'Gillespie and I' is a deliciously morbid, almost smutty story, a compendium of inappropriate wants and smarmy desires.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A lot of banging in the head has built up over the decades, and for my own sanity, I needed to write. I wanted to see if I could tell an honest, organic story about characters that interest me.
I have no particular reader in mind, but a passionate desire to tell an honest, moving story.
I'm writing a new book right now that is like an erotica manifesto.
I once saw Dizzy Gillespie at a live show, and it made me want to go home immediately and start writing.
Of course I want to have a deliciously seductive story on the surface which will keep people engaged and amused, but primarily, I'm interested in other things. It's the texture of any given moment that fascinates me: what is really going on between people or in somebody's mind.
Reading 'Moby-Dick' was really a sort of transformative literary experience for me.
Melville locked himself away in his room for months while working on 'Moby Dick.' If I ever decide to write a novel, I hope someone will take pity on me and take me out to dinner instead.
I'm interested in the dark side of man. I'm interested in taboos, and murder is the greatest taboo. Characters are fascinating in their extremity, not in their happiness.
Virginia Woolf said that writers must be androgynous. I'll go a step further. You must be bisexual.
'The Reader' is about a young man's experience of falling in love with somebody who, it turns out, made some choices that were unavoidable in her life that resulted in horrific crimes against humanity.