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" Narnia, Middle-earth and New York were my three fantasy universes when I was a kid. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Kid
Fantasy
Were
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" 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
" At 14 and 15, I was sort of my town's resident beatnik. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Resident
Beatnik
Town
" 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
" 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
" 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 started coming up to New York at age 17. There was a girl I met over the summer somewhere; I was chasing her. I would drive up to D.C., where I had made some friends, which was about four hours away, and we would take the bus up to New York. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Drive
New York
Age
" I don't quite know why, but I am long-winded. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Why
I Am
Am
" 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
" 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
" 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
" 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
" Definitely, something is happening out there in Internet world at any given moment, but the likelihood that it's something that can't wait until that evening for you to find out about it is very small. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Internet
Small
Evening
" I had one week in the fall of 1996 where I was like, 'I'm America's greatest living teenage poet.' "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Living
Fall
America
" 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
" 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. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Been
Yourself
You
" I happen to be the kind of reader who, if I like something, I don't want it to end. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Kind
Something
Want
" Any character that can't be kept straight, to me, isn't a character who should be in the book - you know, anyone not vivid enough to have a claim on my attention. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Enough
Book
Character
" 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
" 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 came to feel that, in addition to Imre Kertesz, Hungary has produced at least three contemporary novelists who deserve the Nobel: Peter Nadas, Peter Esterhazy and Laszlo Krasznahorkai. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Came
Who
Three
" The central question driving literary aesthetics in the age of the iPad is no longer 'How should novels be?' but 'Why write novels at all?' "
Garth Risk Hallberg
iPad
Question
Driving
" 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. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
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
" The writing that feels the best to me, I experience sometimes, is a kind of weirdly deep listening - like, it feels like if you just listen hard enough, the next sentence will tell you what it needs to be. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Experience
Best
Writing
" I associated excellence in writing with New York City. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
New York
City
Excellence
" 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
" I had a major bug for cities and for paintings and literature and all the things I thought went on in cities. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Literature
Bug
Things
" For some reason, I spent my early thirties reading as much postwar Hungarian fiction as I could get my hands on. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
Get
Reason
Reading
" 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. "
Garth Risk Hallberg
I See
Focus
Job