Christopher Bollen (born November 26, 1975) is a novelist and magazine writer/editor who lives in New York City.
I feel that I'm solid at description.
I like to be alone, I mean, I really love to be alone more than anything else, and I don't really like to talk about myself to death, and I don't like to share too much, and I don't really have dreams of extreme fame or even extreme respect.
My parents were great parents, but for some bizarre reason they allowed me to watch whatever I wanted on TV, we had cable. And I constantly watched horror movies.
In a lot of ways, work was my graduate school.
I just think, as writers, especially with a book that takes years to write, you sort of wake up every morning hoping and praying that you can make it work for the day.
I've never even done a residency.
I was obsessed with Agatha Christie in sixth grade.
I like change. I've never really had much consistency in my life, you know, from everyday work to my living situation to whether or not I'm going to be in L. A. The one constant thing in my life is my friends and family, which is all I need
Now we're in an age of singles. It's actually always been more about singles for most of music history.
There is something very romantic about the orphan figure in American literature.
I would stay at my grandma's house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time.
I really believe there is something in the nature of a democracy that naturally leads people to distrust the government, to assume because a democracy is built by people just like themselves that there must be secret plots and cover-ups and wizards behind the scenes running the machine.
There are certain moments where artwork might seem like it's part of someone's career - if you really know the art world - , but I did my best to prevent that overlap.
To this day I still watch tons of horror.
I wanted to reexamine the idea of the album for generations of people who are not my age, who love music or learning about music or are finding this band called R. E. M. or have just previously heard "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" as their elevator music. I wanted to present an idea of what an album could be in the age of YouTube and the Internet.
There seem to be two ways of generating interest from the reader: withholding information or by telling the reader on the first page exactly what's going to happen.
I have always wanted to be either a cinematographer or a veterinarian.
I was a very scared child.
It's always surprised me that mainstream America had the good taste to like R. E. M. It doesn't have the digestible quality the general public tends to look for in its favorite musicians.
I also wonder why is it that so many of the movies and books that are detective stories are also the most aesthetically interesting? From Hollywood noirs to horror movies like The Shining [1980].