Perhaps this is what we mean by sanity: that, whatever our self-admitted eccentricities might be, we are not villains of our own stories.

The novelist can't successfully depict such horrifying reality. But she can, and must, try, to bear witness. There are many ways of doing this; the mode I prefer is indirect.

So, for a book set in 2006, Open City evades certain markers, while it embraces certain others. Julius doesn't use a smartphone, and he doesn't discuss contemporary US politics in any fine detail.

I schooled in the Boston area.

It is dangerous to live in a secure world.

Our biggest art forms are film and television, and there hasn't been a great film about 9/11 yet, nor has there been a great television series. Something like The Wire gives us a rich and fully achieved picture of the wasteful, cruel War on Drugs; something like The White Ribbon gives a perspective on World War I that could only have been presented long after the event itself.

The big idea behind it was to somehow participate in the discussion about justice. What does it mean to be just to the others out there whose lives we do not think about. One of the answers I came up with was simply tell their stories.