All I Want To Do Is Make

The 250-page Outline For American Tabloid. The Books Are So Dense. They're So Complex, You Cannot Write Like I Write Off The Top Of Your Head. It's The Combination Of That Meticulousness And The Power Of The Prose And, I Think, The Depth Of The Characterizations And The Risks That I've Taken With Language That Give The Books Their Clout. And That's Where I Get Pissed Off At A Lot Of My Younger Readers.

The Novel Is Final Form; It's The Ultimate Individual Final Form. Television And Motion Pictures Never Get There. You'd Be Fabulous To Think That Something You Write Is Even Going To Be Filmed. I Give It The Best Shot Of Which I'm Capable. But It's More A Payday For Me. And If I Didn't Have Alimony And The Full-time Assistant.

I Wanted To Portray A Newly Democratized, Enclosed Society. I Wanted To Show How Extraordinarily Fluid People Are In Their Embrace Of Other Human Beings.

I Like To Be Alone So I Can Write. But Focus Can Hurt You. I Don't Want To Be Some Stress Casualty In Early Middle Age.

In The Time Just Before The Bombing Of Pearl Harbor, When Perfidia Opens, We Were Pre-psychologized. There Were No Concepts Of Identity, No Politics Of Victimization. Reparation Wasn't In The Language. Nobody Thought About Giving The Great Grandchildren Of Black Slaves So Much As $1.98. And All Of A Sudden The Bombs Hit, Interventionism Versus Isolationism Became A Dead Issue, And It Was Us-versus-them In A Heartbeat.