Empire Falls reminds me of Steinbeck. Miles Roby is asking his daughter if he should hang up some old photos of the town’s millworkers. He asks, “Too hokey?” And she says, “Just hokey enough.”
Contemporary writers are more afraid of sentimentality than they should be, as if it were suddenly the greatest of all literary sins. It is a literary sin but not the worst. If you’re going to play it safe, you don’t get the real payoff. So that’s my Just Hokey Enough credo.

Is that reflected in the music you listen to?
Well, I love Springsteen: The Ghost of Tom Joad. The lyrics in that are just stunning. I could quote any line from “Youngstown,” and it could serve as an epigraph for any of my work.

Writer, Empire Falls
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