The book is about, I think it takes place in 1970, American Pastoral, but it was based on my experience of living through the '60s. Nothing like that happened to me, that isn't the way it's based on your experience – it's based on your knowledge, I should say. The '60s, from say, 1963, the Kennedy assassination, till 1974, I think that's the Nixon impeachment or resignation, those years were unlike any years I've ever known in America. They were alive with horror, the horror of the War, they were alive with menace, the menace of the sexual revolution, they were alive with the comedy of the sexual revolution, they were alive with the politics, the resistance to the politics, they were alive with resistance, resistance to authority, nothing like that had happened before, in my time.

And I somehow wanted to get all that into American Pastoral, but not through me, through this glove-maker; and I think I did. I don't know any more that's useful that I didn't put in that book, you know?