I was attracted to the argument in the book that, even in the 1950s, cultural radicals like the Beats and white-collar executives (company men or “organization men”), were actually brothers under the skin. They both shared a cynical belief that role-playing and reputation were all that mattered.
The story is the language. If you can locate a difference between a story and the language it’s told in, something is wrong.
The reason that people care about books is because they influence, and sometimes they influence you like an actual life.
I like to work with this kind of cluster of references that mirror each other.
All of it is meaningless, but all of it is interesting.
We want to think about those works which try to “totalise” our current conditions, to thematize those facets of social existence which are particularly symptomatic of the trends and tensions in today’s political economy: financial markets, logistical complexes, commodity chains.
Most of the time I don’t believe in God, but I always believe in the soul. When I say that I want to write about the experience of being human, I want to write about what it’s like to have a soul.
I do believe in that H.L. Mencken expression, “the politics of the horselaugh.” When you are describing things that are absurd, you laugh to keep from crying, in a certain way.
I think writers may be the canaries in the coal mine.
When we’re honest about ourselves, we’re usually met with a lot of love.