Calling Dr. Laura, debut graphic memoir by Nicole J. Georges, bounces back and forth between the female narrator’s own misadventures in love, and those of her mother’s years before, seen from the eyes of the narrator in her childhood. As she finds herself more and more adrift in her life, she revisits her episodes of dysfunction in hopes of finding some kind of root cause. As the two women slowly unveil their secrets to each other, a devastating conclusion begins to loom, the biggest secret of all. Click "read more" for my interview with Nicole.

1) What draws you to the graphic novel form? What do you think are its main advantages over straight prose?


I like words, but I can express a situation more efficiently & completely through a combination of art and writing.

It is more natural for me to draw a scene with four different people having facial reactions to something than it would be for me to try and find a clever way to describe each face, character and reaction using prose. 

The hitch in my personal logic around the efficiency of drawing is that comics actually take way longer than writing alone! Someone said that every 1000 hours of drawing equals one hour or reading in comic form. I believe it. I worked on my book for five years, and it takes other people approximately 2.5 hours to read from start to finish. 


2) Could you describe your process a bit, in terms of how you develop the symbiotic relationship between text and image? Which tends to come to you first?


As a comic artist, I do both at once.  When I was writing the book initially, I thumb-nailed it out in small booklets, writing the sentence chunks at the bottom of each page and providing a very loose sketch of the characters faces and postures. I wanted to give myself a rough blueprint of what the final drawings would look like.

When the book was finished being written out in that way, I started transferring it to giant 14 x 17” sheets of Bristol board, which were a giant pain to carry around*.  I penciled my drawings onto the Bristol, using photo references to fill out scenes based on my original sketches. The words stayed the same from beginning to end, for the most part. 

*Whenever a friend would suggest drawing together at a coffee shop my head would fall off and roll across the room, because I could only draw in places with giant tables, and since the pages wouldn't fit in any bag with closures, the weather had to be perfect and I had to drive or be driven to the location.


3) The book is amazingly confessional, and filled with inner shames and secrets. Did it take you a long time to build up the courage to express it like this? Or was it essential for you to get it out?


I have been writing autobiographical work for about fifteen years, so I'm well-acquainted with the idea of broadcasting secrets to a larger audience. It helps to transform something from a crappy experience into something new or useful - into art. Something I can share with other people.

When I was writing the book, I tried to think of the things that made me feel the most uncomfortable, or the most vulnerable. I think that's how you genuinely connect with readers.  I knew it would be important to be unguarded for the book, if I was going to write it at all. I wanted to write something honest in response to all of the secrets I've been living with my entire life. 


4)Animals and pets figure largely in the book, and you’re also a pet portrait artist. How would you describe your relationship with animals? How have they helped you through your life?


I feel like one of the few people who kept the lessons from early childhood literature and films with me as I grew up. Like how in Charlotte's Web and Babe, these animals were seen as very emotional and sympathetic characters who you certainly wouldn't want to see mistreated or worse-yet slaughtered. I kept that with me. A fondness and a connection with animals. I don't anthropomorphize them to the extent that those films do, but I also don't think they are here on Earth to serve me, as a human.

I currently live with Beija the corgi/sharpei mix, who is fifteen, and two chickens, who are relatively young. I find most domestic or farm animals to be good company. That's one role animals have played in my life.  Beija has been with me every since I was 16, and while the chickens are not the most cuddly (they live outdoors), they are fascinating to watch. It's like the primal feeling of watching a fire, watching chickens. They hunt and peck and take dust baths and make sweet gossipy noises. Animals liven up the conversation. 

I must add that in the book I was living with five dogs at once, and that was maddening. They took over the conversation! I would not recomment having five dogs in one tiny house. It sounds like a story-book, but it feels like Hoarders. Even if you love them!


5) Do you still listen to Dr. Laura? What is it about advice shows that you’re drawn to? Do you think they actually help people, or serve more as entertainment?


I WISH I still listened to Dr. Laura. She is on Sirius Satellite Radio now, and while I do love her program, I cannot pay to listen to her program. I cannot personally deliver money I have made to Dr. Laura Schlessinger every month. But I do miss her terribly. I secretly hope someone ELSE will get Sirius, and then I can skirt my own ethics by listening to her that way.

I am a naturally gossipy person, so I like hearing other people's problems, and I like hearing useful advice from professionals on how to handle things. It's almost like a public way of teaching people how to behave. How to behave in relationships, how to have manners, what foods to pair with each other, how to save money. There are advice shows about everything, and I welcome them all. I enjoy learning how to be a better human being. 

Oppen Porter, twenty-eight, six and a half feet tall, is not a man of the world. But, having heard that such a distinction might be desirable and lacking much else to do after his the death of his father, he decides that he may as well endeavor to become one. Oppen was born with the terrible flaws of being kind, trusting, and open-hearted, and so his quest consists mostly in doing as other people (con-men, evangelists, fortune tellers, his Aunt Liz) instruct him, and he bounces from ethos to ethos while attempting to learn how a person should be. In his new novel Panorama City, Antoine Wilson has created a modern Odyssey of an unclaimed spirit, a story of 'becoming' in a world with so many different things to become, and so many of them sad. We spoke about surfing, crafting characters, and David Foster Wallace. Click 'read more' for the interview. 

1) Help a New Yorker out: Where is the actual Panorama City? What’s its deal? Have you spent much time there? What about it made you think that it would be fertile ground for fiction?


