In beginning [research for a book], I'm always curious to investigate what psychological motives bring a certain person into his field or profession. Why is a surgeon a surgeon? Why does he enjoy cutting flesh? Why is a psychiatrist a psychiatrist? Why does he like to tune in on patients' private lives? Why does that woman like to teach, and why does this man like to dig into the earth? And so—for The Word—why did this man choose to become a man of God? And, indeed, how much of a...

The flap about [The Chapman Report's] overt sexuality was less than justified, especially when that novel is compared with The Sins of Philip Fleming. The earlier novel was much more sexually explicit, but no one bothered to attack it. The sexual controversy overlapped into the charges that Wallace had manufactured a bestseller by stringing together frantic sex with a scant story line. But if sex sold Chapman, then sex should have sold Fleming. Wallace wrote Chapman because he wanted to write about m...

In development, Wallace's novels start from a large and ranging base. Then they grow pyramidally, gradually concentrating the plot and shedding sub-plots and details as they rise until eventually the top is reached and the problem is solved. These plots are rich and complex, or they are overly complicated and confusing, depending on the reader's point of view…. [He] must have room and time to develop his novels in considerable detail to get across his message. Once this message has been...