People think it's suspect and self-indulgent to make art, and I don't think that's true. Some people think you should be busy making something that you can sell in the marketplace, and if nobody wants to buy it, it must be crap. And that's not true.

There are lots of authentic, moving characters in so-called systems novels, just as there are certainly deep structural ideas in some character-driven novels.

I think most writers have to have a practice of writing. For me it is very early in the morning. I try to make it a separate world from the rest of my life.

Memory is not particularly linear - it is associative, repetitive, subjective and porous. But the writer needs to convey disorder and dysfunction without making the novel itself disorderly or dysfunctional.

I like to mix the real and the imaginary. Sometimes it is characters inspired by real people I know or know of. Sometimes it is a named person from the common cultural dreamscape. And it is tricky, because they have a lot of associated ideas that come with them, and a lot of actual facts.

You are always working towards the moments in which characters experience reckonings or insight or change. I like to track them past those moments.

All roads lead to Wall Street, but we feel the effects of Wall Street on every street corner. Certainly in Syracuse, N.Y., where I live.