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Percival
Everett
Robert
Birnbaum talks with the author of God's Country
 Posted:
May 6, 2003
© 2003 Robert Birnbaum
Images by Red Diaz/Duende Publishing
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this interview
Author Percival Everett grew up in South Carolina
and attended the University of Miami as well as the University
of Oregon, where he did graduate work in philosophy. He has
an MFA in writing from Brown University. He has published
fifteen books, including For Her Dark Skin, Zulus, The
Weather and The Women Treat Me Fair, Cutting Lisa, Walk Me
to the Distance, Suder, The One That Got Away, Watershed,
God's Country, Erasure and a story collection, Big
Picture. He has taught at Bennington College, The University
of Wyoming and the University of California at Riverside and
is currently at the University of Southern California. Everett
and his wife, Francesca, live in LA as well as a ranch in
California and a house on Vancouver Island. He has a novel
and a story collection coming out in 2004.
Beacon Press recently published the soft-cover (or
trade paper back) editions of God's Country and Watershed.
The former is something of a parable set in 1871 that features
Curt Marder— an all-around loser— who as the story
begins has lost his farm, wife and dog. Marder teams up with
legendary tracker Bubba, a black man and also Jake, a recently
orphaned child set upon vengeance. Everett's take on the Great
American Western includes a highly amusing cast of characters
including one George Armstrong Custer.
In Watershed, Robert Hawks, son and grandson
of two iconoclastic physicians, is a hydrologist who finds
himself entangled in a Native American treaty rights imbroglio
as he retreats to the Colorado wilds to fish and escape his
relationship with an extremely neurotic woman. Along the way
he encounters a midget Native American woman, Louise Yellow
Calf, two murdered FBI Agents, a toxic waste dump, a peyote-ingesting
religious ceremony, the neurotic woman's ineptly suicidal
father and an inebriated female FBI agent. Need I say more?
Robert Birnbaum: Do you care to comment
on what kind of crap shoot the publishing business is?
Percival Everett: I have always ignored
the business of publishing. A lot of people think I am joking
when I say I am process oriented. All I care about is while
I am working on something. I really do. I like being paid
like anybody else but I have ignored—I don't read reviews.
The statements from publishers, when they come, I look at
them, but I still don't see them. I just throw them away (laughs).
RB: Well, strange and fascinating oddities occur at the intersection
of art and commerce, I guess. Why is Beacon Press publishing
the soft cover edition of two books that you wrote seven or
eight years ago?
PE: I can't really say how it happened. I am really happy
that it has because it extends the lives of those books. And
they weren't picked up for paper after their hardback publication
by Graywolf. Part of it is that Graywolf, as great a press
as it is—I love being over there—doesn't have
the distribution muscle of a lot publishers and probably if
it did, it wouldn't be as great as it is. I don't know.
RB: You think there is an inverse relationship there?
PE: (Both laugh) There seems to be, but I haven't looked
at it enough to say. Helen Atwan at Beacon read the books
and because of their political stance, she thought they would
be good books for Beacon. It’s probably better for the
books. I didn't get a lot of money from Beacon as if I would
have if I was published by Bantam, but logically it makes
more sense for the books. And for me, morally, it feels better.
RB: I read something about you in the Guardian in
the UK recently. Has Erasure been published in this
country?
PE: Yes. In 2001 it was published by the University Press
of New England. [It was] Kind of an experiment for them because
they do have a fiction imprint called Hardscrabble.
RB: Oh, yes they published WD
Wetherell?
PE: Yes, it's always been New England-based writing. But
[Erasure] wasn't published by Hardscrabble and it
was a departure for them. They treated the book well and it
did well and Hyperion published the paperback. In a way the
layers of irony with this book are just kind of disgusting.
(both laugh)
RB: Do I have this right, Doubleday was launching an Afro-American
imprint, Harlem Moon?