Panorama City is a district in the San Fernando Valley, next to Van Nuys and not too far from Sherman Oaks, which Moon Unit Zappa made famous years ago with her song “Valley Girl.” The Valley is both a part of Los Angeles, serviced by the LAPD, uses LA Zip Codes, etc., and a world unto itself, being separated from the rest of LA by the Santa Monica mountains. I suppose New Yorkers could think of it as a sort of outer borough. The Valley appealed to me as a place that Oppen could think of as the big city without his ever actually coming over the hill into LA proper. In many ways, he lives on the periphery—I wanted a setting that could echo that. Plus, the geography of the valley appeals to me: mini-malls, palm trees, gas stations, and so on.


Now, why Panorama City, specifically? Because it  was developed as a masterplan community, because when founded it had a housing covenant that excluded non-whites from buying new houses, because it has a name rich with hope and ironic disappointment. I like it when masterplans go wrong—when humanity in all its forms asserts itself against rigidity and misguided ideals. Panorama City underwent so-called white flight in the 1970s. It's now about 70% latino. I wanted Oppen's Aunt Liz, who is caucasian, to have remained a fixture in a place that had undergone huge demographic transition.


2) It’s never stated overtly, but it’s clear that Oppen has something along the lines of Asperger's Syndrome. What are the challenges of writing for a main character who operates on a level so different from the average reader, especially from first person? It seems to me that, in order to pull it off (which you do brilliantly!) the writer needs to navigate a narrow course between, on the one hand, taking advantage of the reader through Gump-ian manipulative sentimentality, and on the other, taking advantage of the character (playing his ignorance for laughs in a mean-spirited way, etc.) Did you worry about these things while writing the book?


I don't believe in diagnosing literary characters, unless the author has explicitly provided a diagnosis. Even then, I'm not so excited about it. Diagnoses can be useful in real life, but they just as often create a situation in which a person comes to be defined by their diagnosis, in a way that reduces their individual identity. Everyone is different. That said, Oppen does have some cognitive stuff going on—he describes how the machinery for reading doesn't seem to work properly in his head, for instance. He's preternaturally naïve. He describes himself as a “slow absorber.” And so on.


Now as to whether I worried about threading the Scylla and Charybdis of dopey sentimentality and cruel irony, the answer is yes, yes, yes. Early on, while I was still figuring out what this book was going to be, I knew solidly that I didn't want to write Forrest Gump (the movie—I haven't read the books) and I didn't want to write The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (not a cruel book, per se, but one that depends on dramatic irony for its effects). My first novel, The Interloper, was a darkly comic thing, dripping with irony, that required a certain amount of interpreting the increasingly unreliable narrator. I wasn't interested in doing that with Oppen. I wasn't interested in readers feeling smarter than he is. Obviously, there are moments when we can't help but be better informed, but I avoided making them the main course, so to speak.


I'm happy you think I pulled it off.


3) Besides setting your novel in California, you yourself are a west coast guy; your author bio is brief, but mentions surfing. Is there such a thing as a California novel, or, in your view, a coherent west-coast literature? I imagine that it would be an easier proposition to define New York lit or Midwest lit. How does sunshine and happiness factor in?


Yes, I love surfing. And I love writing. Seems like it would make sense to bring the two together, right? I've tried, multiple times, over the years, from laconic Carveresque water-pastorals to Turner-inspired end-of-the-frontier novel sketches to essayistic things on literary form and wave shape. Failures, all. At this point, I'm keeping the two separate.


As for a California novel, or west-coast literature, I think you'd have to ask somebody else. I've never thought in those terms, and though I've tried to, sometimes, I find myself resisting. I mean, I'm not interested in The Literature of Eastern Ontario; I'm interested in Alice Munro. I get that there are people who put things into geographical and historical context. I've been one of those people, or tried to be, while pursuing an English Literature degree. But in my particular practice as a novelist, defining California literature as a coherent thing takes a back seat to, e.g., figuring out how people prevent unauthorized access to the dumpsters behind fast food places.


4) I’ll leave this question open-ended, but it seems like a good time to ask, given the recent spike of discussion surrounding him: how does David Foster Wallace figure in your writing life? I think I see some shared concerns between your work and his.


I always liked what DFW had to say about literature being something that could make us feel less alone. And, having just read the DT Max biography, I see how essential that was to him. As for shared concerns, it seems to me that, if I'm not being too vague here, DFW was always trying to figure it out. His work, however pyrotechnic it can be at times, has a moral center to it, and that center is occupied by a question mark. So when you read his work, you feel like you're engaged with him in the struggle to understand, to find meaning, to decide. (As opposed to say, the Franzen of Freedom, who reads to me more like someone who believes he has figured it out and is delivering the news.) I too am always trying to figure it out, so that's a shared concern. But probably one shared with many (most? all?) people trying to write a certain kind of fiction.


Your question makes me realize that I never cite DFW as an influence, even though his work—his fiction—is always near me somewhere. In my office, on my nightstand, even in my car, in the form of an audiobook. I probably don't mention him because I haven't finished reading Infinite Jest, and there's a sort of cult of expertise around his oeuvre, but his work is a source of near-constant nourishment for me as a writer.


5) In the book, everyone has something to sell, be it individualism, Christianity, solipsism, etc, even if they don’t truly believe in what they’re selling. Oppen, perfect neophyte, allows these things in turn to fill his empty vessel for a while, before replacing it with the next thing, and finally sort of swears off of the whole endeavor of attempting to become anything else at all. Is the core of this book something like a warning about the folly of trying to fix the holes within ourselves with these external –isms?


I'm skeptical of –isms. They're useful in signaling to others where you're coming from, but internally, most of them are not supple enough to accommodate the vagaries of lived experience. I'd say that I'm into antifundamentalism, but that's an –ism, isn't it? Arg!


Oppen's journey is at its core a bildungsroman. He tries things on in an attempt to find his place in the world, the round hole into which he can squeeze his square peg, so to speak. What he discovers is that the peg model is flawed. You don't become something that already exists. You become yourself—you can't help but become yourself—and if you're lucky, the world makes room for you.

