The “Up” series (the most recent entry, released last year, was “56 Up”) affected me a great deal. The films started in 1964, when the subjects were all seven years old, and followed them as they aged out of childhood and entered early adulthood and then mid-life, and then continued as they waded into the soft pudding that lies beyond.

Michael Apted’s “Up” films.” The British filmmaker famously shot footage of the same group of people every seven years.

Here are a couple of them, along with related distractions: Because this novel deals with young characters, at least in its first part, some of what I consider to be influences come from an earlier time in my life.

Now, though, with the book published and recently out in paperback, I find that I’m able to think back on a few of the things that pushed me into or carried me through the experience. But someone wrote it-someone, apparently, with my exact sensibility. It’s as if my not really evil but certainly productive twin wrote it, while I was off doing something light and indulgent, like getting a two-year facial. Sometimes, right after I’ve finished a novel, I hardly remember even having written it.

Actual inspiration for a novel can come from various pumps and nozzles, and sometimes it can’t even be perceived as it’s happening but can only be examined later, when, in a more lucid and practical state, you try to figure out exactly how you managed to generate all those pages.

The interestings novel