PE: It was a nice offer, but I really don't think if they
did read it that they understood it all. I was tempted briefly
to let them do it so that an imprint could be invalidated
by its first publication.
RB: God's Country might have been funnier if some
of it didn't ring so true.
PE: But then it might not be funny at all (both laugh). Huck
Finn is really funny because it is so sad.
RB: 2 Blowhards,
a culturally astute weblog, recently tried to assemble a list
of great Western novels. It was interesting to see how many
books people were unaware of, including, of course, God's
Country. Were you intending to write a Western novel?
PE: I was consciously writing a parody of that form. And
in that way, no, it's not a western because I wasn't trying
to write an adventure set in the mythic West. I was looking
to exploit the fact that there is a mythic West.
RB: It's all myth.
People who
like my work like my work for all the reasons that I
would want them to like it. And the people who don't
like it, dislike it for all the reasons I would want
them to dislike it. |
PE: Yeah, it has nothing to do with any
reality. And how that mythology that was invented for the
West is really the American story. Not the story itself but
the fact that it was needed.
RB: It falls in with a number books that have attempted the
same demythification, Berger's Little Big Man…
PE: EL Doctorow's Hard Times…
RB: Pete Dexter's Deadwood.
PE: Oh yeah and didn't Vonnegut have something…he floats
around in times so much it's hard to know.
RB: It brings to mind Robert Altman's great film, McCabe
and Mrs. Miller, one of the first and one of the few
films that is an anti-Western besides the film version of
Little Big Man…
PE: Those are the only two that try to do it seriously, but
of course you have—we don't think of it in this way,
Blazing Saddles, may be the best example. Also we
have Silverado, which is a fun, silly movie that
exploits the genre but really don't have the depth.
RB: In your fifteen books, you have hopped around in terms
of subject matter.
PE: And style too. I don't care much to write the same thing
again.
RB: So at what point in your life did you decide that you
wanted to do something as honorable as writing fiction?
PE: Well, I realized that I wanted to be really rich. (both
laugh) That's when I decided. I was actually studying philosophy.
I did the kind of philosophy known as Ordinary Language philosophy.
RB: Me too.
PE: Oh yeah. I just became so disenchanted with scholastic
philosophy that — I was writing scenes anyway, to have
people talk to each other about philosophical concepts.
RB: You were studying philosophy and you became disenchanted
and so began dabbling in fiction—would you call it 'dabbling'?
PE: It was dabbling—I have always loved fiction and
always read it—I applied to a couple of writing programs
and they asked for writing samples and so I wrote a story
and that's how it started. I have just been lucky, basically.
I always feel kind of guilty about the paying the dues thing
that people always talk about, and I suppose I am paying my
dues now by having to still do it. But it wasn't so hard to
start, for me.
RB: Honestly I could just as easily see you as being embittered.
You've published fifteen books, and the way I came across
your work was a reference to you in one of my favorite websites,
The Minor Fall the
Major Lift, mentioning you as an under-appreciated writer.
Which is why I asked you about the crapshoot nature of publishing.
PE: I just want to make my art. So far I have been able to
do that and live comfortably enough. I don't care about being
rich, and I really don't care about the adulation. I just
want to be able to buy hay for my horses (chuckles) and now,
gasoline. (both laugh)
RB: Have you always been teaching along with writing?
PE: Most of my career I have been teaching and it is necessary
now to live the way I have grown accustomed to living. I like
teaching. I get paid fairly well to hang out with smart young
people. That's hard to complain about.
RB: Not that I am trying to convince you otherwise but I
can easily see someone pissing and moaning about the half-empty
glass part of your life. Don't you think?
PE: It's just books (both laugh). Who would I rather be?
Would I rather be Wittgenstein
or …
RB: No, no…would anybody rather be him?
PE: I think the people who like my work like my work for
all the reasons that I would want them to like it. And the
people who don't like it, dislike it for all the reasons I
would want them to dislike it.
RB: What's to dislike? There are people like that?
