It Was The Hat. He Looked Sweet

And It May Be That A Crowd At A Particular Moment Of History Creates The Object To Justify Its Gathering, As It Did At The First Human Be-in And Monterey Pop And Woodstock. Or It May Be That Two Generations Of War And Surveillance Had Left People Craving The Embodiment Of Their Own Unease In The Form Of A Lone, Unsteady Man On A Slide Guitar.

I Felt No Shame In These Activities, Because I Understood What Almost No One Else Seemed To Grasp: That There Was Only An Infinitesimal Difference, A Difference So Small That It Barely Existed Except As A Figment Of The Human Imagination, Between Working In A Tall Green Glass Building On Park Avenue And Collecting Litter In A Park. In Fact, There May Have Been No Difference At All.

I Don't Think That All Girls Seek The Influence Of Older Men, But I Think Girls Whose Fathers Are Absent Or Recessed From Their Lives Often Do. And Honestly, When I Was Growing Up, Fathers Were Generally Pretty Absent From Their Children's Lives. We Didn't See A Lot Of Them. That May Be Something That Has Genuinely Changed For The Better In Our Culture: Men Are More Present For Their Children Now That More Women Are Working.

Goon Squad' Took About Three Years To Write And That's The Short End. My Second Novel, 'look At Me,' Took Six Years.

I Hope To Keep Writing Journalism As Long As I Write Fiction; It's Afforded Me Such Amazing Adventures And Opportunities. It Does Take A Lot Of Time, So It's Hard To Do Both At Once, But I Try To Do A Big Journalism Piece Every Couple Of Years, And I'll Hopefully Continue With That.