Okay.

Which I'm proud of that.

And I'm still excited about it.

for my past self that I got to walk in that door and spend nearly three hours with Dylan, who'd been a figure in my childhood.

He'd been a part of my life forever.

But that's a much more conventional piece.

And in many ways, the author of that piece was Dylan.

So can you talk about your relationship to noir and how it shaped your work and your worldview?

Were you thinking at all of those types of writers?

Well, I mean, the idea of the reclusive artist, or the reclusive writer specifically, kind of haunts, uh, post-war 20th century literature, and it's aReaction to the desire for purity, of course, of a kind, because we feel, everyone feels vaguely soiled when they're reading interviews or seeing publicity for a writer that they wanna take very seriously.

And so the ones who solve that, who crack the code by make, being famous for refusing to appear seem very sacred and solemn to us.

Uh, of course, that trick mostly doesn't work.

We, we, what we notice are the, the, um, exceptions, you know, Salinger or [laughs] Pynchon.

Uh, c- counter publicity became a, a, a, a great, um, a, a great play for them.

But mostly if you, if you decline to be interviewed, uh, the, the spotlight moves on to someone who is willing to be interviewed.

Would you say there was anyone that, like the short story, was your king of sentences? Was there anyone you kind of idolized as a younger writer?

Yep

... or the great, uh, Tom Lehrer song, Wernher von Braun, uh, reminding us that we'd made a partnership with Nazi science, with Nazi, uh, corporatism, and that in some sense, there was a, a deep level at which, uh, by absorbing the militaristic and, uh, authoritarian, um, centralized, world-dominating perspective of fascism, we had, if not surrendered to it, we'd partnered with it and that it was lurking under the skin of American reality.

This is m- you know, something more than just pointing to the Japanese internment camps or the fact that we'd had, you know, fascist rallies at Madison Square Garden.

It's saying, in some way, even the victory over Germany and Japan meant that we'd incorporated aspects of, uh, this nightmarish possibility into our own forms of social control.

Yeah

... subjects.

He, uh, he had advertisements that got up and walked around and followed you down the street and tugged on your sleeve, you know, back when Madison Avenue was brand new.

He had what he called news clowns, which was the sober texture of Walter Cronkite devolving into provocation and cynicism and, um, sneering irony, uh, i- on the evening news.

Yep

... or the great, uh, Tom Lehrer song, Wernher von Braun, uh, reminding us that we'd made a partnership with Nazi science, with Nazi, uh, corporatism, and that in some sense, there was a, a deep level at which, uh, by absorbing the militaristic and, uh, authoritarian, um, centralized, world-dominating perspective of fascism, we had, if not surrendered to it, we'd partnered with it, and that it was lurking under the skin of American reality.

This is m-, you know, something more than just pointing to the Japanese internment camps or the fact that we'd had, you know, fascist rallies at Madison Square Garden.

It's saying, in some way, even the victory over Germany and Japan meant that we'd incorporated aspects of, uh, this nightmarish possibility into our own forms of social control.

Yeah

... subjects.

He, uh, he had advertisements that got up and walked around and followed you down the street and tugged on your sleeve, you know, back when Madison Avenue was brand new.

He had what he called news clowns, which was the sober texture of Walter Cronkite devolving into provocation and cynicism and, um, sneering irony, uh, on the evening news.