The first novel has 104 chapters, each of them a little story. You made no secret of your ambition to become a pop lit star, as big as Vonnegut, Irving, whomever, at their peaks. At one point you mentioned that if 50 rather than 500 show up for a reading, it gets upsetting, you get depressed. I think I'd be a charlatan if that were the case. The press likes to make a lot of this.
All writers have their ambitions to reach as wide an audience as possible, of course.
We feel that we have something to tell the world, and we want to run around shouting and let everybody know. I think the danger there is mistaking what I do for, let's say, what most of the people on the best seller list do. I have no calculation as to what will sell, never have. I think you have to have an individual voice and individual vision. I write in order to figure out who I am and what I feel about human existence, basically.