To Conform Is To Lose Your Soul

My First Job Is To Write A Book That I Believe Is Compelling And Deserves The Long Sustained Attention That Any Novel Requires, And To Worry About The Commerce Only Late In The Game.

I Think If There Hadn't Been The One Passage Of The Book That Mostly Abandons The Humor, And Focuses Very Intently On One Person's Struggle With Cancer, It Wouldn't Have Been A Critical Success. So That Was A Very Deliberate Decision, To Say "well, If You Think It's All Fun And Games, It's Not." So That Was My Approach: We're Going To Have As Much Fun As I Can Possibly Provide, But The Serious Things That Might Normally Pass By You Are Not Going To Be Lost.

That's One Of The Things About Comedy - I Think It Works Best When It's Contextualized, As Opposed To Kind Of An Island Of Cleverness.

I Always Knew From The Beginning That This Was The Only Way To Write Then We Came To The End - That It Had To Be In First - Person Plural If It Was Going To Illustrate How The Individual Becomes Part Of The Collective. I Had No Interest In Writing The Book In A More Conventional Voice. It Goes Back To That Fascination I Had With Telling A Story In Multiple Ways. It Was The Only Choice I Gave Myself, Really - I Said "this Is It, Pal. If You Can't Tell A Story This Way, You're Going To Have To Abandon The Book. Write It This Way Or Give Up."

Being Serious Is Serious Business In Fiction. It's Commercial Or Hoi Polloi In Fiction To Be Funny. It's Too Accessible To The Great Unwashed.