When I consider the fiction I wrote when I was younger than I am now, though not so much younger that I do not recognize who I was at the time, or remember those stories as the efforts of a writer who’d reached maturity, I am struck by the amount of violence in them, and cannot explain to myself their meanings, though I suppose that, if I could explain them, I’d prefer I hadn’t written them, for if a story can be explained, it can be reduced, and if it can be reduced, it is absent of mystery, and if it is absent of mystery, which is not to say confusion, or obfuscation, it might be interesting and well-written, or well-written and entertaining, but it is not in possession of an essential characteristic of art.