John Irving on Setting

“Of course, it’s necessary to make the atmosphere of a novel more real than real, as we say. Whatever its place is, it’s got to feel, concretely, like a place with richer detail than any place we can actually remember. I think what a reader likes best is memories, the more vivid the better. That’s the role of atmosphere in fiction: it provides details that feel as good, or as terrifying, as memories. Vienna, in my books, is more Vienna than Vienna; St. Cloud’s is more Maine than Maine.”