I came up with some theories while completing the Monk Fake Book. (Yes, it's done!) One is that references or allusions can be obscure so long as the underlying feeling is clear. Another, proper names can give a particular texture to writing. A third: although I had no idea when I started what any of the texts would be about, I ended up using material that I already had, that was already available to me. Thus the process of writing was one of realizing that I had certain phrases, images, what have you, already at my disposal. Finally, writing for me is gathering up clusters of feeling.

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I was reading a Harukami novel on the plane to SF in which none of the characters had proper names. Nevertheless, there were many proper names in the novel itself--names of writers and actors and musicians, pop culture references galore. This displacement of the referential had a peculiar effect. An effect, precisely, of displacement. The world of cultural references seemed real in a way that the world of the characters themselves was not. It's like a painting of library shelves in which the titles of the books on the shelves are legible. One could go out and get these same books and acquire the "contents" of the painting. Yet one can't meet the girl in the painting, or know what she's thinking as she reads a book on the chair.