Seeing it in black and white, somehow you're always disappointed in your life expectancy. How little you'll really get done. I asked Chuck if he thought it was fair to say his work was more about ideas than character. You love your characters so much you leave them dead in the middle of the book, in a cloud of ammonia and bleach. And Chuck laughed.
Chuck lives in a house that, until recently, had cinderblock walls.
Over a single frenetic weekend he covered the walls with perfectly measured and mitered bits of molding and inset wooden panels. He even outlined electrical outlets in molding, reproducing the drawing room of a historic house from a Merchant Ivory film. He has the idea that every chapter should work as a short story, standing alone, and that every novel should be able to hold up in a condensed short-story version. He gets a lot done all at once, often by making characters say the opposite of what they really mean. There's no hope of mowing the lawn with a sense of finality, polishing silver, dusting, or taking out stains once and for all.