Chicago Has Disappointed Her Enemies And Astonished

Place Has Always Been Important To Me, And One Thing Today's Chicago Exudes, As It Did In 1893, Is A Sense Of Place. I Fell In Love With The City, The People I Encountered, And Above All The Lake And Its Moods, Which Shift So Readily From Season To Season, Day To Day, Even Hour To Hour.

Digression Is My Passion. I Love Telling The Main Stories, But In Some Ways, What I Love Most Is Using Those Narratives As A Way Of Stringing Together The Interesting Stories That People Have Kind Of Forgotten, And That Are Kind Of Surprising. The Problem Is, How Do You Pare Stories Away So That The Book Doesn't Become A Distracting Jumble Of Material, And Readers Lose Focus? In My Experience, There's Really Only One Way To Do That. I Pack It All In With The Rough Draft, Then Count On Myself And My Trusted Readers To Tell Me What's Good And What's Not Good.

I Like All Kinds Of Music, Though I Tend To Prefer Jazz And Classics.

I Was Never Concretely Aware Of The Extent Of Anti-semitism In The United States And In The Upper Levels Of The State Department.

I'm Very Perverse. If Someone Tells Me I Have To Read A Book, I'm Instantly Disinclined To Do So.