A Dentist Is Only Half The Doctor

All Broken Hearts Are Circumstantial. Every Lovelorn Jerk Is The Victim Of Bad Timing, Good Intentions, And Someone Else’s Poor Decision Making.

Without Work, So Much Of One's Identity Just Evaporates.

I'm Not Sure That All Books Aren't That Way. I Think That Might Apply To Any Book I Was Writing. The Book Was Kind Of The Product Of This Enormous Infatuation I Had, Not Only With The Office And Office Politics, But With Perspective, And Trying To Tell A Story From As Wide A Range Of Perspectives As You Possibly Can. I Tried To Capture It All With The First-person Plural, But Once I Settled On That, I Used It To Tell The Story From As Many Angles As I Could. I Guess, To Put It Romantically, It Was About A Love Affair With The Craft Of Perspective.

The Whole Time I Was Writing, I Had To Fight My Normal Inclination To Be Funny, To Sort Of Patch Humor In, In Order To Convey All Of The Disruptions Of The Disease To The Family Dynamic, The Loss Of Individuality, The Impact On Professional Life, And The Sanity Of The Main Character. Of Course, That's Not To Say It Never Sneaks In; There's Some Black Comedy In There, Like When He Shows Up To Court Wearing A Bicycle Helmet And Won't Take It Off.

Every Time You Hear Someone Read Your Book And Liked Your Book, You're Never Sure Whether That's Going To Follow With A Similar Remark From Someone Else. Perhaps I Have Low Expectations, But Whenever I Hear Someone Say, 'i Liked Your Book,' I Don't Know If It's Going To Happen Again.