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.

I just realized that we're facing here is an empathy gap. And this was just another way to generate conversation about something that nobody wanted to look at.

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.

There's a reticence necessary when you consider the suffering of others. Into the space created by that reticence, you bring in those things that best help us confront ambiguity: music, painting, film, and so on.

I schooled in the Boston area.

The white savior supports brutal policies in the morning, founds charities in the afternoon, and receives awards in the evening.

It is a work of psychogeography, albeit in a less explicit sense than Iain Sinclair's or Will Self's. It had to be fiction though, because I needed that freedom of including whatever belonged, and cutting out whatever didn't. The main fiction in it was matching Julius' generous and self-concealing character to New York's generous and self-concealing character. I think this also adds to my answer about New York's personality in the book.