Everything I write, I believe instinctively, is to some extent collage. Meaning, ultimately, is a matter of adjacent data.

If I'm reading a book and it seems truly interesting, I tend to start reading back to front in order not to be too deeply under the sway of progress.

Anything processed by memory is fiction.

A book should either allow us to escape existence or teach us how to endure it.

The novel is dead. Long live the antinovel, built from scraps.

Genre is a minimum security prison.

To me, the moment you're talking about nonfiction you're talking about reality.

The absence of plot leaves the reader room to think about other things.

With relatively few exceptions, the novel sacrifices too much, for me, on the altar of plot.

Resolution and conclusion are inherent in a plot-driven narrative.

Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic-not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.

In my own little way, I feel like I'm part of a group of writers who care deeply about pushing the essay forward.

I'm not interested in collage as the refuge of the composition-ally disabled. I'm interested in collage as (to be honest) an evolution beyond narrative.