At the same time, it's a family story and more of an epic. I needed the third-person. I tried to give a sense that Cal, in writing his story, is perhaps inventing his past as much as recalling it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
He invented this idea of telling the life story of a great writer through becoming his characters and becoming him. It was such a pleasure and I thought we must find another writer.
The son has always felt like he was a footnote in one of the stories the father tells. The father is an amazing storyteller and one of the tales that he tells is how he met his wife.
Dad was an amazing storyteller and illustrator, which he did in his spare time - very inspiring and dramatic.
I always think first about the nature of the story. When I had the idea for 'The Namesake,' I felt that it had to be a novel - it couldn't work as a story.
I wanted to hold onto and exploit the power of narrative. This is not only a book about a great storyteller, but there have to be stories about the storyteller.
There has always been this narrator in me - I loved ideas, and part of the great love affair I would have with ideas consisted of talking about them.
Even as an actor, I think like a storyteller. My parents raised us to look at the script.
The story drove the book. That had a very seminal effect on the way I saw writing and storytelling. If you can set a character in a story that is compelling and has a backbone, you draw people in.
When I first concluded to print the book, I made an honest effort to construct it in the third person.
In one book, CACHALOT, just for my own amusement, every character is based directly on someone I have known.
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