 PE:
I'm sure there are. I don't know if they dislike the way I
write or the way I make my art as much as they dislike my
political stance.
RB: Of course they would have to read you carefully, wouldn't
they?
PE: I can pretty much relax that the people who disagree
with me are not reading books.
RB: What do you make of a vein of resentment in the culture—who
is to say how large it is—towards someone like Toni
Morrison? I have read commentary suggesting that publishers
promulgating her books privately don't like them…
PE: I don't get it either. Very odd. I'm sure that she could
write anything down and get it published because she is going
to make somebody some money. It's also obvious that she doesn't
do that. There is a lot of room in the world for all sorts
of books. I don't know why anybody gets really worked up.
RB: And then there are the attacks on writers like Morrison
and Salman Rushdie and DeLillo and now young guys like Franzen
and Foer and it strikes me that they are being attacked by
people who haven't read them…
PE: It's always easier to condemn something when you haven't
read it.
RB: But why get so worked up? On the other hand, maybe it's
a good thing that people are passionate about these things.
PE: If that's really what they are passionate about? If somebody
is really offended by the artistic sensibility of some writer
that would be a great discussion. But if they are simply jealous
of that person's success or something personal, I don't get
it.
RB: What's your life like? You teach a couple classes a semester?
PE: Yeah.
RB: You write everyday?
PE: I don't write everyday. I have what I call work amnesia.
I don't know when I am really writing. I trust myself to be
doing it.
RB: You mean that at the end of some period of time you have
a book written?
PE: Yeah that's basically how it happens.
RB: So if I asked what you are working on now you would say?
PE: I'm working on something. (both laugh) At some point
it makes itself clear what it is, and then I will be really
sad for a long time while I finish it.
RB: Why the sadness?
PE: Because that means I have to finish it.
RB: You could write really, really long books and then never
get published.
PE: Yeah and that might even be more fun. If my wife says
she wants to go out and play and have fun, I'll just leave
work immediately.
RB: Chessie?
PE: Yeah, Francesca.
RB: You dedicate all your books to her?
PE: Damn near.
RB: I guess it keeps the peace.
PE: No, she's always surprised that I am doing it. It's because
I have been so productive since I have been with her that
it really is a sincere thank you.
RB: Very sweet. I noticed a couple of writers dedicate their
books to their wives, Richard
Ford and Julian
Barnes.
PE: They're the ones who have to put up with us.
RB: Are you a different person when you are in the middle
of writing something?
I like my
life, and I think I like it because I don't like so
much about the world... And writing is my way of dealing
with the stuff that gets me so…there is no profit
in being mad anymore. I used to be angry all the time. |
PE: I don't think so, but I am the wrong
person to ask (both laugh). I try to talk to myself as little
as possible. I have periods—I don't get cranky but I
suppose I become a little withdrawn or a little distracted.
RB: Is writing hard for you?
PE: I say to Chessie frequently, "Okay this is the last
one. I don't want to write anything for a while." And
because she knows me, obviously a lot better than I know myself,
she can turn to me at any point while we are driving in the
car and say, "You're working on something aren't you?"
And I won't even know it and when she says it, I will realize
it is true.
RB: That's a rare thing isn't it. To have a relationship
where you accept that someone knows you better than yourself.
We aren't exactly trained for that…
PE: Well, I wasn't trained for it. When someone says enough
true things to you, you start to listen.
RB: Maybe.
PE: Yeah, it's always maybe. Other than that—the way
I live, I'm spoiled in a way. I teach, but I teach two days
a week and the rest of the time I am at home with my wife.
She teaches too. We are always home. And we work at the same
desk. It’s a big desk, we're there at the same time.
RB: One of those partner's desks, that were used at old law
firms.
PE: I'd like to find one but we made a semicircle glass table
that sits in front of a window and we sit at either end, angling
toward the same spot in the window.
RB: And you have a place in Mississippi?
PE: No, in California.
RB: Why did I think it was in Mississippi?
