and you say I don't have to write down any of that necessarily it's it's more what I now know is that this
thing this thing could be big like it can go in many different directions it can incorporate many realities it can have many layers to it it can have many kind of individuals and events you know I can feel the richness you know through this as I say the feel this physical feeling of all the doors in the building
opening up at once you got to help me with this what is that hotel on the Upper East Side it's I think it's called like the meline room there's the jazz club and it's the hand painted like friend in the Carlile Hotel yes exactly the carile hotel so so oh yeah M because it's it's meline
is the character uh it's bman is the bar yes and bman is the is the artist who did the mural and who did the children's book meline there we go thank you so a few comments so the first thing is it's interesting when I write non-fiction this is that core moment for so many of my students it's when they find not the
door but the core thing that they're saying the one line l or the one paragraph that then they can orbit everything around once they get that Clarity I just see an explosion in momentum I remember being on a date at the Carl hotel and they have the they have the the Jazz in there and it's sort
of going and it's bumping the drinks are so expensive like I've never seen but you were talking about that guy at Carn Hall and I had the very similar Moment Like if I wrote a short story this is the story I would tell there was one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen in my life sitting at the bar and
she was in this like tight black skirt and I was like what is going on here and one of the guys sitting next to me goes hey uh I think that's just a prostitute and I was just like right that's a prostitute like what is going on here and my whole Sense and Sensibility of like what New York was what was possible
in the city like the levels of society of being in this room and literally entering a world that I not only had never been in but didn't know existed that was one of those doors for me that's nice who is this woman what is this club why is it the hand painted walls and that's the door for me yeah
yeah it's very funny you know it's a funny thing man it's a funny thing let's finish off by just talking about New York I think that this as far as a sense of place um you have a line where you talk about New York of being this just this city of passions you know of you go to
you go to many cities and they're just La is sort of known as an entertainment City I live in Austin Texas sort of barbecue and Technology but New York is somehow a hub for everything yeah and how does that influence your writing show up in your writing uh and and your yeah your description of of what I said
is an is a good one you know I I I I really began thinking of that when I wrote Rules of Civility which is set in New York in the 30s um and uh that's where in in writing that and thinking about that book and about the lives of this characters in in the late 30s this
young woman and Katie in 1938 it really sort of struck me for the first time that New York is is we always talk about it as a Melting Pot and what we mean by that is ethnically and as a religious Melting Pot an ethnic Melting Pot Melting Pot of nationalities but in a way of of equal influence in the history
of the city is that it is this Melting Pot of the passions and by which I mean that um there are a number a large number of professional Pursuits that uh where New York City is is the if not if not the capital then one of its key capitals and that would be you know in journalism in uh in cuisine in dance in
you know obviously Broadway Theater and uh plays in mu musicals in architecture in finance in the law in advertising well that this is New York City is the capital of if not the as you say one of the two three or the capital of all those Pursuits and so what that means is that when you have a place
where that is the capital of an Endeavor it means that young people every year come to pursue their dream in that endeavor the young dancers the young theater performers the young chefs the young adexs the young people want to make it on Wall Street the young models whatever they come and uh because each
of those fields is draws on a very different kind of person it means that if you look out at sort of the 25 to 30y Old culture in New York City it's people from all these different walks of life pursuing all these different dreams simultaneously in the same place you know um with the same sort of ultimate
hopes and I think adds this incredibly strange texture uh and a very exciting texture to New York City and um so makes it makes it great fun and I you know Ros cility is very much is is about that actually that is a case where uh we're in the St reges hotel right now and the
King Cole bar in which is the bar the with the the the mural in this hotel um it play is a key scene in in Rules of Civility you know and um because of it has that Vibe of what you're describing at the carile same kind of vibe in terms of people young people there and it's kind of tourists but also you know Rich
locals and finance guys and all kind of the model all kind of piled in there and uh you sort of get the sense of the electric electricity of the city and that the the the man uh Maxwell Parish is the the muralist uh behind the bar of O King Cole you know that's been there
for a hundred years right and you think about that like that that that the idea that that the room just keeps changing I mean the room doesn't change excuse me the people right you know like musical chairs you're constantly decade after decade have a new group who's coming in and sitting behind the same bar and
looking at the same mural with the same intentions like that's you know an amazing thing you know even to consider um you know and Lincoln Highway is is has a portion of itself in New York City and it was sort of f kind of fun to kind of begins in in uh in the midwest comes through New York and then you know ends
up in the aderan Dex um and as I say half most of the short stories in in the new collection are set in New York so New York is it's not the only thing I write about but it is fun stomping ground for sure hey thank you so much for my pleasure much David I really appreciate it thank you yeah