“The Story Has Its Own Logic”: An Interview with Mac Crane
In Mac Crane’s new novel, A Sharp Endless Need, basketball is much, much more than a mere game. Mack, the book’s protagonist, ruminates:
“Have fun, my mother always said. But what’s fun about basketball? This is life-or-death, I wanted to say, a belief so juicy you can’t help but sink your teeth into it, this is painful, disturbing admiration, it is blood on fire, body under fire. The game is a promise, a pact, a mouthwatering vow. It’s no more fun than agreeing to be buried alive.”
Mack brings this kind of intensity to their romantic pursuits, too. A gender-questioning teenager growing up in Pennsylvania in the early aughts, Mack’s desperate desire for their teammate, Liv, leads to on-court magic while threatening off-court disaster. Just like Crane’s award-winning debut, I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself, this novel explores love, longing, and shame in Crane’s iconic style—visceral and poetic, yet clean and accessible. In this interview, we discussed whether greatness is possible without obsession, how to fictionalize your past, and how AIM was the ultimate platform for adolescent yearning.
-Emily Mirengoff
TriQuarterly: The early aughts references will hit millennials right on the nostalgia bone—away messages on AIM, NOW CDs. (Speaking of which, it’s very refreshing to see AI written and realize that it means Allen Iverson, not Artificial Intelligence.) But you used the references judiciously. How did you approach the task of making this time and place feel specific and concrete, without just tossing in pop culture references willy-nilly?
Mac Crane: It’s easy when you’re growing up in that time—the details don’t feel obtrusive, because they’re the background noise of your life. It did take a few drafts to strike the right balance—to figure out which references were really adding to Mack’s world.
AIM was always going to be in the book, because it was such a huge part of my own adolescence. Narratively, it’s such a useful tool for yearning. The early aughts were maybe the last time that we didn’t have full access to other people: yes, there were cell phones, but you had limited text messages. When someone had their “away” message up on AIM, they were out of reach. I used to set up notifications to alert me when my crushes took down their “away” messages and came back. And my own “away” messages were full of secret messages—I’d paste the lyrics of a New Found Glory song and hope they knew it was for them. Within the novel, it was very useful to have the characters wonder about each other’s messages, to try to see through each other’s posturing.
TQ: There’s a fantastic physicality to your prose—both in this novel and in “I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself.” It almost feels like one of your goals is to explore what it’s like to inhabit a human body. Can you speak to that?
MC: That’s interesting to hear, because I felt very heady when I wrote “Exoskeletons.” Growing up as an athlete, I was very aware of my body—everything from, “Oh, do I have an ache or a pain, something that’s going to bug me at practice,” to “I can tell I’m getting sick,” two weeks before I actually was. And when you’re playing, there’s both a micro- and macro-awareness of what you’re doing at all times. I guess that awareness informs how I approach my characters, and how they walk through the world.
TQ: This book is about basketball, but it’s also about young love. Mack, the protagonist, expresses their affection through obsessive study of Liv’s playing style—figuring out exactly how high her three-pointers arc, how many times she dribbles before a free throw. How did you figure out how to connect your two main themes?
MC: This intense scrutiny is Mack’s language of love, and I personally think it’s beautiful to express love through awe and wonder and deep attention. Seeing those details that someone else would never pick up—like the exact spot where Liv likes to catch the ball before she shoots—there’s a sort of holy reverence to that kind of noticing.
TQ: Throughout the book, Mack is begging to be seen that way themselves—by Liv, but also by their mother and basketball coach. At the same time, Mack shies away from it. There’s a real push-and-pull, a simultaneous desire to be seen and a terror of it.
MC: It’s that age-old saying: “Notice me, don’t perceive me.” I wanted to explore that contradiction that a lot of people live with. The end of the prologue leans into that—“We wanted to be in the history books, but when we stepped off the court, we wanted to be anonymous.” Part of that is their wish to love each other in private, without surveillance or judgment of their queerness. But it’s also hard as an athlete specifically, because you’re aiming for greatness, and in practice, that means fame, accomplishments, and championships. You can’t be great and unknown—at least, not anymore. The characters want to be famous and seen, but on their own terms, so that they can retreat to their own private safe haven off the court.
Speaking to your comment, though, Mack does want to be seen that way, because that’s how they love, and so they think that’s the only way to be loved. And when they don’t give Mack that kind of deep attention, Mack thinks, “These people don’t love me right.” It’s hard for them to understand that there could be other types of love—that’s the myopia of being seventeen.
TQ: Speaking of their ages, Liv has this tendency to fall into “make-believe” mode, taking on personas and leading Mack into fake scenarios. It allows the two of them to act out moments that they’re afraid to have as themselves, but the childishness of it also reminds us of the characters’ youth. How did you strike the balance of maturity and immaturity as you wrote these adolescent characters?
MC: It was pretty hard, to be honest—because it’s hard to live through. You’re on the precipice of adulthood, which comes with all these major decisions. For Mack and Liv, the biggest decision is where they’re going to play college basketball. That may not sound like that high of stakes, but it feels like everything to them, because their identities are wrapped up in being great basketball players. They could accidentally choose a coach that doesn’t welcome them, or a team they don’t get along with. And landing with an abusive coach is all too common, because players are basically relying on the whisper network to warn them off. Depending on the school, they could either thrive, or their careers could tank—and with it, their entire sense of self, self-worth, identity, their futures.
