The Intermittent Depression That Had Shadowed Him

There's Something So Relentless And Foul About Hitler And His People, And The Way Things Progressed From Year To Year. It Just Got To Me In The Strangest Way.

Germans Grew Reluctant To Stay In Communal Ski Lodges, Fearing They Might Talk In Their Sleep. They Postponed Surgeries Because Of The Lip-loosening Effects Of Anesthetic. Dreams Reflected The Ambient Anxiety. One German Dreamed That An Sa Man Came To His Home And Opened The Door To His Oven, Which Then Repeated Every Negative Remark The Household Had Made Against The Government.

To Me, Writing Is A Very Physical Process. I Lay Out The Entire Book With The Two Narratives Side By Side On My Bedroom Floor, And Just Get Down On My Hands And Knees And Start Looking At It In That Physical Space. "does This Really Follow From This? Should This Be Here Or Elsewhere?" I Will Literally Cut The Paper Into Paragraphs. I'll Cut It Into Segments And Move The Segments Around From One Narrative To The Other Until I Feel That I've Found The Natural Structure.

Place Has Always Been Important To Me, And One Thing Today's Chicago Exudes, As It Did In 1893, Is A Sense Of Place. I Fell In Love With The City, The People I Encountered, And Above All The Lake And Its Moods, Which Shift So Readily From Season To Season, Day To Day, Even Hour To Hour.

. . . Why Some Men Choose To Fill Their Brief Allotment Of Time Engaging The Impossible, Others In The Manufacture Of Sorrow.