Rick Moody

Anna Metcalfe interviewed Rick Moody for the Financial Times. Moody has published four novels, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. His novel The Ice Storm (1994) was adapted into a feature film. Moody's Right Livelihoods (three novellas) was published in 2007.

A few exchanges from the interview:

What book changed your life?

Moby-Dick. I read it when I was 15 and until then I thought American literature was drudgery – you had to read it to improve yourself, like doing sit-ups.

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What book do you wish you’d written?

The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. It’s in its own little universe.

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Which literary character most resembles you?

John Shade in Nabokov’s Pale Fire. He is a failed poet: complicated, melancholy, but a sublime human being.

Read the entire interview.

--Marshal Zeringue