A Reclusive Novelist Reckons With His Legacy '& Sons'
On his privilege growing up
"I was always trying to hide it. ... Back then it was privilege with a much smaller 'P.' It wasn't what it is today, there was no status involved with it, people weren't ... status-hunting. [Investment banking] was more like the everyday kind of job. But I always was a little bit — or very — insecure about it. I remember saying, 'I live on the Upper East Side,' and someone would say, 'Oh, where do you live?' and I'd be like, '75th Street.' 'Well, where?' '75th and Park.' You'd have to drag it out of me. I felt like, '75th and Park Avenue, ugh, I don't want to be that guy.' So I always had a pretty difficult relationship with it. Yet also, it was incredibly fortunate as well."
On initially being drawn to stories about down-and-out characters
"The short stories I wrote in college and the early ones in my M.F.A. program were all about ... people who were more on the fringe and kind of living desperate lives. [I] was also a big Raymond Carver fan. Denis Johnson was a huge influence on all of us in M.F.A. programs everywhere in the early '90s. So we're all trying to ... ape that world, and that seemed so much more legitimate than my upbringing. So it took me a while to see that their story is everywhere, no matter ... where you were raised, that we're all basically living ... the same tale, and I just took fathers and sons as that tale."
On whether writing can be "soul crushing"
"On those bad days, for sure. On the bad days where instead of writing you're deleting what you've written for the past two weeks. And then you have those great days, where even if it's just one good turn of phrase, it will get you back at your desk the next morning. ... For me, the irony of it, I always thought of writing as, 'I can write anywhere, it's such a portable job. I could go to the beach, or I could go to Maine, or I could travel through Europe and just write in cafes.' But for me, I can only really write in my small little office, at my desk, on a computer, in a certain kind of setting, so there's no freedom to it. It's basically being chained to a desk 9 to 5. It's not nearly as romantic as I thought going into it."
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Reclusive, Curmudgeonly Writer Still Nicer Than Salinger In 'Sons'