I am in Boston right now, in fact, to do work at the New England Historical Genealogical Library, where I'm trying to finish up tracing my lineage back to the seventeenth century.

I do think that just about whenever I am writing, or more accurately, whenever I have written, I feel better and more at peace as a human being. That doesn't mean, unfortunately, that the literary product is any good.

My contention is that that style is just as stylized as an ornate style.

I love comic books and always did as a kid.

The idea to make hotel reviews the form of the novel came first. So I just started writing hotel reviews and tried to come up with a consistent voice.

Updike worked this way, and I just kinda borrowed it from him. So the memoir will be relief from novel writing for a moment.

I'm trying to read more dead people because I keep having to read stuff for juries and so forth.