When I have nightmares, they’re not really terrifying nightmares, they are simply passing strange. And always, always, they take place in some kind of hotel. It’s never clear why I’m at the hotel, for what event, but the same thing happens: I need to go down to the lobby for something I need and I…

There are sometimes events in your life (well, in my life …) that I remember clearly but wonder if I ever really experienced. In retrospect, they seem like hallucinations. One of them is this: When I wrote my first novel, I lived in a modest house on the south side of Madison, Wisconsin. I was…