(Photo: Compass Books)

I decided to be a writer when I was around 16, and I did it because I liked to do it and I seemed to have some talent at it, so I thought, Well, this seems like a good idea. I didn’t really know very much, you know. About life. If I’d known a little bit more about life, I might have thought twice about it. But I read Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man rather literally and I thought Stephen Dedalus is very heroic. I thought, This is what I want to do. I chose very, very early, almost as an infant would choose. Then it was too late. Then I went to do it, and by the time I was 30, I was not suitable for any other kind of job. So I had to be a writer at that point. I was completely stuck.