If you liked this interview, you may also like Five Questions for Patrick Somerville.

Paula Bomer's Nine Months is a novel about pregnancy, but it is more Ridley Scott than Dr. Spock. In the book, an unplanned third pregnancy provokes a young Brooklyn mother into fleeing her family on an unhinged cross-country road trip, with the bun still in the oven. Along the way, she battles her own sexual desires, her stalled artistic aspirations, and the sheer physical realities that a person has to contend with while carrying another person inside of them. The book feels almost dangerous in its iconoclasm, and Bomer writes about the myriad trials of pregnancy with an honesty that made me want to call to my mom and make sure that she never fantasized too much about murdering me. We spoke about sex, feminism, and parenthood. Click 'read more' for the interview.

1) I feel like the book is a female response to the type of thing we’ve seen before in, say, the first part of Rabbit, Run, with the man fleeing domesticity, which represents for him the death of male freedom, inability to spread the seed, surrender to the mundane, etc. But there’s a distinct lack of stories told from the other perspective, which is of course that “settling down” demands massive sacrifice of the woman too, and a kind of death of her own. What might explain the lack in our culture of the type of story that you’ve written here?


There are a few books about women feeling trapped by domesticity for sure, but rarely do they go on wild road trips, whereas a man is more likely to leave. This is sadly factual, not just in fiction. As far as how to explain this I'd look at the historical possibilities women had, which were few. Women were financially dependent on husbands and the incredible shame and dishonor a woman would suffer if she left her children would be life-ruining. Marriage was the only way out of a family, unless you became a spinster. Men - being a life long bachelor- it's not a bad thing. Just comparing those two words explains it all- spinster vs. bachelor. In the second wave of feminism, durng the 60s and 70s, women fought hard against these constraints and made much progress. Fantastic feminist theory and literature came out then, but it was still a very male dominated arena (still is), the arena of serious literature and theory. I'd also say that understandably during that radical time, a lot of women were just saying fuck all that, whereas Sonia, my character, wants it all.


2) I loved the line about New York parents treating their children like a combination between an art and science project. It’s couched in a rightfully derisive tone, but also actually seems like a fairly accurate way to describe parenting (I’m not a parent, by the way, so feel free to set me straight). What does that approach lack, or why do you think Sonia finds it so disagreeable? 


It puts raising children as a public event before the very beautiful private thing that it is. This of course is my opinion that I put in Sonia's mouth, but I believe it's a problem with living in New York. Children become part of the endless social climbing. I'm terrible at social climbing. And I think using one's kids to further your social status is morally repugnant. My guess is it happens everywhere a little, but a lot more in New York and LA.


3) So few authors write sex scenes as well as you do, and authors who might be otherwise talented often write sex scenes that are borderline unreadable. How do you approach writing about sex? What makes a sex scene suck?


First of all, thank you. I hope I write about sex well, as I do it a lot, although less so these past few years. I think straightforward language is key. My sex scenes are rarely romantic. Guazy language is never a good idea- sappiness can be cringe inducing. I use humor, but the bad sex scenes are ones you laugh at, not with. Sex is an important part of who we are as humans, so I think it should be addressed. 


4) I got a real jolt of feministic appreciation reading this book. What I mean is that I’ve never read anything that so urgently asked me to consider certain things that, as a guy, I might otherwise have never had to consider as vividly, not only about pregnancy but also about being a woman. Is that part of what you set out to do, or just a fortunate byproduct?


I love that you got a "feministic appreciation" reading my novel. It was very much my intention that the readers question and/or experience these huge things that Sonia questions and experiences- pregnancy, birth, marriage, child rearing, what it means to be an artist, a "serious" artist, a good mother, how  having children deeply affects our understanding of ourselves and our daily lives.


5) What will your caveat be to your children before they’re allowed to read this book (if ever)?


Ha- that's funny. My older son is sixteen and when doing some excruciating revisions, I had him read some things out to me. For instance, the Indiana visit- he read that chapter to me while I was working on it. He's also read a few short stories of mine. But there is plenty I warn them away from. Who needs to read their mother's more sexually explicit stuff? Or even the more heartbreaking stuff (I'm thinking of some of my not-funny short stories)? At some point it's out of my hands. I remember reading about Alex Styron reading Sophie's Choice and feeling embarrassed by the explicit sex. Honestly, they aren't interested right now, and that's fine with me.

Gavin McInnes, co-founder of the counter-cultural paper of record Vice Magazine, is often credited (or blamed) for the creation of the hipster, largely thanks to his long-running "Dos and Don'ts" fashion critique column, but that's hardly the most interesting thing about him. His new memoir, entitled "How To Piss In Public" (after this successful viral video) is a collection of his craziest stories, from his beginnings as a Canadian punk fighting Nazi Skinheads, to his drug-feuled days as a media mogul with money to burn in New York City. The book is rude, lurid, and awesome, and also recounts maybe the only own known instance of someone transmitting an STD to themselves (don't ask).  Click 'read more' for the interview.  

1) The book is definitely billable as just a collection of amazing stories, but I think that it’s also an argument or encouragement for a risk-taking, entrepreneurial, balls-out kind of life. Would you agree that you are, in a way, defending the viability of a way of life? You said something once about how, for an older generation, getting a tattoo meant a life working the docks, but today things are different and it's basically: “You’re smart! You’ll be fine.”


I didn't realize that at first but the publishers pointed it out to me when the book was done. They said it's a "How To" book on doing whatever you want without going broke. I believe that, despite all the doom and gloom economic projections out there, we are still living in a very affluent time. If you work hard at something, it'll pay the bills, no matter how retarded it is. You don't even have to be that smart. Shit, if graffiti - writing your nickname on other people's property - can lead to a lucrative career, anything can. Shepard Fairey grossed $6 million last year.


