I like to say that these four novels are punk novels or "nobelas". I was thinking at that time that "punk" —and when I used this concept I had in mind the music of the Ramones and the example of groups like the Velvet Underground— was the best way to describe what I was trying to do in writing. I thought that it was a good comparison that helped bring out the aesthetic qualities —speed, authenticity and rawness— that I aim for in a novel. Over time I continued exploring the possibilities of this brilliant comparison and expanding on the idea, which is turning out to be more serious and useful than I had expected. For me a "nobela" melds all of the heteroglossic elements that modern fiction either ignores or puts between quotation marks. All of this "noise" —and by "noise" I mean anything from bastardized spellings to colloquial mistakes and any kind of slang or language that is usually avoided in literature— is what a real novelist has to turn to if he wants to revitalize and pump new blood into a genre positioned like no other to give artistic shape to living language.