1. What are you working on right now?
Well, Im working on another kids book. My plan was to write something like Babar or Curious George and then live out the rest of my life on the income from stuffed animals, but unfortunately the book took a weird turn and is now all about ethnic cleansing. So no stuffed animals are forthcoming, I dont think, and Ive once again managed to minimize my audience, to all Beginning Readers with a great interest in ethnic cleansing, which market research indicates is this one little crazy guy from Lansing, Michigan.
2. What books are you reading right now, and what do you think of them?
Im reading a great new book of poems by Michael Burkard, called Unsleeping. Like all of Burkards books, this book throws the English language into this beautiful relief it doesnt sound or read the same for weeks afterwards. Burkard dazzles you with his heart and his humanity and his brilliance.
Im also reading Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam a memoir of her years with the great Russian poet Osip Mandelstam. One of the most moving and frightening books Ive ever read every page has some startling insight about human nature and makes you realize how good weve got it, and that these relatively good times SuperSize Me! notwithstanding carry with them a real responsibility.
3. If you could have dinner with one author, dead or alive, who would it be, and why?
Isaac Babel, the author of Red Cavalary. Id like to know how he went about writing those incredible stories, which are so compressed and subtle and beautiful that its hard to imagine a mere human being writing them, though I suspect he wouldnt tell me he apparently hated talking about his work.
My second choice would be Lawrence Godson, author of Why I Always Pick Up the Tab, Then Give My Dining Partner One Hundred Thousand Dollars! What a terrific book! I literally couldnt put it down. Even the compendium of Mr Godsons family photos were, I thought riveting, and I plan to tell him so, at our dinner.
4. What would you say is the best thing about being a writer? Whats the worst or hardest?
The best thing about being a writer is that, when you say youre a writer, nobody expects you to be able to function normally. So if theres a spot on your clothes or your hair is sticking up, people go, Oh, well, you know, hes a writer. Or if you overturn your vehicle and wander away through traffic and then blunder through a plateglass window into a pet store and inadvertently start eating some guppies right out of the tank, people just go, Ah jeez, that guy, what a terrific writer.
The hardest part about being a writer is that, having overturned your vehicle and broken a plateglass window and eaten a bunch of guppies, you cant afford to pay for any of it and have to put it all on credit cards.
5. What would you be doing now if you werent writing?
I think I would be Ralph Stubby Iambretto, crayfish king of South Fox County, Louisiana. I dont know why, I just have this feeling. Sometimes even now, even though I am a writer, I have that feeling. My wife will find me out in the yard, dancing around in front of an imaginary gumbo pit. Other times Im reasonably sure I would have been a small Viennese girl sulking in her backyard because once again her mother forced her to eat strudle, and shes trying not to eat strudle, because shes tired of being so fat, and as she sits in the yard, some of her schoolmates walk by, snickering about the tightness of her lederhosen. Again just a hunch.
6. What are the necessary or preferred conditions for when you write? Why? (place, time of day, etc.)
I wrote my first book while working at an environmental engineering company and so any pretensions about having to write in a particular place or at a particular time of day were eradicated by a succession of suspicious co-workers racing into my office to try and bust me typing anything but Soils Sampling Results for Northeastern Air Force Base With Regard to Possible Cyanide in Soil Due to Inadvertant Cyanide Spillage During War Games. Actually, I guess there is one preference I find it really helpful if, when I am writing, someone periodically races into my room screaming, Saunders, you piker, what the hell are you smiling for, are you writing another one of your so-called literary products, you skilless liberal whiner! That really gets me going.
7. What areas of a bookstore are you drawn to, and why?
It may just be me, but I find myself drawn again and again to the area of the bookstore where they are barbecuing ribs and serving free drinks and a small orchestra is playing and a distinguished-looking gentleman at the podium is intoning a list of my virtues to an adoring audience, and then the statue of me is unveiled as some special indoors fireworks are set off, and from the crowd comes a low controlled sobbing of admiration. I dont know why, I just like that area. Hard to find, yes, but well worth it.
8. How would you like to be remembered?
When I was younger I wanted to be remembered as undeniably the finest and most influential and handsome writer, thinker, musician, lover, philosopher, and politician of his generation, besides whom even the most worthy competitors paled. Ive since scaled that back somewhat and would now like to be remembered as that guy who didnt die in a particularly embarrassing way. So well see how that goes. If the next forty years are anything like the last forty years, in terms of expectation-reduction, I may be content to be remembered as that guy who died in a way which was probably not exactly the most embarrassing way of dying ever, all things considered.