2) How much do you credit luck for your survival? Or is the key just to not do heroin?

 
Oh so I didn't "build that" as Obama would say? You see this guy who's done a bunch of fun shit and you assume it must be luck? Having a great time isn't about luck. It's about trial and error. I didn't put in stories that involved getting rained out or the place being closed. The book is only the winners and like business, for every win, there are a dozen fails. 

Wait, I just reread the question. You aren't asking how I had so much fun. You're asking why I'm alive. Yeah, I would say luck plays a big part. I recently read a story about some drunk assholes who drove over a cliff and died and while I was shaking my head at their stupidity, a friend said, "Yeah, but how many times have we done shit that's WAY stupider?" It was a chilling thought. 

Also, not doing heroin is a biggie. I think I list a dozen friends in the book who O.D.'d. The analogy I always use is: If there was a 10 with AIDS in the room and an 8.5 with no STDs, which one would you fuck? You can synthesize the heroin buzz with pot, booze, and Xanax. That's the 8.5. Heroin is a bit better but the odds are very high you're going to die. You'd think saying, "Don't fuck women with AIDS" is redundant but apparently it's not.  


3) I share your hatred for flip-flops. Will the scourge of strangers’ toes ever be lifted from New York City? At least summer’s almost over.

 
Yeah but then another summer comes along and they're back. I once asked a guy in my office building why the fuck he wears them to work and he goes, "I didn't want to be some douche." Pardon? Where do these guys get the idea that showing the world their hairy toes is chill? Have they ever seen their own genitalia? Go look at your bag in the mirror. God did not give men nice looking parts. Stop parading them around town. 


4) Is it true that in fourth grade you made fun of Clinton Bedecki and stole his gym shorts? [Context]


I don't think I ever stole his gym shorts. Clinton was a wild motherfucker who is probably in jail now. He'd always take shit too far. In fifth grade, a bunch of us broke into the school gym during lunch. We were throwing gym mats around and doing other harmless stuff and then we look up and Clinton is throwing the school's stereo off the stage. It soared through the air in slow motion and then smashed into a million pieces on the floor. We all yelled, "HOLY SHIT!" and ran for our lives. I think he was the one who took a shit in the equipment room, too. I often wonder what the janitor thought when he saw that. He probably said, "Animals" out loud. 


5) At this point, I’ll bet you’ll agree that the idea of talking about what is or is not a hipster is totally boring and almost incoherent. Even using the word makes me feel lame. Does that mean that the hipsters won?

 
When you first approached me about this interview, you asked if you could ask five questions. That was one. This is six. 

In Where'd You Go, Bernadette, second novel from Maria Semple (former screenwriter for "Arrested Development,") Bernadette Fox is an agoraphobic and Macarthur Award-winning architectural genius who escapes from LA to Seattle in order to raise her daughter, Bee, alongside her tech-guru husband. As her unwillingness to deal with the external world drives her to rely more and more on her outsourced personal assistant in India, and the other mothers of the crunchy private school begin to plot against her, Bernadette disappears, forcing Bee to track her down using the emails, chat logs, medical records, and FBI transcripts that make the novel epistolary. The book is a legitimately hilarious satire, but also something of a marvel of structure and vision. Maria and I talked about structure, form, comedy, and God. Click 'read more' for the interview.

1. Did you always envision Where’d You Go, Bernadette as epistolary? Were early drafts in that form? The form works so well here, in part because you approach the plot from so many different angles, with each character shining their penlight on the larger idea, but it definitely seems like a much more difficult task than a straight narrative, and I’m wondering where you got the bravery.


I started with the character of Bernadette Fox—a woman unable to get over artistic failure, who turns her creative energy toward hating Seattle and its residents. This seemed funny to me, and it was a comic exaggeration of the pain I was in at the time. So I began by writing in her voice, first person. It flowed and flowed. But I quickly encountered two problems. First, Bernadette is agoraphobic, and someone sitting at home, afraid to interact with other people, is by definition pretty passive. She wasn’t providing the forward thrust a good story requires. Second, her voice was starting to be too much! After twenty pages I just wanted her to shut up and stop complaining.  

So I started the book over, this time from the third person. I introduced the points of view of her husband, Elgie, and their daughter, Bee. But Bernadette’s voice became diluted.   

I was close to abandoning the whole thing until one day I was taking a walk and had an idea: Bernadette would have an internet-based assistant with whom she’d overshare. I hurried home and wrote an email from Bernadette to a virtual assistant in India. Something crackled. Bernadette’s voice was even better than before, plus I found a nice comedic rhythm in Manjula’s terse responses to Bernadette’s rambling emails. That’s when I thought, Aha! This will be an epistolary novel!

As for bravery…it didn’t feel that brave, because I had finally found the right style for my novel. More than anything, I was relieved and excited. However, there were times when I thought of a piece that would fit perfectly—e.g., the Artforum article, the TED talk, the police report—yet seemed completely outside anything I considered myself capable of writing. But I didn’t let that stop me. I hacked away until I had an ugly draft and then revised it dozens of times.


2. Before switching to novels, you had a successful career in screenwriting. Obligations to advertisers aside, what do you think is the biggest difference in switching between the forms? Do you think your experience as a screenwriter gives you any particularly unique angle on fiction writing?


The main difference, at least emotionally, is that when I write fiction, it’s all me. It’s really scary having my name out there and basically announcing, “This is the best I can do.” In TV, your hands are tied by so many forces—the network executives, the actors, the budget, the other writers—that you always have someone to blame if it sucks!