PE: I was just at a book conference there. Though Morgan
Freeman seems to be comfortable in his farm in Mississippi,
I don't think that I would be.
RB: It hasn't changed that much…
PE: I guess it has. I don't know if it's a function of his
being a millionaire that makes him happy there. I really enjoyed
the visit I just paid to Oxford at Square Books. It's a terrific
town full of people who love books.
RB: It's also highly gentrified at this point. It's another
piece of information that filters into the book press, when
book or publishing magazines attend to real estate in Oxford,
Mississippi. Apparently people who were raised there can't
afford to live there anymore. It's gotten quite expensive.
But that bookstore is one of the legendary independents especially
now that those kinds of stores assume the mantle of a crusade.
PE: I wish them luck. I have trouble with
the chains. I don't mind the business people like Square books
or Lemuria and Powell's books where I know that the people
who own the bookstores are trying to make money came to it
because they loved books, not like the Wal-Mart model of the
bookstore.
RB: So you are not under any contractual obligation to write
a book, an idea comes to you, you write the book, teach, you
have a ranch.
PE: I work a lot—I must because I —I'm always
a little ahead of myself. I have a novel that's done and waiting
to come out and a book of stories. They are both coming out
in 2004. So I don't really feel pressure and neither do my
publishers, to want me to write something else.
RB: Having written fifteen books you apparently have the
confidence and the work ethic.
PE: However misguided that thinking is…
RB: Who is publishing the novel and the stories?
PE: The novel is being published by Hyperion.
RB: The Disney people.
PE: Yeah, I am trying to come to terms with that…and
the stories again from Graywolf. Fiona McCrae, the director
of the press, is my editor there and she is the person I think
of as my editor. I hope I can always keep a book with them.
RB: Is that the longest-standing editorial relationship you've
had?
 PE:
Yeah, we’ve done six books. And we talk about literature
and books. That's real different in this industry. (both laugh)
RB: They published a wonderful anthology of essays this Spring
called The Next American Essay by John D Agata. I
was talking about Graywolf Press with Fred Busch and he was
telling me that they are financially strapped…
PE: It's funny how non-profits are under this pressure to
break even whereas regular presses finish in the red all the
time. (chuckles)
RB: Accounting sorcery. Can you talk about the yet-to-be-published
novel?
PE: I have never been terribly good at talking about books.
RB: Okay.
PE: It is a novel and it is kind of, maybe it is unnecessary
for me to say it but for me it is kind of strange. (both laugh)
RB: When you begin a new work how much of
your past books do you carry with you? I was struck by your
mention of 'work amnesia'. Do remember or think about your
previous writing?
PE: No I don't think about it too much. I recognize it when
I see it and to some extent I'll read at readings from things
I've written. I have— I don't know if it's a reading
disorder— but I can't read line by line. I see the whole
page, which is why I read rather rapidly. When I am giving
readings I am pretty much reciting what I have just memorized
while I have looked at the page. But I don't know it when
I am away from the book. My wife seems to remember every word
I have ever written because she tells me what I have changed
at my readings because I am constantly editing myself. What
I actually read is not always on the page. Given any particular
day, I like the sound of some words better than others. And,
of course, I am a different writer now than when I had written
the thing.
RB: One can say that and seems that it should be true but
why do you say that?
PE: Hopefully I am smarter. Hopefully I have gotten better.
And in between the time I am seeing it and the time I have
written it I have probably read about two or three hundred
books that make me feel differently about language. Who knows?
RB: Do you read fiction or non fiction?
PE: I just finished judging an award, the Pen /Hemingway,
so I just read a couple hundred books.
RB: Did you read all of them? I'm thinking back on the National
Book Award brouhaha…
PE: You will have to read my treatment of that in my novel
Erasure, I have a little fun. I judged that award
a few years ago. It was a good experience, but I do make some
fun of it.
RB: Sorry, I sidetracked you.
