Golden-laced Wyandotte roosters have striking plumage, but not too striking. It’s not overdone, you know, like the tails on White Leghorns. Unless I’ve misunderstood the question. Then it’s whatever W’s drinking.
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
In honor of the War on Terror (and Other Abstract Concepts), my favorite of the Seven Deadly Sins is Justice.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
In W’s words: Ignorance Is Strength.
Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?
We have five cats and a half-dozen birds. I write in shorter sentences than I used to. The birds are all pro-war. The cats are too smart for the rhetoric.
So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?
How can you not believe in alien abductions? Or, more specifically, in alien abductions and replacements, as in the case of the current President of the United Now-Completely-Safe-&-Terror-free States?
What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?
Never ever sell out. Ever. Especially if you can maintain your integrity while drinking a nice cool beverage like Coke, driving your Ford, and cruising around on good old fashioned American-made Exxon unleaded. Did you know that Exxon averages only one habitat-obliterating oil spill for every Persian Gulf War they underwrite?
Who’s been eating my porridge?
Sadam Hussein. Don’t you watch the White House briefings?
Who cleft the Devil’s foot?
Good question. Donne right? I prefer his famous:
“Who smokes crack in the White House, in back?”
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the subject-verb agreement in the first question? I believe the cavalier idiot who’s asking for whom the trumpet toots is running for reelection in 2004.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
John Ashcroft’s fearful hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry with a load of wiretaps and surveillance. He knows you’re reading this right now, by the way. I bet you’ll vote twice next time, won’t you, if martial law is ever lifted.
What has it got in its pocketses?
My Colin Powell crucifix. My Fox News War Ticker text imager. My duct tape. My color guide to Terror Alert Codes. My Republican get-out-of-jail-free card. My “All Animals Are Equal, But Some ARE More Equal Than Others” Bush in 2004 stickers.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
Yeats, right? Okay, enough with the poetry quiz. Donne, Blake, etc etc. Enough is enough.
What has it got in its ‘pocalypse?
Stumped. Milton? Joyce? Shakespeare? Chaucer? Ari Fliescher?
How far is it to Babylon?
Not far. It’s just ahead, under that giant oil well fire.
Can I get there by candlelight?
If you’re carrying an AK-47 and have a ton of air support.
“Where is last year’s snow?”
Siberia, Antarctica, the Himalayas, the last State of the Union address, or in some other repository for the sickenly sentimental.
Can you call spirits from the vasty deep? Will they come when you do call for them?
I can’t even get my two and a half-year old daughter to come when I call her.
What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?
What have you done with the real questions?
Best trampoline story you know (or, in lieu of story, rules for best trampoline game you’ve played).
I wasn’t allowed on the trampoline when I was a kid because we lived down the street from the Bushes and “Georgie” got a cranberry stuck in his nose and had to go to the hospital and my Mom said that’s not the kind of boy whose trampoline you’re going to play on.
What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?
“The Bewitched Anthology,” “Dagwood Loves Samantha,” “The Trials of Tabitha,” “Let’s Play Doctor with Dr. Bombay.”
What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?
Sandstorm of sufficient strength to interfere with bombing Iraqi children.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
Well, it’s been suggested to me recently that the Vice President actually is still alive. I’m open to considering it.
What book or books do you press upon friends?
Fixing Daddy’s Big Mistake: How W Only Sacrificed Thousands of Innocent Iraqi Children to Satisfy His Unrequited Homosexual Obsession with Sadam Hussein.
What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
We can demand that all cyclists wear facsimiles of the American flag while racing their courses through, around, and over carefully placed Iraqi little girls, aged two to six. We can play the national anthem throughout, slightly louder when a collateral obstacle gets taken out. Fox News can update fans on the changing status of terror alerts as the stages unfold.
What is the meaning of life?
It’s better to fly planes carrying weapons of mass destruction or be able to order men around who fly planes carrying weapons of mass destruction or to live in a country on whose behalf men fly planes carrying weapons of mass destruction than to (formerly) live underneath planes carrying weapons of mass destruction.
If you could live in a book, which one would it be?
I’d like to live in a satire of the War on Terror and other Abstract Concepts, because, being a satire of the insane, it would, I guess, have to be about a perfectly reasonable, contemplative country full of critically-thinking citizens, governed by caring, thoughtful, and mostly non-substance-abusing democratically-elected statesmen.
Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?
