Jaimy Gordon

Jaimy Gordon's sixth novel, Lord of Misrule, is a Finalist for the National Book Award in fiction.

From her Q & A about the book with Bret Anthony Johnston:

BAJ: Horseracing itself is arguably one of the most complex characters in Lord of Misrule. What was it about the enterprise that captivated and inspired you?

JG: I’ll give you the short answer to this, since Lord of Misrule, and the way all its main characters ruminate on luck, is the long answer. When I hear the first few bars of Handel’s Israel in Egypt or Shishkov’s tale in Janácek’s opera From the House of the Dead (just to seize the first two instances that come to mind) I’ll weep a little, without any sadness. The same thing happens when I’m standing at the rail of a horse race and the horses go by, especially if I’m watching some late closer make his move from many lengths back, or if a stalker slips into the lead in the stretch. It’s just visceral. I come from a family of horseplayers on my mother’s side, and both of my sisters have my weakness. One of them actually breeds racehorses—harness horses—and is very good at what she does. I know all that’s wrong with horseracing and I still have this weakness, even for a cheap claiming race if some old miler is running his race.

BAJ: Do you remember your original idea for Lord of Misrule? How closely does the finished book correspond to what you first had in mind?

JG: As I was suggesting earlier, I didn’t want Lord of Misrule to be another female picaresque from a single point of view but rather a social novel about a group of equally dominant characters inside a community (however disreputable) that is a world unto itself.

I was a friend of the late Malcolm Braly—can you say “the late” of someone who died in a car wreck in 1980, at the age of 54?—who wrote...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue