Donald Ray Pollock

Donald Ray Pollock's writing has appeared in, or is forthcoming in, the New York Times, Third Coast, The Journal, Sou’wester, Chiron Review, River Styx, Boulevard, Folio, and The Berkeley Fiction Review. His 2008 book is Knockemstiff.

From his Q & A with Powells.com:

Have you ever made a literary pilgrimage?

I've made several, but the one I remember best is when I drove to Milton, West Virginia, to visit Breece D'J Pancake's grave. Of course, as many readers know, he committed suicide at an early age, a couple of years before his first and only book came out. I stopped at the library in Milton (a pretty small town) to ask a couple of questions about him, but the lady at the desk didn't even know whom I was talking about. Now, I'm sure there are people in Milton who remember him, but that was a little sad, to say the least.

What is your idea of absolute happiness?

I'm not sure about "absolute" happiness, but I am happiest when I go to bed at night knowing that I tried to do my best that day. Usually, that will mean writing at least five hours, getting some exercise, reading a good book, talking with a friend, being nice to my wife. You have to understand that I'm in my 50s now and it doesn't take nearly as much to satisfy me as it did in the old days.

Read the complete Q & A.

The Page 69 Test: Knockemstiff.

--Marshal Zeringue

R.J. Ellory

From Ali Karim's interview with British novelist Roger Jon “R.J.” Ellory at The Rap Sheet:

AK: Many of your novels feature psychopaths and the occasional serial killer. Where does this interest of yours come from?

RJE: I think it comes from a really deep desire to understand the human psyche. I think all of us are intrigued by what it is that prompts an individual to do terrible things--from Hitler and Idi Amin to Ted Bundy. Why do people do these things? Why are they different? I think writing about it goes some way towards appreciating a viewpoint, trying to make sense of it, trying to shed some light on this terrible darkness.

AK: And that’s the reason why serial killers appeal to so many other readers these days?

RJE: I think it comes back to the emotional impact. People like to be thrilled, excited, horrified, intrigued, mystified. I think that serial killing is perhaps the most not-understood of all criminal actions. It isn’t like theft. You can see why someone would steal: they want something they haven’t got. It isn’t like killing someone out of rage, jealousy, passion, hatred, revenge, or anything else. Serial killers kill people because ... well, why do they kill people? Not just one or two, but three or 12 or 50. What is it that motivates that level of destructive need? It is said that you can never rationalize irrationality, but everyone considers themselves rational. What is that rationale for John Wayne Gacy or the Zodiac? What problem are they solving? What reality do they exist in that makes this kind of behavior necessary? That’s what fascinates me, and I think that’s what fascinates a lot of other people who read crime fiction.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

James Lasdun

James Lasdun writes poetry, screenplays, short stories and novels, including Seven Lies, which made the Man Booker Prize longlist in 2005.

From his Q & A with Anna Metcalfe for the Financial Times:

What book changed your life?

My parents gave me a copy of Thom Gunn’s The Sense of Movement. I’d had vague ideas about being a writer but I didn’t know what I wanted to write until I opened that book and read “On the Move”. It’s still a poem I’d give anything to have written.

Are there any books you wish you’d written?

St Mawr (Lawrence), Seize the Day (Bellow), Naked Lunch (William Burroughs), After Leaving Mr MacKenzie (Jean Rhys), The Crying of Lot 49 (Pynchon), Benito Cereno (Melville).

Which literary character resembles you?

I always feel very much among my kind when...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Kirsten Menger-Anderson

From Kirsten Menger-Anderson's with Donna George Storey at Sex, Food, and Writing, about Menger-Anderson's Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain:

DGS: How did you come to write a novel-in-stories about the history of medicine in America?

KMA: First off, thanks for inviting me to your blog! It's a pleasure to be here.

The history of medicine has intrigued me ever since I looked up "phrenology" in the dictionary and marveled that reading human characteristics in the contours of the skull was once common belief. What other (now discredited) medical ideas have we held, I began to wonder. I discovered the works of Jan Bondeson, Carl Zimmer, and several other medical historians and science writers who tell captivating tales of practices that read like fiction: curative radium, lobotomy, therapies requiring ground millipede and mercury. These techniques and the contemporaneous debates about life, death, and the soul took hold of my imagination. Who were the people who believed humans could birth rabbits? Or that routine bleeding could cure the common cold? I began to look at how doctors and the medical philosophies of previous generations impacted daily life, and I ended up with a book that covers 350 years of medical history.