PE: Yeah, I read not so much—I like reading essays
but I have to admit I have never warmed up to—what is
called creative non fiction, things that people write a lot.
I'm sure it's fine but I can' t…I can't read science
fiction and I am sure a lot of it is well written and wonderful.
It just doesn't turn me on. But I read a lot of science and
philosophy and history, still.
RB: Did you read Wittgenstein's Poker?
PE: No I don't know that one.
RB: It's a book about a legendary confrontation
at Cambridge University between Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl
Popper. I have this sense of your life as idyllic. What is
it that, excuse this word, that informs what you write about?
Movies, do you fish …whittle on your front porch?
PE: I do fish. I have horses so I don't have time to whittle.
I like my life and I think I like it because I don't like
so much about the world. And I can't divorce myself from it.
And writing is my way of dealing with the stuff that gets
me so…there is no profit in being mad anymore. I used
to be angry all the time.
RB: So that's how we get smarter.
PE: And now I am kind of sad, it's all predictable and maybe
I sound cynical saying this, but the outrage gives way to
a sort of amused concern. And it’s shocking and I am
curious and interested in the fact that it's not shocking—what's
shocking is that is not shocking. And what does it mean about
people that they have always behaved in a way that doesn't
let their behavior surprise us.
RB: When the hostilities began in Iraq many friends and acquaintances,
my mother, they were upset—I thought most of my life
the world has been in a state of more or less armed conflict.
I can't remember a time of peace. I asked, "Why this
and not that?" I kept telling people to stop watching
television.
PE: Yeah, there's that and there is also
this question when I see the Saud family having given $500
million to Al-Qaeda in the past ten years. I don't know how
we choose allies and enemies. I don't know how we stood by
and watched and said that apartheid in South Africa will change
naturally as a matter of course and so there should be no
violence there and now we are liberating people who never
asked for it.
RB: The stench of untruth is oppressive here. I guess that's
why you have a ranch and why I have withdrawn from my formerly
urban lifestyle….terrible. This is a lot of weight to
carry, such anger. What do you see in your students?
And it’s
shocking and I am curious and interested in the fact
that it's not shocking—what's shocking is that
is not shocking. |
PE: I've been impressed with my students
at USC. They run counter to every stereotype that's been created
for the private university and especially the USC student.
At least mine have been engaged with the world and interested
and to a one, they participate in some kind program in the
community in LA.
RB: Why do you think that is? What's the stereotype —that
they are disengaged and only care about careers?
PE: The stereotype for USC at one point might have been deserved—a
very expensive private university…
RB: A football school…
PE: I guess it was at one point. And fortunately the football
team became really bad and that always helps a university.
Then the university, a number of years before I arrived made
a concerted effort to change its student body. To find better
students and what I can see is they have succeeded. I never
thought I would like an institution where I taught but…the
university embraces that it is set in downtown LA, surrounded
by what is considered a bad neighborhood. It doesn't run from
that. In fact it had a chance to move a number of years ago
to some beautiful suburban setting and it didn't. It's a Los
Angeles university. We have this program for kids in the neighborhood,
they are spotted in middle school and if they stay with this
program and are admitted to USC, they go for free. We just
graduated our first student in English, three years ago. It's
fantastic— a $30,000 a year education that these kids
get.
RB: Times four.
PE: I'm proud of the institution.
RB: Where is your ranch in California?
PE: We are about 60 miles east of Los Angeles in between
Palm Springs and LA. But we live part of the time on Vancouver
Island. Though we have this little farm, we still have neighbors.
I like people just fine, but in Canada we are stuck in the
woods and it's nice. Do you fly fish?
RB: No.
PE: We have a mile of the Salmon River on our property. So
if you want to fly fish you are welcome to join us.
RB: Thanks, my dog has made me more of a
nature person. Anyway, how do you plug into the informational
shit stream? TV?
