Everybody in the family decided to get a tattoo each as a sign of togetherness and pestered me to get one. You have to be with the times, and I'm glad my tattoo isn't scary or anything.
Growing up in Chicago is hard. I'd say 80 percent of the people ain't really got no daddies. Their household wasn't right. All they know is the streets and getting some money to support each other and support their family.
Although, from the point of view of sociology, the overt ambition of 'American Pastoral' - to imagine the impact on a good man of America's fall from the family decencies of the '30s and '40s to the self-centred violence of the '60s - outstrips anything Sabbath's Theater attempts, the writing is no less fervid an excurse into the writer's mind.