Alyson Rudd recently interviewed Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of The Dead, for the Times (London).The opening exchanges:
RUDD: You were brave to bind the plot of The Brief History of the Dead so closely around Coca-Cola’s marketing ambitions. Why did you opt for a real company?Read the entire interview.
BROCKMEIER: I considered inventing a company, but nothing sounded anything other than needlessly artificial and, frankly, silly. I needed a device such as Coca-Cola to set the plot in motion, but my worry was aesthetic: I had to find a product name that wouldn’t ruin the atmosphere of the prose. Coke is so widely known that the word almost reads as a generic noun. Simply enough, it seemed to cause fewer aesthetic problems than anything else.
Has there been feedback from Coca-Cola?
As far as I know, there has been none at all from Coca-Cola. The feedback from readers, has been pretty consistent. Everywhere I go, people ask me this, and I tell them that there have been some pretty elaborate disclaimers on the copyright page, and I can only presume that my publishers know what they are doing.
--Marshal Zeringue