Q: When did you start writing Magic City?
A: I started writing when I was fifteen, around the very beginning of tenth grade. I was very into film at the time, and the book started off as a screenplay. I figured it would be my first full-length, as I’d done shorter movies with my friends before then and figured that my friends and I could act in it and edit it and basically do all the other stuff you have to do when you’re making movies. A couple things played into my decision to change it into a novel. First, Magic Citywould have become a bad, bad movie. The screenplay was decent enough, but I realized (mostly from previous endeavors) that the acting wasn’t going to be great, the film quality (from some digital video camera my parents bought me when I was like thirteen) was going to look like a home movie, and, in general, it wouldn’t take the story, which had some serious elements, into a believable realm for the viewer. So it basically came down to… I had all of the physical tools of Stephen King (a computer with a word processor), but none of those of, say, Steven Spielberg (just to use a nice parallel structure with the Steves). The other thing was that, while working at the screenplay, a lot of stylistic ideas kept cropping up that just wouldn’t work in film. What’s great about both mediums (media?) is that they each offer stylistic possibilities that are impossible to the other form; it keeps them both relevant. But the main reason I chose to make it a novel, as I think this paragraph indicates, is because you can’t use parentheses in film. So, to answer your question: When I was about fifteen.

Q: What was your inspiration?
A: Oh, lots of stuff. My friendships, my relationships with girls (or attempts at relationships with girls) — those interpersonal things were huge inspirations. Another enormous one, especially as I began the book, was my disillusionment with high school. Tenth grade in particular was an offensive year to me for some reason, and a lot of that anger led to venting (read: ranting) through Magic City. (The book was actually a lot rantier in its first draft.) So it was great to turn that frustration toward a “creative outlet,” as the cliché goes. Philosophical issues were also a pretty big inspiration for me. I’ve never really been a religious person, and not being one leads to all sorts of questions about why the hell we’re here, what we’re supposed to do, how we’re supposed to judge right and wrong, and so on. Those are all things Henry grapples with and that the book deals with.

Q: You finished and revised the book in New York City, as a PUSH intern. What was that like?
A: When you’re a disillusioned kid from Miami, New York City represents this sort of Mecca of culture and thought. I mean, the nightlife in Miami, particularly South Beach, is all centered around, I don’t know, dancing and throwing money around. And of course there’s that shit too in New York, but it was nice that you could also go out at night and find interesting people to talk to, people who were interning at Saturday Night Live or working for some record company, people with interesting, new things to say. It was also great walking around (which there’s none of in Miami—everything is cars), hanging out in Union Square, discussing populism and vampires with the illustrious Josh Glazer. But that’s just New York. Interning at PUSH was surreal. I remember the first day I got there and it was sort of like, okay, y’know, just go write. I set up my laptop in the dining hall/cafeteria thing (which was my office) and opened it up and just sort of stared at the screen, thinking, okay! Write! Okay! It was just so strange at first, writing for basically seven hours a day. But it was great, of course, and incredible to work with such talented people on this thing I’d written, and was continuing to write and rework. It was also a great insight into the publishing world that I imagine a lot of authors don’t get to see.

Q: Because you’re so young, and because the book is in the first-person, and because the book is a first novel, a lot of people are going to assume that the book is autobiographical. Do you feel that it is?
A: Eh. No. I mean, of course all the ideas in it emanate from the thoughts I’d been kicking around, things I’d spent a lot of time talking about with friends and family. Ideas about medication, politics, morality, that kind of stuff. I guess, in that many of those conversations did take place in some form or another, that aspect is autobiographical, but the events in the novel aren’t really. You can’t link the characters in the novel to my friends in reality in any really direct way. And Henry’s parents definitely aren’t mine. So I guess it depends how loose your definition of autobiographical is. It all comes from my thoughts and all my thoughts come in some way from experience. So you could call it more of an autobiography of my consciousness, if that sounds pretentious enough.

Q: Who are some of the writers who’ve influenced you?
A: I’m a huge fan of Lost Generation literature, particularly Faulkner and Hemingway. That whole literary culture was very much interested in experimenting with the form of the novel, and also had this profound disillusionment with the way the world was going, this sort of horror with the modern condition that they each expressed in different ways. So like them, I’m also interested in trying out new things with the literary form, as well as sort of horrified by a lot of what’s going on in the world today. They’re also just great writers, who make you feel and make you think, and no one does characters like Faulkner, as far as I’m concerned.
Moving to more contemporary writers, Chuck Palahniuk was definitely a huge influence when I first started writing Magic City; his themes and styles were incredibly appealing to me at that time, and different from basically anything I was reading back then. Dave Eggers was also an influence, especially his short stories from the book How We Are Hungry. He’s also someone who does a lot with form, without forgetting to make his characters feel genuine. And of course it would have been hard to write Magic Cityif The Catcher in the Rye had never existed. The philosophical aspects are influenced a lot by Camus and Sartre, particularly The Stranger, The Age of Reason, and the play “No Exit.” So, all white males. What can I tell you? I read a book by Edith Wharton once. It was pretty good.

Q: Why call the book Magic City?
A: Why not? (It’s Miami’s city name, and the book takes place in Miami, and certain parts have kind of a surreal magical quality, maybe, and also I was thinking about other names and couldn’t come up with anything that fit the book better as a whole, and also there’s a sense of disillusionment about Miami among the characters, so Magic City has a little bit of an ironic or maybe sarcastic quality, but in the end it sort of is magical as I mentioned in some kind of way, so maybe it’s not so sarcastic, or maybe it still is, or maybe it’s both, etcetera.)