But I much prefer writing fiction. I love being in charge of my own time. If anything drove me out of TV, it was the waiting for hours (and I mean hours: two, four, ten) while the showrunner was in editing or meetings of some sort, and the writers would be sitting around the table, eating Costco junk food, waiting to start the huge amount of work that needed to get done.

Wait, I’m oversharing—like Bernadette! I just realized you didn’t ask me about my emotional state. Ha!  

OK, yes, screenwriting. It’s all about story. My years in Hollywood turned me into a story master, if I may say so myself. That was my very favorite part of being in the writers’ room: standing at the dry-erase board and banging out the story outline with a bunch of brilliant writers.

Also, in TV you’re writing for stars, which means you always think in terms of strong character and dialogue. You’re quite literally asking yourself, “Would George Clooney want to play this part?” When I begin writing a novel, I approach it the same way. I make sure I start with a strong, charismatic character. Then I fold in other characters who will provide maximum fireworks. For instance, in Where’d You Go, Bernadette, I began with Bernadette, then realized she needed an antagonist. I reverse-engineered the character of Audrey so that she and Bernadette would be opposites. When I put these two in scenes together, the sparks flew quite naturally, which made the writing fun and easy.

And that brings me to scenes. In TV, you’re of course always writing in scenes. I believe scenes are also the building blocks of fiction. It’s something I lecture about all the time to my fiction writing students.

A friend who’s writing his first novel challenged me on this point the other day: “But then all you’ve got is a book with a bunch of scenes.” I said, “Consider the alternative. Memory, backstory, description, discourse. When you’re reading a book and you get to that, what happens?” He said, “I skip over it.” As Elmore Leonard quipped in his terrific rules of writing, cut out the stuff you’d skip over.

God, that was a long answer. I promise the next one will be shorter.   


3. There’s been a rise over the last, say, fifteen years of what we can call commoditized quirk, that I see roughly corresponding with the films of Wes Anderson (which I actually happen to like, although I bridle at quirk for quirk’s sake). And I feel like when you’re dealing with precocious, overachieving characters, you’re in particular danger of falling into a trap where the things that make a character “quirky” override the things that make them human. But you avoided the trap completely, and all the characters seem very real to me, despite the comedic nature of the book and its just slightly satirical universe. It’s a simple question, I guess, but how did you balance comedy with drama?


Thank you for saying I avoided the quirk trap! Because the beginning of that question was starting to scare me. I loathe quirk. The only thing that makes me cringe in reviews is the use of the word “quirk.” Which is kind of nuts, because it’s always meant as a compliment.

All I’m ever trying to do when I write is entertain and tell the truth. I think the drama you’re talking about comes from the story, which I try to construct to be as entertaining as possible. The comedy? Well, I think I was born with a comic sensibility. Even when something terrible happens, I’ll find myself describing it to my boyfriend as “the most hilarious thing!”


4. At one point in the book, Bee undergoes a kind of religious experience while at the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. It comes more or less out of nowhere, but doesn’t feel wrong for the character. I read it as a point about how undernourished she is by the kind of life that she and most of the characters around her are leading, and that we’re told, these days, is most desirable: dominate your peers, go to a good college, find a good job, and eventually you’ll get to retire to the nursing home of your choice. But then again, her mother [Bernadette] tried the other way, to live for a passion, and that didn’t work out too well either. Do you agree that the book is, on some level, an analysis of how we should live? And is the only solution to run away to Antarctica?


I love this question. I was strongly drawn to writing about Bee’s spiritual conversion—or her momentary flirtation with one—because, even though I’m an atheist, I often feel a similarly overwhelming connection to God. And I don’t quite know what to make of this.

Something similar happened to me during the Radio City Christmas Spectacular. We had just moved to Seattle and I didn’t know anyone, so going to that show with my daughter seemed like a good way to kill a Sunday afternoon. I had no idea the second act would be an unapologetically religious nativity story. When it began, I started moaning and groaning. Then I became suddenly and strangely moved to tears at the simple joy the story of Jesus brought to the audience. The experience stuck with me, and when I was writing Where’d You Go, Bernadette, the idea of little Bee feeling transported by the wave of Christianity struck me as appropriate.

And thanks for giving me so much credit, but god, no, I wasn’t trying to analyze how we should live! I was just trying to show readers a good time.

Rick Bass occupies a unique position in American letters. A true writer's writer, his lyrical and philosophical fiction has been awarded O. Henry Awards, Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the NEA and the Guggenheim Foundation. But he's also a geologist, and an environmental activist; in addition to writing extensively on environmental issues, he also helps safeguard both the flora and fauna of his home in the Yaak Valley Forest of Montana. In his latest book, "The Black Rhinos of Namibia: Searching for Survivors in the African Desert," Bass details a trip he took into one of the world's most unchanged and unforgiving landscapes, in order to bear witness to an incredible species on the brink of extinction.

Interview after the jump.

1. An overly easy way to describe your stance in this book is one of a “sense of wonder,” but it’s not the wide-eyed wonder of a child. It’s something more oracular, as if you’re receiving these truths from nature but you’re not quite sure how to interpret them. Was your trip more enlightening, or more mystifying?


I’m usually pretty wary of anyone who claims enlightenment. For me, Namibia was definitely mystifying. Everywhere I looked, I found myself asking, Why? For example, why were the rhinos so big, why was the euphorbia bush so poisonous, why didn’t more rain fall, why could the rhinos and giraffes run across the loose basalt cobbles without looking down or stumbling, why were the ungulates’ horns shaped the way they were, why were there two different types of striping on the zebras, why was Mike Hearn the way he was?


Definitely not enlightened.


2. Can you describe the physical process of writing this book? It’s hard to imagine that you had a Macbook out there in the bush, maybe plugged into a little generator, but the scenes are so vivid, both in the recounting of the physical events and the reporting of what was going on within yourself, that I’d love to know what kind of system you worked out, as I imagine it’s hard to take notes while keeping one eye open for lions.


