I’d wish the reader, in the course of falling into one of my stories, to grow more and more estranged from the familiar, until by the end of the story he or she, if only for a moment, sees the world as a mysterious and surprising place. After all, our nervous systems are arranged for practical ends—we see what’s immediately useful to us and ignore the rest. In this sense, art is a method of destruction. It turns our attention away from the useful, it allows us to see things usually obscured by habit—it invites us to witness the thrilling strangeness of the world.