Early Career
His early literary influences ranged from writers like Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, Flannery O'Connor, and Philip Roth to film directors like Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Sidney Lumet, and Werner Herzog. He studied at Wesleyan University in Connecticut and won the Paul Horgan prize for best short fiction by a student. He started in journalism as an assistant to writer Pete Hamill before reporting for the Newark Star-Ledger in New Jersey and the Norwich Bulletin in Connecticut. He reported on crime for New York magazine but found inspiration for his first novel at the New York Department of Probation saying that it was a "virtual social microcosm."
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