In other words, I would say about 50% of the first draft material that I created for both books really didn’t end up being viable. … Beyond just the kind of structural curiosity that is built into books like this, another reason that I think I was so eager to continue is that there’s a high failure ratio writing books like this. That definitely had not happened after “Goon Squad.” That’s what would put an end to it, the exhaustion of my curiosity. There’s a story arc in both books for sure, but because they’re such ensemble creations and each character has its own constellation of history, people, experience, et cetera, and new peripheral characters to be curious about and turn into major characters, there’s no clear end to it except the exhaustion of curiosity. How did you decide to do that?Įgan: Well, another aspect of books constructed this way is that there’s no real end to them exactly. MT: But in terms of the chronology of your experience of writing these books, you were choosing to return to this world, even if not really continuing the narrative that you had before. But I think that those surprises of hearing about events that came and went and then being plunged into the middle of them, that particular form of surprise and satisfaction is going to be more present going from “Candy House” to “Goon Squad” than the other way around. That’s what makes me think starting with “The Candy House” would be more satisfying. I couldn’t make it work in a straight backwards chronology, but it’s my general feeling that in books like this, finding out what did happen is as fun or more fun than finding out what will happen. That kind of relationship to time and narrative has been exciting to me from the very start. The reader already knows the future, so the reader experiences the present with a particular character in a very different way than we do if we’re just wondering, “Gee, what’s gonna happen?” as the character is.

I was very interested in that because there are all kinds of advantages that it gives the reader.

The candy house characters