One of the many pleasures of reading Dr. Olaf van Schuler’s Brain is the wealth of historical detail about New York City over the centuries, which clearly represents a lot of background research. Can you tell us about your process? Do you have any tips for historical research for fiction writers?

Much of my research about New York began with...[read on]

The Page 69 Test: Doctor Olaf van Schuler's Brain.

--Marshal Zeringue

Peter Leeson

From a Q & A at the New York Times/Freakonomics blog with Peter Leeson, author of The Invisible Hook: The Hidden Economics of Pirates:

Question: The Invisible Hook is more than just a clever title. How is it different from Adam Smith’s invisible hand?

Answer: In Adam Smith, the idea is that each individual pursuing his own self-interest is led, as if by an invisible hand, to promote the interest of society. The idea of the invisible hook is that pirates, though they’re criminals, are still driven by their self-interest. So they were driven to build systems of government and social structures that allowed them to better pursue their criminal ends. They’re connected, but the big difference is that, for Adam Smith, self-interest results in cooperation that generates wealth and makes other people better off. For pirates, self-interest results in cooperation that destroys wealth by allowing pirates to plunder more effectively.

Question: In the book, you write that pirates had set up their own early versions of constitutional democracy, complete with separation of powers, decades before the American Revolution. Was that only possible because they were outlaws, operating entirely outside the control of any government?

Answer: That’s right. The pirates of the 18th century set up quite a thoroughgoing system of democracy. The reason that the criminality is driving these structures is because they can’t rely on the state to provide those structures for them. So pirates, more than anyone else, needed to figure out some system of law and order to make it possible for them to remain together long enough to be successful at stealing.

Read the complete Q & A.

Peter Leeson is the BB&T Professor for the Study of Capitalism in the Department of Economics at George Mason University.

The Page 99 Test: The Invisible Hook.

--Marshal Zeringue

Robert J. Sawyer

From Ann Wilkes' interview with Robert J. Sawyer at Science Fiction and Other Oddysseys:

AW: In WWW:Wake, how did you get the teenage girl so authentic? Did you have help with that or a ready model?

RJS: I spent a lot of time reading blog postings and Facebook postings by teenagers, and talking to teenage girls—including my own wonderful nieces and the daughters of friends. I really worked hard to make the voice authentic, and I had a number of teenagers read the novel in manuscript to check to be sure that I got it right.

AW: In WWW:Wake, you tease the reader with snippets from an awakening, an entity discovering consciousness. Did you do any research on human awareness for this?

RJS: I did years of research on that topic. I’ve been researching human consciousness and perception for over a decade now—and using that material in novels such as Factoring Humanity and Mindscan. To me, the single most interesting area of science right now is consciousness studies, and I love the way it combines computer science, neurobiology, quantum physics, and so many other disciplines.

AW: Your characters are so believable and have such depth. Do you model them after real people?...[read on]

Read the opening chapters of WWW: Wake, and learn more about the book and author at Robert J. Sawyer's website and blog.

The Page 69 Test: WWW: Wake.

--Marshal Zeringue

Richard W. Bulliet

Richard W. Bulliet is the author of Hunters, Herders, and Hamburgers: The Past and Future of Human-Animal Relationships.

From a Q & A at the publisher's website:

Question: What is "postdomesticity"?

Richard Bulliet: Postdomesticity refers to a group of attitudes and practices that arise in societies that rely heavily on animal products—meat, milk products, leather, etc.—while most people living in the society have no contact at all with the producing animals. Feelings of guilt and shame about animal slaughter in all its forms (hunting, meat-packing, fur harvesting, etc.) are central characteristics of postdomesticity. These feelings underlie an increasing sensitivity to animal rights and opposition to hunting, trapping, fur farming, and use of animals as experimental subjects. They also motivate people who have no relevant religious or cultural background as vegetarians to choose a vegetarian life-style. I call this "elective vegetarianism."

