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.
* * *
What book do you wish you’d written?
The Rings of Saturn by W.G. Sebald. It’s in its own little universe.
* * *
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
