Two interns for the literary journal interviewed me about my theater background, my time living in Bangkok, and my obsession with point of view (among other things). You can read about it here.
A Great David Sedaris Interview
I realize that this website is one post short of being a David Sedaris fanblog, but I came across this article today from Vice: “David Sedaris Talks About Surviving the Suicide of a Sibling,” which was one of the best interviews I’ve read in a long time.
Not only do we get an authentic discussion of a really tough subject, but also a wonderful collection of Sedaris family photos. At the end I was thinking, “What an incredible family, and we’re so lucky to have it chronicled by such a fantastic writer.”
Tissue recommended.
Alice Munro on writing and things…
If you liked Munro before, you will really like her after visiting the Nobel Prize website and listening to this interview.
Crazy Fascinating Interview with Bob Shacochis
Like August Wilson and his plays, Shacochis is a novel-a-decade kind of writer. The reviews are saying his latest is well worth the wait. I haven’t read The Woman Who Lost Her Soul yet but I certainly will, especially having heard him read from it a couple weeks ago at the local reading series.
The LA Review of Books recently published an epic-length email interview about the epic. Here is one of my favorite bits:
Q: Could you say something about how the book’s structure evolved? Every time I think you’ve pushed a scene as far as it can possibly go — you find a way to push it one step farther. In the process more layers of character are revealed. How deliberate is this?
A: The explanation for the structure is a bit dramatic — perhaps psychodramatic would be the more accurate description. The novel is divided into five interior books, and as I was closing in on the finish of Book One, I had to confront — for genuine medical reasons — the likelihood that I was about to die. Accepting that outcome, I decided to create a sense of closure around the denouement of Book One. Even though the narrative closure is misleading and downright false, Book One could still be published autonomously should I indeed croak. That sword of impending death was still hanging over me by the time I wrote Books Two and Three. If I died, Grove Atlantic would still be able to publish my unfinished work as finished. One novella — Croatia — and two small novels. By the time I was working on Books Four and Five, the medical crisis had passed, and I had every reason to believe I wasn’t dying quite yet, which means I was free to go ahead and write those last two books without fretting that they needed to close in a way that was a full stop, narratively speaking. That’s the simple explanation for why the book is structured the way it is. I was looking at eternity, trying to hedge my bets.
Whoa.