I toted a little notebook, and when it filled, I wrote in ballpoint ink on the palm of my hand and then up my arm to my elbow, like some strange tattoo. Actually, keeping notes in lion country helped me feel like I was doing something I could control. Dot the i’s, cross the t’s, that kind of thing. 


3. Take this question however you’d like, but is the Earth a better or worse place for having humans on it? I think that as both a conservationist and a student of human nature that you’re uniquely suited to give an answer. In other words, would an unspoiled Eden be preferable, or does the fact that Earth is the only place in the universe that we can find moral undertakings set it apart in a positive way, even if as a group we appear to be failing many of those undertakings?


I think better, though certainly I have some ambivalence about that opinion. But how could one deny one’s own existence? I don’t mean me individually but the thing we are, the thing we are striving to become, with each next drawn breath pulling ourselves sometimes tentatively and other times boldly into the new and near future, just as the old ones—all other forms of life that were here for so many hundreds of millions of years before us—have been doing? I believe we are an experiment and though it seems to be going a bit poorly right now, I would never diminish or hope to see extinguished the magnificent allure of beauty, the rapture we are capable of feeling—often in the presence of wild nature, the rest of nature. Maybe it is hubris, but I do think we are capable of burning brightly with beauty and some kind of internal illumination, at times, and that just as surely that has some value to making the earth be the earth in some tiny, tiny—yet beautiful—way.


4. There’s a passage early on in the book, in which you diagnose a particular element of yourself, that I strongly identified with:

“For [me], any venture into the outside world can be like going out onto thin ice, with my serenity in the world able to be disrupted by a single sound, a single unpleasant event: as if some saturation point has been reached wherein the heart can be made heavy by even one tiny, dangerous thing.”

A weakness such as this, which I think I share with you, would suggest a person who was at least by some measure ill-equipped for the world. But when I stop and think about my personal “tiny, dangerous things,” they are always moments of modernity, or at least human artifice; the flickering of a florescent light in a convenience store, an old man trying to make sense of a subway map. I’m a male in my 20’s, but my genetics haven’t been recalibrated for thousands of years, which means that my body still wants to crush things with rocks and flee predators into the trees, and so I often feel misplaced. I know that it can be dangerous thinking to idolize “simpler times” (in this case, Paleolithicly simpler,) but how long do you think it will be until we’re suited for the lives that we’ve made for ourselves?


That’s a great question. I would parse it out and ask by “we” do you mean you and me, and folks like us, who unravel sometimes these days at the thought of answering a telephone, much less braving the fluorescent lighting of supermarket aisles, passing folks with bushel baskets of Twinkies and Budweiser (no judgment) or do you mean the majority of culture’s centerstream flow, in which as I think we suspect a numbness or inattentiveness to the thinness of the ice beneath our emotional and spiritual existence is quite likely a selective advantage,  even perhaps sometimes a mercy?


If you mean the former, then I would say never. If you mean the latter, I would say 25 to 50 years.


5. The year is 2112, and the terraforming of Mars is well underway. Is this do-over our chance for salvation, or just the next malignant outgrowth of our rapaciousness, a stepping-stone towards Neptune, where it rains diamonds?


It’s hard to imagine being interested in diamonds in 2112. What an indulgence they will seem, I think: like reading of how folks from the previous century were wild for buffalo robes or beaver tongues.

This summer in 1972, George McGovern, the so-called candidate of "Amnesty, abortion, and acid," tapped the young, senatorial shoulder of Thomas Eagleton to be his running mate. Over the course of the next eighteen days, a pair of anonymous phone calls alleging that Eaglteon had undergone treatment for depression and exhaustion would force McGovern to publicly withdraw his selection.  In Joshua Glasser's  debut, "The Eighteen-Day Running Mate," he recounts every angle of the episode in vivid detail. Wonks of all stripes will be interested by the various political wranglings that went on behind the scenes, but at the book's core are two very human stories about that rare breed of politician that still appears to be a good person even after all the facts are known, and their attempts to do what is right, both for themselves and for their country.

Mr Glasser, a researcher for Bloomberg Television, and I spoke about the incident, and how it continues to reverberate in the present day. Interview after the Jump. 

1. Eagleton is such a tragic figure; a decent, loving man, whose highest aspirations were cast down simply because he had once sought help for a medical condition, a condition that arose in part due to his own sensitivity and work ethic. Although his career continued, his story reinforces my cynical intuition that good people should stay out of big-time politics unless they’re willing to get dirty. Is that the right response?

 

First, I would be careful about assigning too much weight to the role Eagleton’s sensitivity and work ethic played in leading to his depressions. Psychologists and psychiatrists still debate what exactly causes depression and bipolar disorder, which Eagleton had, but most people think biology, a person’s given brain chemistry, has more than a little to do with instigating depressive episodes. But, yes, you’re right, that’s how Eagleton justified his past treatment for depression with electroshock therapy, and his overwork on the campaign trail indeed likely did have some role in precipitating those episodes. Most psychologists and psychiatrists today believe—as some did back then, in the 1960s and seventies—that depression stems from a combination of brain chemistry and life experiences. They think some people are wired for it, and it will arise given a certain set of external, precipitating factors.

 

You’re also right to be cynical. The McGovern campaign in general and the Eagleton affair in particular each teach that it’s hard to be both a good guy and a politician, and both someone who’s entirely faithful to his or her ideals and a politician. And, as an aside, it would also even be pretty dangerous if we expected all our politicians to be unflinching in their commitment to ideological purity, for Congress would never get anything done without compromise, as McGovern and Eagleton both recognized. But, yes, the realities of political campaigning—especially the higher you go up the hierarchy—requires candidates to do things that aren’t so great or, as you said, pretty dirty.

