Self-reinvention is an essential trope of the American project, closely linked to another such trope: going on the lam. Both are regularly featured in movies and novels and suchlike. Criminals and persons loitering with and without intent hold a crucial place in the culture. For obvious reasons, the culture cannot endorse this behavior, even as it is in thrall to it.

Redheaded Peckerwood, which unerringly walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction, is a disturbingly beautiful narrative about unfathomable violence and its place on the land

Like a four-sided porch I'm open to all winds.

Subjectivity is my middle name, a trick memory is my pack mule, and self-contradiction is my trusty old jackknife.

When I was a child I did engage in an arduous struggle to pass: learning English, getting rid of my accent, becoming conversant with the culture in all its large and small aspects.

The US remains an object of fascination for me, and the subject of much study, but while many of my friends etc. are American and I have no plans at present to move elsewhere, I consider myself a permanent outsider.

New York has no truck with the past. It expels its dead.