PE: No, but I read the papers. I never thought I would say
that Internet is good but because of the Internet—I
used to go to the library every week and read all the papers
and now I read all the papers on line.
PE: Where did the resistance to the Internet come from?
PE: Out of habit. And also it’s really bad for my students.
There is so much bad information and unless you come to it—this
might sound elitist—with an education you don't know
enough to edit and judge what you are getting. At least even
though there are a lot of bad publications what you are getting
has been vetted by someone.
RB: Maybe.
PE: That's true. It's been the case that you can find anything
to support what you believe in the worlds. You have to read
between the lines with everything and that's what a college
education is for.
RB: I thought a college education was supposed to get you
a job?
PE: Luckily, I don't think that's why my students are there.
I never went to college for that reason.
RB: This is a vital issue for me because my young son will
be of college age in 2016 and I have my doubts about what
the real value of a college education will be. As opposed
to some training in how to view the world intelligently and
critically and, dare I say, skeptically.
PE: I think it still will be the case that real advances
in our culture will come from people with education. A lot
of people will make a lot of money finding out a way to sell
us a different kind of deodorant and that's always been the
case. But how our art changes and how medicine changes will
still be by people who have some investment in the world beyond
themselves.
RB: Maybe I am double-talking here because I don't want to
denigrate the idea of the university.
PE: I understood what you were saying.
RB: I'm wrestling with the notion that a degree conveys and
the process is anything other than some rote automatic thing.
 PE:
That's the bad part. The equating of the degree with the meal
ticket that universities have to resist. The universities
are feeling a pressure to sell themselves as places that will
get their students the best jobs.
RB: What are you teaching?
PE: I teach some lit courses and mostly fiction writing.
And I teach theory for writers.
RB: And why are people taking writing courses.
PE: That's a good question. I am always baffled by that.
I don't know why people want to be writers. For a lot of people
it's because they love books—for some people. For quite
a few it's because they have this romantic notion of —and
I have no idea where it comes from—
RB: If I walked into a class and you were my teacher, I'd
say, "Great." I'd like to have your sense of ease
and your accomplishments. You are a wonderful paradigm for
being a writer.
PE: Well, because of that I have been contemplating becoming
an alcoholic (both laugh) so I can do my students a favor
and steer them away.
RB: Do your students want to change the world?
PE: I wish they did. But honestly can't say to them that
I want to change the world anymore. When I started writing
I did it because I wanted to make art and now I understand
that art and politics are inextricably bound and that you
can affect the world in really small ways and hope that something
good happens. But I never have a message and I try to teach
them to not have a message but it's hard to do that while
at the same time trying to teach them that part of the reason
they are writing is to participate in the world.
RB: That would be a subtle thing. Preachy books don't deliver.
PE: Yeah, and they can't.
RB: I had asked before about the body of your work and somewhere
here in our talk I got a sense of the mystery of your creative
process.
PE: To some extent. I like the magic of it. I don't know
where the stories come from. People will say, "Why did
that occur to you?" And I have no good answer. For them
or myself. And in that way it is mysterious. That's why I
really love it. There is a magic associated with it. And by
now—my students ask, "Can you teach me to write
a novel?" I say "No, because I don't know how to
write a novel." And I don't. I know that I have written
them. And from all appearances, I will do it again. But I
have no idea.
RB: Do you outline?
PE: Every thing comes differently. Every book has its own
life. That's what I mean when I say I have no idea when I
start. Interestingly the first thing that occurs though I
can't explain it all. I see the shape of the book.
RB: As a geometric form or as a shadow?
PE: In a way, that's really easy— it’s going
to be rectangular (laughs) but I see what the words will look
like on the page and kind of the negative space they will
be in. That sort of thing.
RB: How do you know when you are done?
PE: You can work it forever. I think it’s done when
the changes you are making don't make it ostensibly better.
When you can step back and say I've changed that but nothing
really has changed.
RB: How many drafts.