I have to admit that at this point in the exam I’m worried most about whether I’ve exhausted every possible avenue to earmark myself for an FBI file. Some of my friends have them, why can’t I? Frankly, it’s embarrassing having worked for so long for a liberal university and not having caused the FBI to waste tens of thousands of dollars of surveillance on me. Thus far, though, it seems I haven’t provoked anything more than the occasional peeping of my neighbor Gus, who I’ve twice caught on a ladder outside my bathroom window in his French maid’s outfit.
Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
I don’t think I was influenced by anybody in this story except maybe so long ago I don’t remember. Maybe thirty years ago, my class with Kenneth Koch.
Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?
This story is written in a style I use every now and then when I get tired of writing more “standard” stories. I think maybe every third or fourth story comes out like this.
Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People” provided the overall structure of the story. Thus “Destroyer” began as a writing exercise in which I intended to follow O’Connor’s story scene by scene, but as the story developed, I realized that the set-up I had originally envisioned would have been completely wrong-headed. The structural and even thematic links are still obviously there, but morphed into something quite distinct.
Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?
My writing style seems to have as much direction as a drunken housefly; lots of directions, but none of them consistent or predictable. But this story is representative of my usual sort of story in that I tried to be as true and naked and real as I could manage, which was particularly excruciating in this story.
What’s your favorite cocktail?
Long Island Iced Tea
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
Hmmm…let me get back to you on that one. Still trying them on for size.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
No pain, no pain.
So, come out with it, already — you really believe in alien abductions. Don’t you? All sci-fi writers do…right?
What? We’ve been abducting aliens?
Who’s been eating my porridge?
A hippo.
Where have all the flowers gone?
I believe they followed the cowboys.
Does she or doesn’t she?
Whichever she pleases.
Did he ever return?
Yes, but he was never the same.
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
What’s your record for consecutively asked questions?
What is sharper than the thorn?
The false rose.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The eye of the tyger.
What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?
Fed him to a hippo as punishment for eating your porridge.
What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
Encourage the use of hallucinogenics?
I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?
Why eat creme brulee when you could eat Twinkies?
Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?
Why not… what hasn’t gotten dodgier?
What is the meaning of life?
Office supplies & summer mornings.
Can you say something, particularly in light of these grave times, about the writer’s role or responsibility in the creation of work that is purely literary, that is the work of the imagination, as opposed to work that serves more overtly and diras a voice of conscience?
Work that is purely imaginary, that is the work of the imagination and not of dogma, that emerges from the soul instead of being shaped out of held notions and inherited conceptions – this is the work that feeds true conscience and gives us hope of understanding that Other is none other than Self.
Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?
Beth’s Simplified Dichotomy of Approaches to Form:
Approach 1: Jokes are funny. A joke has a set-up and a punchline. If it has a set-up and a punchline, it is funny.
Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
The writer would be Farrid Ud Din Attar, author of the great Sufi poem The Conference of the Birds and also a book on the quantum phenomenon of Entanglement. I’m not exactly sure how they influenced me, but I know they did.
Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?
Some stories I write because I feel I know the story, some I write to discover them. This was a discover story. Every time you take the boat out it’s a new departure, even if you stick to that part of the bay you know best. With this one, I braved the inlet and made it out into the deep ocean. There, I discovered a floating island.
What’s your favorite cocktail?
My favorite cocktail is the dry martini with olive, but the view from the floor isn’t my favorite, so I’ve switched to VO on the rocks with a little bit of water. The descent is slower and more manageable for one of my advanced age and declining sensibilities.
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
Jeez, it’s hard to pick one. My specialties are hubris and sloth, and I practice them simultaneously. Greed has never been a favorite, but gluttony is a close friend.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
Sometimes you have to have the courage to do nothing.
Who’s been eating my porridge?
I have. Refer to my answer previous to the previous.
Where have all the flowers gone?
To Iraq for the graves of the thousands who have succumbed to shock and awe so that we might continue to wonder where all the flowers have gone.
Who cleft the Devil’s foot?
The Almighty foot clefter.
Does she or doesn’t she?
If she doesn’t, she ought to.
Did he ever return?
Yes, and he brought souvenirs.
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
The horse is blowing the horn and the rider is blowing the horse.
What is sharper than the thorn?
My left big toe nail.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Roll your cart over the bones of the dead.
What has it got in its pocketses?
Holeses.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
That would be my mother-in-law.
What has it got in its ‘pocalypse?
A cup of coffee and a come hither glance.
How far is it to Babylon?
