Millhauser on ...

HIS CHILDHOOD FASCINATION FOR COMICS: "I read Walt Disney comics side by side with children's classics. I was a great admirer of Scrooge Mcduck, who went on wondrous adventures that took him to civilizations at the bottom of the ocean, or deep underground. And I loved cartoons. As a kid I had a more direct relation to popular culture than I do now."

HIS RELATIONSHIP TO HIS AUDIENCE: "The truth is, I don't worry about an audience. I don't brood over the kinds of people who might or might not like my work. ... One of the charges against me from critics who don't like my work is its coolness, aloofness. That stings, because I feel that distance is a form of artistic discipline. It has nothing to do--nothing to do--with lack of feeling. In fact, easily available feeling, writing that seems to gush out, is something I dislike. I don't believe it. It's like a sentimental drunk. Maybe he's telling the truth, but chances are he's not."

NOSTALGIA: "I'm uncomfortable with the word 'nostalgia,' which is commonly taken to mean something soft and sentimental, a longing to escape from the harshness of the present into some other, gentler time. This is a curious development, since the word itself contains the Greek word for pain. There's another understanding of nostalgia that I honor: the powerful feeling, shot through with pain, that comes over you when you recall past happiness. This feeling can be as deep as love, and there's nothing false or questionable about it. There's probably more of that feeling in my first novel than elsewhere. That novel has the additional quality of being an enclosed world, and enclosed worlds tend to be places of heightened emotion."

THE LIFE OF THE ARTIST: "It's a solitary life, no doubt about it, lots of time spent alone. My whole life is bent in a certain direction because of what I do. But not to do what I do would be a greater sacrifice. Art is exhilarating and necessary. I suppose you could say that I've sacrificed a life that goes straight down the middle of the road. But I don't want that life, the middle-of-the-road life."

HIS AFFINITY FOR SPACE IN HIS WORK: "I had one of those wonderful childhood houses, which had a cellar and an attic, with the everyday places in between. The attic was an absolutely scary place. And a place that was frightening in another way was the basement. The only reason I wasn't afraid of the cellar was that the Ping-Pong table was down there. But it was scary to get there because you walked down this murkily lit stair with big barrels and trunks around. I always liked going down and coming back up, just as I liked going up to the attic and coming back down. And later, when I began writing, I continued to like these up-and-down movements, which also echoed the epic stuff that still finds its place in certain novelistic imaginations."