I was born in the Bronx in 1937 and grew up on its mean streets, which had plenty of movie houses but no library. I read comic books, discovered Captain Marvel and Krazy Kat, joined a gang, and dreamed of becoming a movie usher or a soda jerk, the two stellar occupations of my childhood.

    I attended the High School of Music and Art, managed to sneak into Columbia College, where I slowly began to devour whatever books I could borrow or steal (I wasn't a very accomplished thief). I fell in love with Faulkner and James Joyce. While friends of mine went on to graduate school, I worked as a playground director, trying to learn the strange--almost invisible--craft of a writer. I had no particular talent except an imagination that leapt from one form of chaos to another.

    I published a story, then a novel, started to teach at Stanford University, and I've been traveling, teaching, and writing ever since.

    I've lived in Barcelona, Houston, Austin, and San Francisco, and now shuttle back and forth between New York and Paris, where I teach film theory at the American University and write regularly for the Cahiers du Cinema.

    I've also been lucky to have a brother who's a homicide detective; it's through him that I entered the arcane, schizophrenic world of the police and started a whole series of novels about a murderous, romantic cop who becomes police commissioner, then mayor of New York, and vice president of the United States.

    I've also written about my own mythological journey through Manhattan (Metropolis) and through Hollywood (Movieland), and I've completed two autobiographical journeys through the Bronx (The Dark Lady from Belorusse and The Black Swan).