I learn a
lot writing. And with every book I learn more about
how little I know. So by now at the end of fifteen books
I know a lot less than almost anybody. |
PE: Typically a lot of drafts. But most
of the work is the research and my thinking. For God's
Country I must have watched and read 150 Westerns so
I could soak up the genre. It was not something I was into.
RB: Most Westerns were pretty hokey.
PE: I taught a film course in the Western not too long ago.
A movie like The Searchers with John Wayne—
growing up I hated John Wayne. John Wayne is great and The
Searchers is an incredibly sick movie. From the opening
scene in Monument Valley and the beautiful part is what's
being sold. Anyone who knows that region knows you can't live
there (both laugh). And there's this house…
RB: Jonathan Raban wrote a whole book [Badlands]
about the people who were euchred by the railroads to come
out to the Upper Plains. I don't know many times you used
this joke but it cracked me up every time people would commiserate
about Curt Marder's [God's Country] dead dog.
PE: Part of that is about how much I love dogs but the other
part is you can kill the entire Confederate army in a movie
and nobody blinks but Old Yella, everybody cries.
RB: You don't tour much do you?
PE: For a long time I was a problem for publishers because
I just wouldn't do stuff. I wouldn't go places and do stuff.
And then with Erasure, I needed a new roof on my
house in Canada (both laugh) so I thought I am going to try.
RB: The practical side.
PE: Erasure has done fairly well, I got the roof,
and there was nothing left after that but it’s better
to be dry and poor then rich and wet.
RB: Do you take a longer view of your life?
PE: I have a few ideas. I paint as well. I'd really rather
be painting.
RB: Were you born in this century. Oil paints, fly-fishing—do
you write with a computer.
PE: I write long hand actually. I used a typewriter for my
first five books—a manual typewriter.
RB: Do you still have it?
PE: I gave it to a student. It was collecting dust in my
studio and there was this student who I liked very much, he
was admiring it. So I said, "Would you like that?"
And he got all excited and so I gave it to him.
RB: I love typewriters and I think they are beautiful.
PE: And they have that—computers have too, on the hard
drive— but I always loved the idea that all my words
were on the ribbon.
RB: Let's see, you'd rather paint but you are going to continue
to write because when it comes down to it, it's in your blood?
PE: I guess. I always avoided that kind of talk. But unfortunately
it's probably true.
RB: If you had only written three of four books I wouldn't
have said that.
PE: I'm going to do it until I get it right, basically (laughs).
I learn a lot writing. And with every book I learn more about
how little I know. So by now at the end of fifteen books I
know a lot less than almost anybody (laughs).
RB: Think about what you won't know when you have written
thirty.
PE: My goal is to know nothing.
RB: A Zen approach to fiction. Do you associate with writers?
PE: I think it's always healthy to avoid a room full of writers.
A lot of my friends are writers and we don't talk about writing.
I like the way writers see the world. That doesn't mean I
always agree.
RB: I agree with you. That's why I like to talk to writers.
Mostly because there is an effort to individuate, to think
originally. It's not like trying to say what everyone else
is saying.
PE: That's right. Writers like disagreeing with each other.
RB: Unless you are in a religious cult or a right-wing namecaller,
why surround yourself with people who think the same way?
PE: Unfortunately people who might be considered progressive
and lefty usually have a somewhat artistic sensibility and
don't like to repeat themselves.
RB: Yeah, so they are not able to become practitioners of
the Big Lie technique. That's pretty savvy. In order to brainwash
people you have to keep repeating the same message over and
over. I'd like to think that progressives also have more respect
for other humans. Getting back to this idea of how to mitigate
the anger we feel, we have to find something that…
PE: It's like what you said earlier, there were no good old
days.
Robert Birnbaum was double promoted
in the 4th grade, was on the swim team in high school and
was a philosophy major at university. He has been a night
club manager, a short order cook, an Earth Shoe salesman,
a secretary in a neurosurgical ward, a public school teacher,
an advertising salesman and, of course, a taxi driver. He
has been an adherent of a certain kind of antediluvian journalism
that eschews publicist's lunches, industrial cocktail parties
or shop openings as either the text or the source of stories.
