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" At 14 and 15, I was sort of my town's resident beatnik. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Resident
Beatnik
Town
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" I'm trying to focus on my job as I see it, which is to write the next thing and to remain, to the degree that I ever was, a noticer. "
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" I happen to be the kind of reader who, if I like something, I don't want it to end. "
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" You don't have to subject yourself to the sweep and rigor of Bourdieu's book 'Distinction' to feel how thoroughly a lower-calorie version of its ideas has been absorbed into the cultural bloodstream. "
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" I had one week in the fall of 1996 where I was like, 'I'm America's greatest living teenage poet.' "
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Fall
America
" For some reason, I spent my early thirties reading as much postwar Hungarian fiction as I could get my hands on. "
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" One of the ways I stuck out was I was a very passionate reader. There was probably a cyclical nature to that; the more I felt like an outcast, the more I sought refuge in books, and the more I sought refuge in books, the more it made me not speak the same language as my peers. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Nature
Passionate
Me
" I always thought I was going to be a great poet, and go and live in New York, where the great poets lived - you know, where Whitman had walked the streets. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Go
Thought
New York
" I remember reading 'The Hobbit' on a car trip from Ohio to Mississippi and getting out at a rest-stop in Mississippi and feeling jet-lagged at my return from Middle-earth. "
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Feeling
Remember
Trip
" It may be that Tolstoy and Virginia Woolf were sitting around fretting about their Amazon reviews or their pre-pub whatever, but I kind of doubt it. I don't think that's how the work probably got made. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Work
Doubt
Got
" I respect Billy Joel, but I'm not a guy who's gonna sit down and listen to the entire 'Essential Billy Joel.' "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Respect
Guy
Gonna
" The ego being shattered is not what frightens me - that can be useful for writing - but the ego being inflated is sort of like it dying of gout. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Like
Writing
Ego
" I associated excellence in writing with New York City. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
New York
City
Excellence
" In graduate school, I was a student of E.L. Doctorow, and he had us read 'Moby-Dick' in a week. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Student
Week
Read
" Reading was not just an escape or a Band-Aid; it was a deep form of feeling seen and recognized, and being able to see and recognize other kindred spirits. My dad was a writer, too, which also likely had something to do with that. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
See
Reading
Feeling
" Reading isn't about managing expectations. In certain ways, writing is. You're trying to send signals early in a book about what might be coming later, but I think worrying about the kind of chatter around a book is something I try and stay as far away from when I'm reading. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
You
Book
Kind
" I think there is a real thing going on where writers are feeling more liberated to write with a big canvas because of a demonstrable, continued appetite for long-form storytelling. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Think
Storytelling
Feeling
" I have this weird tropism for islands. Take me to an island as far from New York as I can possibly go. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Island
Me
Weird
" I don't quite know why, but I am long-winded. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Why
I Am
Am
" We who curate our Twitter feeds and Facebook walls understand that at least part of what we're doing publicly, 'like'-ing what we like, is trying to separate ourselves from the herd. "
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Like
Trying
Doing
" Sure, 'Les Miserables' can be melodramatic. And seeing the musical instead of reading the novel will save you some time and spare you the long part where Hugo goes on and on about the Parisian sewer system. But I would hate for the novel to lose that. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Reading
You
Long
" In college, I was a huge fan of 'Les Miserables.' I seem to remember that people who were into French literature preferred Hugo's poetry. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
College
Fan
People
" When something is at risk or in danger or about to be lost, those are the moments you start to realize how much it means to you. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Lost
You
Start
" I grew up in a university town in eastern North Carolina - what's called Tobacco Road. It was very rural. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
University
Road
Up
" Narnia, Middle-earth and New York were my three fantasy universes when I was a kid. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Kid
Fantasy
Were
" When I get online, there's this cycle of anxiety and narcissism that takes over, which is the part of me that I like the least. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Like
Over
Narcissism
" I was working my first adult job, a quasi journalistic job, writing content for a website. In the offices, we had banks of TVs, papers, a constant media stream, which was unusual for 2001. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Job
Website
Writing
" Writers since at least the heyday of Gore Vidal have bemoaned their audience's defection to other forms of entertainment. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Since
Audience
Other
" I had this dream that I was going to come to New York and be a writer. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Dream
Writer
New York
" I'm not confident in my own ability to resist the titanic force of my own ego. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Confident
Own
Ability
" A fragmented film such as 'Babel' gives the impression of 'edginess' but, in its form, tells us nothing we didn't already know. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Know
Film
Us