He said growing up in the Bronx, he doubted he would ever be able to
write about his own neighborhood because nobody would be interested.
What changed his mind was reading the novel "Last Exit To Brooklyn" by
Hubert Selby Jr. That taught him he could write about anywhere. He
published his first novel about where he grew up in 1974 called "The
Wanderers".
I prefer to write novels because, well, I'm a novelist. I feel like an artist when I'm writing a novel, when I'm working on a screenplay I feel like a craftsman.
