Dave Eggers

Yeah, for sure.

Especially when it's like memories, flashbacks, that kind of thing.

Those could occur anywhere.

You have options.

And this new book is the first one I think that's structured sort of strictly linearly, where it starts when the characters are eight and nine, and then it ends when they're 74.

And it's like, to me, that was not the kind of book I read when I was young and experimenting.

It has a little bit more of a traditional structure.

And so I was really used to be pretty much more interested in the form than I was the story.

I never read mysteries because I didn't care who did what to who, you know, now I really love them.

But at the time I was like,

I don't know.

We know this didn't happen.

But so I was always interested in like, well, how are we breaking the form?

How are we reinventing what happens on the page?

And that was what I was interested in.

And that's what a lot of what McSweeney's did.

We always welcomed formal experimentation, even if it failed.

Like the problem with that and conceptual art or anything is that much of it, in retrospect, it doesn't age well.

But in the moment, you're like, oh, that's interesting.

That's something new.