Then again, the name, the associations with a writer's name, can add to the reader's entertainment and pleasure.

Even when I was living below the poverty line as a novelist, I was still living better than 99.5% of the human population of the world. But in my little, soft realm of trying to amuse a few dozen middle-class people with my books and articles, I did struggle to survive in my own way.

As a child, I wanted to be an athlete, a professional tennis player or something like that.

I hid my underwear beneath a parked Peugeot.

There's no shortage of material in life.

Whenever I wrote fiction, people always seemed to think that what I wrote was true, that it was entirely autobiographical. And when I would write non-fiction, they often accused me of exaggeration and fictionalization.

It was one of those days when every time I went to go out the door, something grabbed me in the back of the brain and said, lie down and masturbate one more time.