On 'Joker: Folie à Deux' and 'Megalopolis'

When I was sixteen, in 1992, I wanted to be a novelist like Stephen King, only better. I wanted the literary prestige of Edgar Allen Poe. I had conceived of this idea for a novel: The River of Lost Time. It was about a deranged criminal who illogically stabs a little girl and dumps her body in the river. But he’s cursed; now he has to see the world through her eyes. With this shift in consciousness, he goes up the river and meets all the great figures of the past (Socrates, Shakespeare). These figures are on two opposing sides: the mind and the soul.