That pressure is forcing them into a mature space, but they handle the pressures in an immature way. They both cope through avoidance and denial, so that small window of fantasy was really needed, especially by Liv, to express anything real. They’re unable to connect on a level beyond infatuation and obsession, which is how their immaturity really expresses itself.
TQ: This novel has strong autobiographical elements—you also grew up in this time and place, as a gender-questioning, queer basketball player. How did you feel about revisiting your past, trying to depict it with some level of detachment? Were there elements or events in your life that you planned to include but ultimately didn’t fit in the narrative?
MC: I’m never going to deny the autobiographical elements, or the allegations of autofiction! But the detachment question is interesting, the idea of separating story from self. I just turned 35, and I could never have written this even at 25. The distance was especially necessary because the novel is in past tense, narrated by an older Mack. I needed to go through my own grieving process—I’m riddled with ACL tears and I can’t play anymore—so I had to reckon with my own identity crisis around losing basketball before I could look back.
I took this Mack character and gave them my basic autobiographical traits, but of course I didn’t want it to be too close to my life. I created drama that didn’t necessarily happen to me but felt true, art-wise.
But there were real-life experiences that I had to force myself not to include. In real life, I was arrested for possession of weed and kicked off my high school team mid-season; I thought I was going to lose my scholarship. And with the decisions that Mack and Liv are making throughout the novel, that definitely felt like a plausible event for them too. I was trying really hard to include it in the novel, but it just wasn’t working. It took several drafts to realize that just because it happened and makes sense for the characters, that doesn’t mean it belongs in the novel. Ultimately as a writer, I had to let the characters breathe and have their own story, and it was so much stronger that way.
TQ: One of the main themes of this book is using a passion—namely, basketball—as the basis of your identity, and to fill a void. Late in the book, another high school player tells Mack that she doesn’t want to play in college, that she just plays for fun, which makes Mack feel like they’re playing two different sports. Do you feel that way? Is it possible to be excellent and still have a balanced life and identity?
MC: I’ve actually done a lot of research and thinking on this exact question, because I’ve been wondering about it forever: does greatness equal obsession? How many truly great players have ever been chill? And I don’t watch football, but I did find this one quarterback—the number-one draft pick a few years ago—who didn’t seem to care about the sport. He was like, ‘There are other things that matter to me besides football. I like it, but if I stopped playing tomorrow, I’d be fine.’ And I was like, ‘Who is this person? I hate him!’
TQ: Well, it’s a slap in the face to everyone else! They’re out here, sacrificing their identities because they think it’s the only path to greatness—and he’s saying there’s another way?
MC: Especially if you don’t end up being that great! But honestly, most really great players that I’ve studied have that hungry, obsessive temperament. In the world of the book, it doesn’t occur to Mack that you can play ‘for fun.’ Why would you step on the court, play a game and then let it go? Part of that is just Mack’s competitive nature.
TQ: The book is structured like a basketball game, with chapters named after fouls, a half-time, and so on. Did you start the book with that structure in mind, or did it come along later?
MC: It took shape as I went along. This is a writing tic of mine: I always need some experimental element that gives me a way in. If you ever see a book of mine that doesn’t have a strange structure, I was probably held at gunpoint as I wrote it. This particular form freed me up to play, to have short chapters—time out #3 is only one line long, for example. It helped give the story texture, and allowed me to get weird.
TQ: This book features one of the most unusual funerals I’ve ever read. Without giving too much away, it takes place in a high school gym, with people shooting hoops and drinking—and then it only gets more physical from there. I love, too, that all the characters act like this is completely normal. Where did you come up with this? Have you attended a funeral like this?
MC: No, but I’ve been to some heavily drinking funerals! Even in my books that take place in a grounded reality, like this one, I still always like to include a little bit of magic, a little bit of speculative. This isn’t really a funeral that would happen. I don’t have a specific word for it, but they’re in this tweaked, dream-like reality. It sets the tone for what happens in this town, in this world.
I also really wanted the heightened aggression—writing fight scenes is fun for me. The book is heavy, but I love including humor within heavy things. It’s hard to self-declare, because then you’re basically calling yourself funny, but I’m always trying to achieve that balance. It was important for me that, as we start a book with a lot of despair and trauma, there’s also humor. Her father—the character who died—was funny in a larger-than-life way, and this scene makes Mack’s grief that much more accessible to the reader, because we also get to know him through this unusual funeral request.
It’s always interesting to write scenes like this, though, because then the reader critique comes in: “That’s not realistic.” If you’re one person, you’ve only had one set of experiences in your life, so who are you to say that it could never happen? With a scene like this, I don’t expect readers to say, “Oh wow, this is so realistic, I was just at a funeral like this the other day.” But I do wish readers would just allow themselves to believe it within the world of the story. The story has its own logic.
A Sharp Endless Need by Mac Crane
The Dial Press, May 2025, 272 pages, $27 Hardcover