9. What is your favorite word? Why?
My favorite word is disinter, which, to the best of my knowledge means to fire an intern. Either that or doppleganger, which I believe means a gang of very old men. So, as you might imagine, my favorite sentence goes something like: My God, that huge doppleganger is very slowly advancing towards the hospital, intent on disinterring some guys! I also like promulgate, which means to interrupt with great violence, as in, Come on, Hank, lets promulgate those geezers in that doppleganger before they commence the disinterrment!
10. Who do you think your reader is?
My reader is Larry, a guy in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Which is sort of too bad, because as it turns out Larry really hates my work. Were in counseling together about it but I can see very clearly now that what Larry wanted all along was to be Danielle Steeles reader. So Ill send him some scathing post-modernist critique of capitalism and hell be like, you know: More cleavage! Or: There isnt a single well-hung globetrotting Arab millionaire in this whole dang book, George! So its a tough situation for both of us. Thank goodness for Alice Winter, our counselor, who is always saying things like: Larry, do you think its healthy to expect George to be Danielle? And: George, do you think its healthy to expect Larry to be Fred Wide-Ass Shapiro? (Fred is the guy I wanted for my reader, a real brain, very generous. If only!)
11. Are you a part of a community of writers? Which community, and what do you think about it?
Im a part of Argot 324, a nice little writers community that specializes in writers whose readers hate their work. We live in this little ranch house with our dog Kafka, although John Irving (whose reader is Sally, who would prefer to be Dr Ruths reader) is always challenging us all to wrestling matches in the living room, which makes us all nervous, because most of us are small and depressed and John always beats the snot out of us.
When not inside Argot 324, I teach at Syracuse University, with some of the most brilliant, funny, and kind colleagues and students imaginable: a great and rewarding writers community if ever there was one.
12. What role do you feel books play in modern life?
Well, in Argot 324, the main role books play is that when John Irving breaks the coffee table again in the process of thrashing one of us at wrestling, we use books to prop the coffee table back up.
Actually, seriously they play the same role they always have, I think, which is to be the single most efficient and transcendent chance one human being has to communicate with another. If I write: The angry man walked up the dirt road towards the white house, you immediately supply the man, the road, and the house, and from that moment on you are implicated in my book. Your man, your road, and your house come fraught with deep psychological and spiritual nuances, private nuances, and so you and I make that book together, not that youre getting any of my royalties. In other words, a good book is the best tool we have for teaching and learning compassion theres nothing else like it.
13. Which author or book first inspired you to write, or made you want to be a writer?
What made me want to become a writer is that I had two high school teachers Joe and Sheri Lindbloom who were, then and now, the personification of intelligence and wit. They seemed to think I was bright and a decent writer, and that was enough for me a way into the world I saw them occupying, the world of ideas.
14. What are the current trends in literature (from sales and marketing, to bookstores, to books themselves) that you find disappointing?
A trend I find deeply disturbing is that some of these big chain bookstores are selling other peoples books besides mine. It seems to me and bear in mind that Im a writer, not a businessman that if they offer books other than mine, then the chance of me selling every single book that day in the whole country goes down. This seems, to me, to be a disturbing and dangerous trend, almost fascist.
15. What is the harshest piece of criticism you have received from a literary critic, teacher, or editor? How did you react?
A certain very well-known and dignified literary critic once characterized my work as childish, to which I responded by giving him a wedgie.
I actually havent received too much harsh criticism, probably because my low self-esteem is apparent in my work and nobody wants to drive me over the edge.
16. What influence do you think email has had on how people read and write? Has it had an influence on your writing?
I think it has greatly influenced our reading, in that many more of us read hunched slighly forward now, squinting, with a bluish glow on our faces. It has also greatly affected our writing, and I expect any day now to see whole entire novels made entirely of little smiley faces made out of typographical symbols. I also think its terrific the way email makes it possible for a person to totally disguise his or her identity, reversing the oppressive, centuries-old tradition of a person actually needing to have charm, wit, or intelligence, or needing to stand behind what he or she says.
17. What are some of the fiction books released in the last few years that you have really enjoyed?
Rides of the Midway, by Lee Durkee.
The Age of Wire and String, Ben Marcus.
Five Doubts, Mary Caponegro.
Brief Interviews with Hideous Men, David Foster Wallace.
