Daniel replies:

Hmmm. Where did I get the idea? People always ask that question, as though there were a ""where,"" from whence ideas come. I can't speak for anyone else, but my ideas are fragmentary and never any good until I tinker with them. Often there's a kernel of reality--in this case the Clark, a real movie house that was dear to me in my high school days in Chicago. And I had a friend named Winston with whom I'd ""Clark out,"" sometimes. Come to think of it, the whole book is utterly true, and not a word of it is fiction.