 

2. Empirically, a history of depression doesn’t mean that one is incapable of governing effectively at the highest levels. Here’s a quote from one of Lincoln’s letters: “I am now the most miserable man living. If what I feel were equally distributed to the whole human family, there would not be one cheerful face on the earth. Whether I shall ever be better I can not tell; I awfully forebode I shall not.” And then there’s Churchill’s “Black Dog.” Was McGovern’s decision to drop Eagleton from the ticket based more on political pragmatism, or more on the actual belief that Eagleton would be a liability to the country once elected? Would you have done the same in his position?

 

Yes, you’re right. Both Lincoln and Churchill experienced depression, even in office, and they were both extremely competent leaders during times of immense stress. McGovern now says that, given what he now knows about Lincoln—having himself written a book about Lincoln—he would have kept Eagleton. But at the time, even though the press noted that Lincoln and Churchill both had depression, there was the sense that in the nuclear era—with the stakes so much greater—that the risks of quick, ill-advised decisions or a burst of irrationality from a leader would be that much more harmful. Was Eagleton the type of guy you’d feel comfortable with having his finger on the nuclear button? The unpredictability of depression, and the lack of knowledge, lack of understanding about its roots made this an impossible question to answer, almost as impossible to judge then as it is now. We don’t have many more conclusive answers now than we did then. And, while in retrospect we can say, "Well, Eagleton went on to serve another two terms in the Senate without any serious issues," there’s still no way of guaranteeing that he would have had the same absence of incapacitating relapse as vice president and, if necessary, under the unique challenges and stresses of the Oval Office. This is why it seemed Eagleton had become untenable politically. But McGovern also ultimately made a medical determination about Eagleton, though he was never able to justify it as such.

 

3. The revelation that Eagleton had been hospitalized for depression was damaging enough, but the book makes it clear that it was the fact that he had undergone electroshock therapy that was the real coffin nail. What do you think it is about that particular treatment, electroshock therapy, that has made it so stigmatized? Or, more broadly, why is psychiatric treatment so much more stigmatized than physical treatments?

 

As one McGovern aide put it, depression is one thing, but depression treated with electroshock is quite another. And, as a member of the Eagleton team said, electroshock is "an assault on the senses.” Just the imagery of it is scarring—the entirely hyperbolic conception that visible jolts of electricity rock the patient’s brain, forcing him to convulse wildly enough to rattle the gurney. Of course this is a function of the name "electroshock" and Hollywood and popular culture playing with our imaginations, even before the movie version of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest popularized these notions even more. This conception of electroshock does not convey how it was performed in Eagleton's time, especially not in Eagleton’s case, and it certainly doesn’t convey how electroshock—or ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) as it's now called—is performed today. But there’s still that fear of memory loss, and, even in Eagleton’s time, when electroshock was more frequent—there weren’t the psychotropic drugs such as Prozac that exist today—there was also the perception that treatment with electroshock suggests a condition far more serious and far more debilitating that a run-of-the-mil case of the blues.

           

To get to the second part of your question, mental illness is more stigmatized than physical ailments because it appears to many, even to medical professionals, that mental illness can negatively impact job performance, and also because it seems mental illness is behind a lot of the actual craziness, a lot of the horror that we see in the world, like the shootings at the Aurora movie theatre just the other week. Of course that's a very, very extreme example, but I think incidents like those contribute to the unfortunate general stigma. There's also the fact that mental illnesses are even more unpredictable than physical afflictions, and our knowledge about their roots, their causes, is still lacking.

 

4. It would be nice to think that, as a country, we’ve matured in the last forty years with respect to our opinions about the boundary between public/private, but of course, the case is probably the opposite. How do you think the episode would have played out in today’s political climate, if differently at all?

 

I think the Eagleton case presented a unique dilemma in that Eagleton's "skeleton" wasn't anything necessarily dirty, shameful, or corrupt, as he described the allegation, but it was one that seemed could impact job performance. In Eagleton’s case, the private was certainly relevant and merited the public evaluation that it received, as sad as it was. Eagleton most likely would not have been treated with electroshock today, given advances in psychotropic drugs, but the unpredictability remains, and psychologists and psychiatrists still dispute whether someone with bipolar II disorder is fit to be vice president or president. I think we'd still have heated debates, but the campaign's comport and explanation would determine whether or not such a candidate would last on a ticket. As the book shows, McGovern didn't handle himself so well, and made mistakes that if avoided could have kept Eagleton on the ticket.

 

5. We live in an age where just about everything we do is digitally archived and readily accessible, especially to those willing to do some digging. In another forty years, do you think the voting public will come to accept the fact that all candidates are going to come along with more baggage than they have in the past? In other words, what will it look like down the road when each candidate has a lifetime of Facebook pictures, Twitter feeds, email chains, blogs, etc, dogging after them?

 

I think the public realizes—especially in the post-Nixon, post-Clinton, post-Bush era, when the fallibility of our leaders is so plain—that no politician is perfect, no human being is perfect, and not even our presidents. Most people have done something that they're not proud of, like sending an ill-advised e-mail, or being caught in a less than flattering Facebook photo that maybe even shows underage drinking, or something like that. The public will accept stuff like this and get over it. But the "skeletons" that have doomed politicians in the past, such as dishonesty, adultery, and unpredictable mental illness—those will continue to doom politicians in the future, especially at the highest levels, because the public likes trust and the semblance of accountability.

Patrick Somerville’s new novel This Bright River is a lesson in how contemporary storytelling should function. The book is hell-bent on pursuing questions of modern experience, but doesn’t abandon the kind of sensitivity and interior investigation that I think we expect from these types of big literary novels. You may have read about the very public misreading that the book was given in an influential publication, or Mr. Somerville’s graceful treatment of the issue on Salon.com, but let's not focus too much focus on that.