* * * *
Q: How do pornographies of blood and sex relate to postdomesticity?
RB: The explosion in popular consumption of pornographies of sex and blood that began in the 1960s doubtless has multiple causes. An important aspect, however, was the almost total elimination of experience with animal reproduction and slaughter from the lives of most young Americans after World War II. Earlier generations living in domestic times had become accustomed from childhood to animals being brutalized and killed, and to animal reproduction. Though it was seldom acknowledged, these experiences accustomed young people to such scenes and ensured that throughout their lives they would regard bloodshed and sexual activity as part of the real carnal world. In postdomestic situations, children are protected from witnessing animal killing and sexual relations. Parents, perhaps rightly, consider such sights coarsening and inappropriate for children. The consequence, however, is a child's first exposure to bloodshed and sexual activity coming increasingly from magazines, videotapes, wildlife documentaries, and erotic Web sites. This type of exposure locates sex and blood in the realm of the imagination, and this opens the door to further imaginative stimulation via pornographic images and slice-and-dice horror movies.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Joyce Carol Oates

From Joyce Carol Oates' Q & A with Deborah Solomon in the New York Times Magazine:

One of the most chilling stories in your new collection, “Special,” appears to draw on your own experiences as the older sister of a severely autistic woman.

When I look at photographs of Lynne, she looks a bit like me. It’s really ironic that I have a sister who’s never uttered one word and of course can’t read, and I’ve written all these books.

Perhaps you had a phobic reaction to her and felt you had to go to the other exaggeratedly productive extreme.

I think it’s actually completely unrelated. I was writing novels in high school and apprenticed myself in a way both to Faulkner and to Hemingway. I was a dedicated writer before she was born.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue

Andrew J. Cherlin

From a Q & A with Andrew J. Cherlin, author of The Marriage-Go-Round: The State of Marriage and the Family in America Today:

Q: What led you to write THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND?

A: I had the sense that American marriage and family life differed fundamentally from the other Western countries—Western Europe, Canada, Australia, New Zealand—in a way no one was writing about. Some observers have focused on changes in marriage, others on divorce, and others on non-marital births. But I realized that you have to look at the whole picture—all of these aspects together—to appreciate what was happening. We have more marriages and remarriages, more divorces, and more short-term cohabiting (living together) relationships than the other countries. Put them together and you have more turnover, more movement in and out of relationships than anywhere else. As a result, Americans have more spouses and live-in partners over the course of their lives than do people in any other Western country. We step on and off the carousel of marriages and partnerships faster than anywhere else.

Q: You were already well versed in the subject of marriage in America, as you have been studying families and public policy for much of your career. Did any of your discoveries surprise you as you wrote THE MARRIAGE-GO-ROUND?

A: I knew that our divorce rate was higher than in other countries, but I didn’t realize how much higher than even in supposedly vanguard countries such as Sweden. One statistic that stunned me:...[read on]

--Marshal Zeringue

Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson

From Katharine Mieszkowski's Salon.com interview with Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson, author of The Face on Your Plate:

Right now there is a lot of attention to the question of where our food comes from. But there have been exposés about slaughterhouses going back to Upton Sinclair's novel "The Jungle," published in 1906. Why isn't there more change?

But there is.

I just heard a fantastic statistic that at Stanford University, a quarter of the undergraduate student body is vegetarian. That is amazing to me. It means young people are thinking about this.

People are more aware than ever before of these questions, not in the vast numbers that we may hope for, but I would say that more today than at any other point in our history.

But there's a huge gulf between the cultural conversation about food that's going on right now and the actual, average American diet. How do you see bridging that divide?

I've never seen so much attention paid to a single garden in my life as the Obama's vegetable garden. What a wonderful thing! Here you have, for $200, you plant 55 different vegetables on 1,000 square feet instead of a dead-end land. I think Alice Waters was responsible for that. She wants to see kids getting really wonderful, fresh vegetables from their own school gardens, and I think that over the next 10 or 15 years that will happen.

Awareness is changing. I've very optimistic. Now, is Obama going to read "The Face on Your Plate" and say, well, that did it, I'm becoming a vegan tomorrow? No, that's not going to happen.

Read the complete Q & A.

--Marshal Zeringue