Q: Without giving too much away, there are reasons a reader might believe that the novel was written after Hurricane Katrina hit the South, when in fact it was finished before that tragedy occurred. What was it like to have current events suddenly give an incident in your novel much more weight?
A: It’s definitely an interesting aspect to consider. And I guess I’m not even sure how much more weight it gives the incident in the book. The hurricane in Magic Cityis a very intimate event, and I’m not sure how much that’s going to be equated with something like Katrina. Although Katrina certainly affected victims of the disaster psychologically, it seems to me more of a political and social phenomenon in the public consciousness. I mean, experts had been warning the Bush administration for years what kind of damage a category four or five hurricane could inflict on the Gulf Coast, and local officials in Louisiana had been fighting for federal funding of hurricane defense plans long before Katrina struck. Of course the funding was all denied, and then the disaster hit, and what can you do at that point other than say what ought to have been done? So, I don’t know. Every reader reads every book differently, and doubtless a few may find an added element due to the inclusion of hurricanes into our collective vocabulary as a force of mass destruction post-Katrina. And why not feed Henry’s narcissism by giving his misfortune to the scale of tragedy? He could dig that.

Q: Is there anything you hesitated to put into the novel? 
A: It’s hard to answer. I don’t think so, but once the idea of publication enters your mind you can’t help but realize your parents, your grandparents, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins, and everyone you know—they’re all going to read this thing. And, like you said before, it’s tempting to assume the book is autobiographical. So, okay, maybe my relatives will think I’m crazy, and, okay, my grandma will see me use the word fuck and see me talk about sex. And you just have to think, well, everyone knows these words and talks about or thinks about these things. So, of course you’re always sort of conscious of an audience, but you just hope that that audience wants to hear the realest story you can tell, and as a high school student Magic City was the realest story I knew how to tell. Everything that fit went in, to the best of my knowledge.

Q: The strange codes and rituals of male friendship are at the heart of Magic City. Who are your best friends, and what kind of dynamic would you say they have?
A: My best friends are four guys, Josh, Jake, Ryan, and Andy, who I’ve known basically my whole life. It’s a great dynamic because we’re constantly arguing and being assholes to one another, but they all have hearts of gold and they’re all like brothers to me. I think to some degree, the power structure and competitiveness in the friendships in Magic City represent something that we all kind of outgrew, although I guess those things are always present to some degree in any relationship. But we’re very honest with one another, and I think very self-conscious of any stupid codes or rituals we may be engaging in. That doesn’t always stop us from it, though. Since going to Dartmouth, I’ve made some great new friends, too, and it’s interesting to see how different the dynamic is when you’re a member of one group of friends versus another. Ultimately, my friends are people who can laugh at anything and who think a lot and just talk and talk and talk. I think my writing is often pretty dialogue-driven, and it’s just because the people I’m around won’t shut the fuck up.

Q: You finished writing Magic City before heading to your freshman year at Dartmouth. What is it like to start college knowing you already have a novel being published?
A: It’s great in that this is what I want to do with my life and I’ve been given the opportunity to get an extremely early start. That’s the most I can really say about it.

Q: I know music is something you’re inspired by. What bands and albums left their mark on Magic City?
A: To pare it down to albums, Goddamnit! by Alkaline Trio; Apathy and Exhaustion by the Lawrence Arms; Left and Leaving by the Weakerthans; Less Talk, More Rock by Propagandhi; Broken Star by the Broadways. A lot of punk stuff. A lot of the lyrics, particularly in the first two albums I mentioned, get at exactly the type of feelings some of the characters are having. Alkaline Trio’s song “Trouble Breathing” was, in itself, a huge influence on the book. And then basically anything the Lawrence Arms have ever written. There’s actually a scene in the book where a Lawrence Arms mix is playing at a fateful party, and those lyrics get at a lot of the core emotional issues in the book. Songs like “A Boring Story,” “I’ll Take What’s in the Box, Monty,” “Brick Wall Views”—those are all Lawrence Arms songs, and the list goes on and on and on with that band. Propagandhi and the Broadways influenced a lot of the anger and frustration Henry feels about society in general, moving sort of away from the interpersonal and more toward the social and political. And the Weakerthans, of course. John K. Samson is just an unparalleled lyricist, and a lot of the anti-hometown sentiments in Weakerthans songs can certainly be seen in Magic City. Oh, and the Pretenders, obviously.

Q: You’re about to head out on your first book tour. What do you think that’ll be like?
A: Should be pretty nuts. I’m gonna be touring with some great writers to some great cities. Sounds like a good time. I’m bringing a little basket to catch all the bras that’ll be thrown at me and I guess a few dozen bodyguards, two or three dozen. I’m trying to rig up a little Pope mobile thing before March. We’ll see.

Q: What next?
A: I’m just writing and writing, working on getting better at the whole thing. I just finished my second novel pretty recently. It’s called Three Seasons, and it’s about three siblings as they deal with their mother’s battle with cancer. It takes place in a fictional town called Isabela, which is basically being Wal-Mart-ized, and it deals with the way this affects their lives. It’s narrated with alternating voices through these three different perspectives (two brothers and a sister) and I’m definitely very excited about it, although I’m sure it will undergo some revision before it reaches bookstores. Other than that, I’m getting together ideas, themes, and characters for my third book. Haven’t started writing it yet, but I’m also very excited with where I’m going to try to take it. So next is just more writing, trying to understand this time and place we’re all living in, trying to get it on paper and get it right.