From the publisher’s copy: "Lauren Sheehan's career in medicine came to a halt after a sequence of violent events abroad. Now she's back in the safest place she knows--St. Helens, Wisconsin--cut off from career, friendship, and romance. Ben Hanson's aimless life bottomed out when he went to prison. But after his release, a surprising offer from his father draws him home. In Wisconsin, he finds his family fractured, still unable to face the truth behind his troubled cousin's death a decade earlier. As Lauren cautiously expands her world and Ben tries to unravel the mysteries of his family and himself, their paths intersect. Could each be exactly what the other needs?"

Mr. Somerville and I spoke about craft, videogames, and some other interesting stuff. (Interview after the jump.)

Q)    Could you speak a bit about how the idea for this book came about? It’s a clichéd question to lead with, but I’m particularly interested in how a large, layered book like this one grows from some kernel (I assume) into something spanning such a wide expanse of territory, time, and emotion, especially given that the book reads like an intricate system of occurrences rather a main character simply moving though a narrative arc. How large was your idea of the book when you set out?

 

After I wrote The Universe in Miniature in Miniature I felt a pull back toward realism, just storytelling about people and their problems, how love fits into that, how bad choices fit into that, how the world looks to people in the early decades of adulthood. Whenever my writing drifts toward the supernatural this pendulum in my heart always swings and I am reminded of stories like So Long, See You Tomorrow or Kenneth Lonergan’s impossibly powerful film You Can Count on Me and I think: wait, just people, Pat, don’t get cute. I’m that kind of reader as well. Back and forth guy. I love high-concept fiction with crazy setups and I also love fiction that is low-low-low-concept too, just regular life. So as a writer, going back and forth will probably doom me forever, commercially, but it reflects who I am, and I drift around in terms of tone and form and I probably always will.


All that said I did still want This Bright River to be layered and crafted in an unusual way that reflected my doubts about finding certainty in the modern world, and I did still want it to have a big idea in the middle. In this case, really just a probing of the question How do you be a good person? Like: what is the skill of that? How do you learn that? Can you? Is it a sense or an art? It’s sort of low-concept and high-concept at the same time in that way, I guess. And finally, I also just thought: well, hell, if The Cradle is short and sweet, I should probably try to write a novel that’s long and twisted and unnerving now. Just to cover that base.

 

Q)    As a reader, the dialogue that seems most realistic/compelling to me is dialogue that captures just how ineffective a method of communication talking really is, where characters repeat themselves, digress, and fail to address the issue at its core; basically the complete opposite of Aaron Sorkin. The only writer I’ve seen capture this kind of thing as well as you is Denis Johnson. How do you approach dialogue?

 

Writing dialogue is my favorite part of writing, so I’ve thought about it less than I’ve thought about things like structure or scene or language. That may not sound like it makes sense but I try not to think about whatever feels like it comes out right the first time. For me, so much of the fun of reading is trying to decode the subtext of what people mean when they say certain things, and what the author means them to mean, and what the other characters hear. I just can’t imagine writing dialogue that has a one-to-one correspondence. It has to not make sense, just a bit.

 

Q)    There’s a great digression in the book about videogames, and how they generally break down along Apollonian/ Dionysian lines. Where do you think videogames stand as objects of art? It seems like the form can offer a unique artistic experience when done right, but I still can’t fire up the ol’ Playstation without feeling a bit guilty, like I should be reading instead. Also, a shot in the dark: Have you played Braid?

 

I haven’t played Braid but now I want to. I don’t play videogames as much as I used to—baby, work, money—but I’m confident they’ll be a larger and larger part of the culture as the next generation takes over the reins of the status quo. The technology is just so powerful, the possibilities are endless, the overall enthusiasm is so high. And that’s good! That’s fine. I think that feeling of guilt just comes from a) the half-breathing narrative that videogames are for children, and b) that other half-breathing narrative that art and play don’t mix. What major art form didn’t come from a place that was believed to lack seriousness?

 

Q)    Is it too imprecise to posit that the American Midwest has a coherent influence on the fiction it produces? I’m very much a product of the suburban wastelands of Long Island, but there is something about the fiction of the Midwest that I find very appealing, something about internality, or the particular type of sadness I feel on chilly Sunday evenings when I stand without a jacket near a long road with no cars on it. I’m thinking of the great David Foster Wallace essay Derivative Sport in Tornado Alley, where the wind is a not necessarily positive omnipresence. Do you see your home country as informing your writing in any particular way?

 

I can’t pretend that it doesn’t, because I seem to keep writing about where I’m from. I think that’s just familiarity, on one level, but it’s also because I love the American Midwest and I love the people in the Midwest and I bristle at its marginalized status in the larger culture, at some of the generalizations, both positive and negative. I have a Midwest chip on my shoulder. Just like everyone else from here, I suppose. Maybe that’s a crucial part of being from the Midwest.


I would also add that every writer is different, everyone’s history is different, and because of that I don’t know if the influence of place is either coherent or consistent from one author to the next. My mother is English and I have one foot in Wisconsin, one foot across the ocean, so my perspective is unusual, my story has its own wrinkles.

 
But then again, how can the loneliness and isolation of the farmer or the farmer’s wife not haunt the stories here, even out in suburbia, even in the middle of the city? The Native population that was here for so long before those farmers, all these goddamned mini-malls now?

 

Q)    Let’s say, hypothetically, that a preeminent book reviewer misread (or, really, didn’t finish reading) your book, and then made a flawed negative analysis in a major publication. What is your cocktail of choice?

 

The Weep No More, of course.