Most of the time. For the better part of two decades Birnbaum
was the publisher of a now-defunct hip and smart downtown
magazine in Boston. Since the early '90s he has interviewed
over 500 hundred writers — from Martin Amis and Isabel
Allende to Marianne Wiggins and Howard Zinn — and read
over 1000 books. He continues to tilt at windmills while he
tries to be a good father to his son, Cuba Maxwell, and a
congenial companion to his blonde Labrador, Rosie.
Note:
Featured author in November 2000
E-mail: reddiaz@aol.com
Writing interests: Interviews, Photography
Author interviews: Dorothy
Allison, Steve
Almond, Nicholson
Baker, Julian
Barnes, Andrea
Barrett, Alex
Beam, Jill
Bialosky, Sven
Birkerts, Amy
Bloom, Amy
Bloom 2002, Alain
de Botton, TC
Boyle, Arthur Bradford,
Frederick
Busch, Ethan Canin,
Stephen
Carter, Alston
Chase, Sandra
Cisneros, Michael
Connelly, Richard
Conniff, Frank
Conroy, Mark
Costello, Elizabeth
Cox, Jim Crace,
Nicholas
Dawidoff, Andre
Dubus III, John
Dufresne, Geoff
Dyer, Tony Earley,
Barbara Ehrenreich,
Gretel Ehrlich, James
Ellroy, Percival
Everett, Richard
Ford, Nick
Fowler, Alan
Furst, Alan
Furst 2002, Anthony
Giardina, James
Gleick, Adam
Gopnik, Allan Gurganus,
Barbara
Haber, David
Hadju, Brian
Hall, Ethan
Hawke, Patricia
Henley, Christopher
Hitchens #1, Christopher
Hitchens #2, Gabe
Hudson, Siri
Hustvedt, Elizabeth
Inness-Brown, Ben Katchor,
Nora
Okja Keller, Chip
Kidd, Anthony
Lane, Erik
Larson, Don
Lee, Annette
Lemieux, Alan
Lightman, David
Liss, Paul Lussier,
Ruben Martinez, Daniel
Mason, Colum
McCann, Thomas
McGuane, Jenny
& Martha McPhee, Abelardo
Morell, Thisbe Nissen,
Sherwin
Nuland, Tim
O'Brien, Susan
Orlean, Ann
Packer, ZZ
Packer, Tom
Paine, George
Pelecanos, Thomas
Perry, Arthur
Phillips, Samantha
Power, Richard
Price, Christopher
Rice, David
Rieff, Hazel
Rowley, Richard Russo
#1, Richard
Russo #2, John
Sedgwick, Will
Self, David
Shields, Peter
Singer, Ilan
Stavans, Darin
Strauss, Manil
Suri, Donna
Tartt, David
Thomson, Nick
Tosches, Brady
Udall, Sarah
Vowell, Kristin
Waterfield Duisberg, Brad
Watson, W.D. Wetherell,
Mark
Winegardner, Howard
Zinn (2001),
Howard
Zinn (2003)
Author portraits: John
Sayles, Howard
Zinn, Robert
Stone, Ana
Castillo, John
Waters, Allen
Ginsberg, Carl
Hiaasen, Carlos
Fuentes, Barbara
Ehrenreich, Eduardo
Galeano, Isabel
Allende, Junot
Diaz, Joan
Didion, James
Ellroy, John
Edgar Wideman, Martin
Amis, Michael
Ondaatje, Richard
Price, Rigoberta
Menchu, Louis
de Bernieres, Studs
Terkel
Photography: "I
am the Son of my Son"
Journal: "A
Reader's Progress"
Links: Review
of Cuba: A Traveler's Literary Companion at Hyde Park
Review of Books | The
Morning News - Robert Birnbaum
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