The novel has its own virtues and its own power, but it almost is too big. It's like a tractor. You can cut right and cut left real fast and the consequences aren't enormous. Going back over forty years of writing, over a hundred stories, and selecting the ones worth preserving. This book stands for those forty years, so if it's treated casually or in a dismissive way, it'll probably hurt me more than it should.
Banks pores over a couple of newspapers every morning, tossing the clippings into a wine crate.
Its kernel was lifted from a young woman who told him she had been hit by lightning. If it's any good at all, it's going to transform the materials altogether, not into something unrecognizable, but something that serves a very different purpose. I tend to agree with Conrad. Above all I want my readers to see. It helped me climb when I was exhausted.