I think it's what fiction is for: to illuminate that gap between our secret selves and our more visible and apparent ones.
Matthew SpecktorWe're a culture that's obsessed with people who make and who squander ridiculous amounts of wealth, which seemed an obsession well worth interrogating in a novel. That probably accounts for what some have called the book's "sweeping" feel, but I don't know that I set out to be cinematic. I wouldn't know how to do that in a novel, specifically.
Matthew SpecktorMy own sense is that fiction is inching its way over to join poetry on the cultural margin. It's an area of passionate concern for me, as for many people, but it's nowhere near as central to the culture as it used to be.
Matthew SpecktorDuring the 90s, I watched a lot of people getting fat and prosperous, and I thought, culture itself is the casualty of this.
Matthew Specktor