Writing THE VAN was a strange experience--the idea came to me while getting my son to sleep. Just weeks before, my neighbor had killed himself, using a VW microbus as a source of carbon monoxide. It was a tragic end to an unhappy life--yet it was also a bizarre use of an iconic American symbol of freedom. As I laid there, I ruminated on the journey the VW had taken--and the fact that it was still sitting in the rented storage space where the suicide had taken place. What a long, strange trip indeed. Who could ever predicted it? So I started filling in the missing pieces, imagining the van as it coursed through history. The novel became a way for me to investigate the themes and tropes of our contemporary world, experimenting with styles and methods of storytelling.