It was a short bike ride from West Islip when I was a kid. Now, it’s a half step to the side.
Can I get there by candlelight?
A taxi is still quicker.
“Where is last year’s snow?”
Right here, baby.
Why is a raven like a writing desk?
They both eat worms. Neither of them pays the bills.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Knock yourself out.
Can this cockpit hold The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram Within this wooden O the very casques That did affright the air at Agincourt?
No and no.
Can you call spirits from the vasty deep? Will they come when you do call for them?
Only after a meal of beans and Pineapple Sangria. They’ll come but I’d rather they didn’t, especially in public.
What have you done with Dr. Millmoss?
I stole his road map, kicked his ass, and sent him on his way.
Where is fancy bred?
The fancy bakery.
Where do you hope to haunt when you’re gone (or, I guess, when you come back)?
A five dollar window at Belmont Race Track.
What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?
I’m a big Curious George freak, but I guess that was younger than 10. Stowaway to the Mushroom Planet, Doctor Dolittle, Tarzan, Treasure Island, King Solomon’s Mines, The Time Machine, Off on a Comet.
What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?
Overcast. Like Goya, I don’t like the sunlight interfering with my inner light.
Tell me a little about when you left home to live on your own.
Lived in a motel room. Ate a lot of Pilgrim Franks, the bright red color of which would come off on a paper plate, and Showboat Pork & Beans (pale little bags of dust in a brown sauce with a thimble size loogie of fat in every can). Drank 99cent six packs of 16 oz. Pabst Blue Ribbon and smoked a lot of Coney Island Green (a dime bag was as big as a bed pillow). Worked grouting bathrooms at the motel. Read the greats, the near greats, and the hopelessly obscure. Wrote stories in black and white composition books with a pencil (tales of snooze inducing brilliance). Lived with this girl with long, blonde hair. We hung out in the graveyard behind the motel, talking cosmic and messing around. One night a ghost came to our room and turned the pages of a big book on the dresser. We climbed the mountain across the highway, drinking from a bottle of Tequilla every few hundred yards. At the top, we found a broken down shack. Inside, in an old book, there was a love note, written in pencil, dated 1932. The salutation was: Love you forever.
If you could have a writer of your choice come live with you, who would it be and what writerly stuff would you want to talk to them about?
Emily Dickinson because I think she would be a quiet house guest. I would ask her what the dashes were all about and what I should do to better tell it slantwise.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
I went on a conscious crusade to read books, one a month, I was sure I would not like. I ended up liking many of them, loving some of them, didn’t finish the rest. It taught me that I don’t know what I like all the time, so almost everything is at least worth a look or a listen.
Did you ever go to a really low rent amusement park that had trampolines stretched over shallow pits and bounce and bounce and bounce and get really confident and start bouncing from one trampoline to the next but then kind of lose it and bounce in to your cousin Jeff and cause him to fall into a split timber fence and knock out one of his teeth? Did you ever do that?
No, I never did that. Trampolines always scared the shit out of me. I don’t like heights and in gym class in school, before you got on the trampoline, they went through a list of all the ways you could break your neck and wind up a vegetable. I realized at a young age that this was something I was not particularly interested in.
What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
Drive your car crazy like a crackhead and give everyone the finger.
I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?
The pursuit of truth has made beautiful monsters of us.
My story has a semi-wild chimpanzee in it; does yours?
Sort of, in the narrative voice.
Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?
Not really, but I certainly despise all those mother fuckers.
What is the meaning of life?
I don’t know the meaning of life, but I know what gives it meaning. Love your friends and family, be kind to strangers, do your work well, respect nature, pets and wild animals, follow your dreams.
What, in your opinion, is the relationship, if any, between the so-called real world and your particular imaginary one?
The older I get, the less the difference is noticeable. I would say I’m somewhat better looking in my imaginary one.
If you could live in a book, which one would it be?
A Moveable Feast by Hemingway (for only a week, though. Then I’d move on to Travels With a Donkey by Stevenson for a week, etc….).
Vandana Singh (The Woman Who Thought She Was a Planet)
Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
I read a beautiful short story by Walter Tevis in some ancient anthology and loved it, although I have forgotten its name. But I also wanted to pull its leg. Hence my story.
What’s your favorite cocktail?
The juice of fresh mangoes.
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
Gluttony, especially as applied to mangoes. Real mangoes, that is. Not the ones you get in the Western Hemisphere.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
Faraday’s Right Hand Rule. (If your thumb points in the direction of a current in a wire, the magnetic field lines due to the current will wrap around the wire in the same sense as your fingers).
Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?
I have a venerable 14-year-old Corgi dog who is a constant companion, without whom I would not be able to write a word. He lies under the table and sighs while I type. I discuss character development and plot lines with him, and he gives me this extraordinarily wise, patient, Buddha-like look in return.
What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?
To subvert the dominant paradigm.
Who’s been eating my porridge?
Certainly not me, since that is not my idea of breakfast.
Who cleft the Devil’s foot?
I don’t know, but you could ask Dubya and his cohorts since they seem to be intimately acquainted with the aforementioned gentleman.
Does she or doesn’t she?
You are assuming she is a binary system.
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
Where is the dyspeptic camel? Where is the green grass growing?
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
The unskilled fingers, the blind eye of a god called Evolution, perhaps?
Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
Dopey.
What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
Not to always trust rules of thumb (or is it rule of thumbs?).
Who’s been eating my porridge?
I think the world would be a better place if people ate more porridge. It just sounds so good. Porridge! So, the answer is: everyone, I hope.
Who’s there? Betty. Betty who?
I’ll pretend Mr. Barzak answers this question for me: “Betty get your freak on.”
Where is the horse and the rider? Where is the horn that was blowing?
I’ll leave this one for Robert Jordan to answer…
Kennst du das Land wo die Zitronen Bluhn?
Actually, I haven’t listened to Def Leppard’s “Rock of Ages” for awhile now.
How should I your true love know?
Skywriting. And bookmarks.
What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry?
Roberto Alomar.
What has it got in its pocketses?
A wallet, a piece of lint, a key. The usual.
What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
Richard Perle. Wait, did you say “Bethlehem”? I thought you said “seventh circle of Hell”.
What has it got in its ‘pocalypse?
By me or according to Olaf?
Where do you hope to haunt when you’re gone (or, I guess, when you come back)?
Maybe a Starbucks, or a Fuddruckers. Or go the Ringu route, and maybe upgrade from VHS to DVD. I could haunt an iPod!
What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?
My favorite book when I was ten? Dungeons and Dragons Basic Edition Player’s Manual.
What’s the most favorable sort of weather for your creative process?
Not too hot, not too cold. Porridge weather.
When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
About every three weeks or so for smaller stuff, every six months for larger paradigms.
What book or books do you press upon friends?
Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe, any poetry by Lisa Jarnot and Jennifer Moxley, The Age of Wire and String by Ben Marcus, The Tremor of Forgery by Patricia Highsmith.
Where did you grow up?
Erie, Pennsylvania.
Did you ever go to a really low rent amusement park that had trampolines stretched over shallow pits and bounce and bounce and bounce and get really confident and start bouncing from one trampoline to the next but then kind of lose it and bounce in to your cousin Jeff and cause him to fall into a split timber fence and knock out one of his teeth? Did you ever do that?
Accidents involving teeth give me the willies.
What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
Do what we, as a group, do about any major societal problem in America: make a zine about it.
I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?
Ray Davis said it best: “Restricting yourself to mainstream fiction in the late twentieth century is like restricting yourself to heroic tragedy after 1650.” Even more true in the early 21st.
What is the meaning of life?
“This is what you shall do: Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.”
— Walt Whitman, from the Preface of the first edition of Leaves of Grass, (1855)
What, in your opinion, is the relationship, if any, between the so-called real world and your particular imaginary one?
I have about twenty imaginary worlds. And they’re not even worlds since I am not very good at consistent “world building”. Tendrils instead of worlds. This is sounding really dorky, so I should probably stop.
Can you say something, particularly in light of these grave times, about the writer’s role or responsibility in the creation of work that is purely literary, that is the work of the imagination, as opposed to work that serves more overtly and diras a voice of conscience?
I think all times are more or less grave, and it is only the snowglobe shellac that our now-ness, which our present tense provides us, that we think the “now” is somehow more grave than any other point in history. The Merovingians, the Picts, the late Victorians, the Toltecs…all more or less grave. To the question…I don’t think any work is “pure.” Language itself isn’t ever pure but is always borne by societal expectations. So in theory all writing should be able to bring something to bear to a larger “conscience.” Doesn’t often seem that way. But I don’t think it’s an either or proposition. Good writing, by nature, is subversive. It doesn’t mollycoddle the reader. And so even if it’s subtle, or might not seem political with a capital P, good writing is nevertheless part of a POLIS.
Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?
I think Ms. Stein hit the nail on the head, and if she were alive I’d buy her a beer or three.
we’ve been offered a spot in an ad with some other publishers — it will be 4 books on a page with some text and the covers — in a national pop culture mag. Cost is $9,100. Anyone want to pay up? Come on, what else are you going to do with Aunt Aggie’s bequest?
(We will give you some books, and, er, stand you a drink or two when we next see you.)
Benjamin Rosenbaum grew up in Arlington, Virginia, and received degrees in computer science and religious studies from Brown University.
His work has been published in Harper’s, Nature, McSweeney’s, F&SF, Asimov’s, Interzone, All-Star Zeppelin Adventure Stories, and Strange Horizons. Small Beer Press published his chapbook Other Cities and The Present Group published his collaboration,Anthroptic, with artist Ethan Ham. His stories have been translated into fourteen languages, listed in Best American Short Stories: 2006, and shortlisted for the Hugo and Nebula awards.
Rosenbaum lives near Basel, Switzerland, with his wife and two small, rambunctious children. There are cows, steeples, double-decker trains, and traffic lights for bicycles in his neighborhood.
A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and NYC. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air & Space Museum; she was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology, and received her B.A.
She is the author of many novels, including Winterlong, Waking the Moon (Tiptree and Mythopoeic Award-Winner), Glimmering, and Mortal Love, and three collections of stories, including the recent Saffron and Brimstone.
Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopeoic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chose as New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship.
A regular contributor to the Washington Post Book World and The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Hand lives with her family on the Maine Coast.
Elizabeth Hand is represented by the Martha Millard Literary Agency.
“Thirty years ago, Cassandra Neary’s grim photos of punks and corpses briefly made her the toast of the downtown art scene. Now an alcoholic wage slave, Neary accepts a magazine assignment to interview one of her reclusive photographer heroes on a Maine island, where a rash of missing-teenager cases and an off-kilter populace grab her attention. It takes time to warm to the self-destructive, sour-tempered protagonist –she drives drunk, pops Adderall and Percocet, and generally tries to not stick out her neck. Luckily, Hand’s terse but transporting prose keeps the reader turning pages until Neary’s gritty charm does, finally, shine through.” (B)
— Entertainment Weekly
“Although Generation Loss moves like a thriller, it detonates with greater resound.”
— Graham Joyce, Washington Post Book World
“This novel disturbs like Cass’s photos of dead junkies and squalid club scenes. While in some ways she’s just another self-destructive person, Cass’s intelligence and talent make her an appealing mess. Hand propels this oddly appealing character through an old-fashioned mystery-thriller with stirring results. In the end, Generation Loss is a conventional story of sin and redemption. With darkly inventive polish, Hand reveals a character so deeply disordered, she’s both unlikable and compelling.”
—Time Out Chicago
“Cass is a marvel, someone with whom we take the difficult journey toward delayed adulthood, wishing her encouragement despite grave odds.”
— Los Angeles Times
“This smart, dark, literary thriller will keep you up at night. A photographer who has been drinking, doing drugs, and alienating everyone around her since the ’70s goes to Maine to interview a legendary photographer and gets caught up in the case of a missing girl.”
— Megan Sullivan’s Pick of the Week at the Boston Globe
“This long-awaited fantasy novel brings an end to the critically acclaimed Aegypt quartet that takes ‘the vast jigsaw that Crowley has assembled in the first three books – and places them in a picture that’s open, smiling, filled with possibility….gracefully written, beautifully characterized, moving, and thought-provoking…. [Graham Sleight]'”
— Locus Notable Books
“Just as lives that are only momentarily brilliant deserve celebration and respect, though, so do such novels, because life is dark enough that we need whatever illumination we can get, and there’s plenty to be had in Generation Loss.”
— Strange Horizons
“A formerly famous punk photographer attracted to the dead and damaged stumbles on a serial killer case when she takes a job inteviewing a famous reclusive photographer in this dark thriller of art and damaged souls, and despite only a hint of the supernatural, ‘…something of a departure for the author, but fully as elegant and significant as her overtly fantastic works. There is grave beauty her, and great thematic power.’ [Nick Gevers]”
— Valley Advocate
“Hand (Mortal Love, Black Light) expertly ratchets up the suspense until it’s at the level of a high-pitched scream near novel’s end.”
— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
* “Hand (Mortal Love) explores the narrow boundary between artistic genius and madness in this gritty, profoundly unsettling literary thriller.”
— Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Ægypt is a metamorphosis, a metensomatosis, a memory play and a meta-novel; a story about many stories, a book with a larger book inside it. The further in you go, the bigger it gets.”
— Elizabeth Hand, F&SF
“Cass Neary, Elizabeth Hand’s unlikely heroine in her latest novel Generation Loss, may be hard to like, but I found her story is easy to love.”
— Feminist Review
“A dark, literate mystery that’s easy to appreciate and hard to put down.”
— The Olympian
“The novel crackles with energy: it is alive.”
— Nicholas Rombes, (The Ramones and New Punk Cinema)
“Intense and atmospheric, Generation Loss is an inventive brew of postpunk attitude and dark mystery. Elizabeth Hand writes with craftsmanship and passion.”
— George Pelecanos
“Lucid and beautifully rendered. Great, unforgiving wilderness, a vanished teenager, an excellent villain, and an obsession with art that shades into death: what else do you need? An excellent book.”
— Brian Evenson, The Open Curtain
Praise for Elizabeth Hand’s previous novels:
” A literary page-turner . . . deeply pleasurable. . . . A delightful waking dream.”
— People (****)
“One of the most sheerly impressive, not to mention overwhelmingly beautiful books I have read in a long time.”
—Peter Straub
*”[Hand’s] language has an incantatory beauty.”
— Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)
There’s a reason for this search buried in our Writer’s Daily Planner. So happy belated birthday George. It’s the 25th iteration of the year 1984 and we the citizens of Oceania thank you for your prescience.
George Orwell holds a significant place in contemporary literature. His politically charged masterpieces, “Animal Farm” and “Nineteen Eighty-Four,” introduced an entirely different approach to issues such as freedom and totalitarianism, and remain fresh and relevant today.
Eric Arthur Blair, later known as George Orwell, was born on June 25, 1903, in Motihari, Bengal, then a British colony in India. As The Literature Network explains, his father, Richard Walmesley Blair, worked for the Indian Civil Service and his mother, Ida Mabel Limouzin, stayed at home with Eric and his two sisters, Marjorie and Avril.
By Frank Marcopolis courtesy of Creative Commons. He’s split the story into two: part one is here, part 2 TK.
“Can Erik and Batu revolutionize convenience retail? And what about all those zombies? ”
– Is the All-Night Convenience a metaphor for life itself? If so, how?
– What other symbols are used in the story (if any)?
– Is a new style of retail, one that will usher in a revolutionary era, on the horizon?
– Do you believe in ghosts? Zombies? Dog ghosts? Why or why not?
– Do you sleep in pajamas?
– What themes/issues/whatevers from the story do YOU want to talk about?
I’d love to know your thoughts. Listen to the story, and let’s discuss in the comments section.
Great piece about the only woman beer inspector in the UK (thanks Michael, Erin!). Apparently 80% of women in the UK haven’t tried real ale. How is this possible? Ok, so stout is no longer prescribed when women are pregnant, but still, come on! Next round, here’s some advice:
“The other thing is that women are more sensitive to bitter flavours,” says Annabel, “so if a woman’s first experience of real ale is a very bitter pint, she may never go back to it.” Better to start with something more floral, such as Caledonian Deuchars IPA or Theakston’s Old Peculier.
Carol Emshwiller’s stories have appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Century, Scifiction, Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet, The Voice Literary Supplement, Omni, Crank!, Confrontation, and many other anthologies and magazines. Ledoyt Mercury House, 1995
Ms. Emshwiller is so gifted. . . . She describes the ragged, sunswept Western countryside with a vividness and clarity that let us see it as her characters do — and understand why they love it as they do. There are moments of [Ledoyt] that are remarkably moving; there are scenes of great power.
—The New York Times Book Review
[Ledoyt is] as haunting as the song of a canyon wren at twilight.
—Atlanta Journal
It’s always cheering when an unclassifiable writer suddenly grows a little more unclassifiable. That’s the case with Carol Emshwiller, the feminist-fantasist author of three short-story collections and one earlier novel…. With Ledoyt, Emshwiller offers a historical novel of sometimes gothic intensity, but one remaining well within the realm of physical possibility…of all things — a Western…a story of unlikely love and destructive jealousy.
—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
A fierce and tender portrait of a girl growing up fierce and tender; a sorrowful, loving portrait of a man whose talent is for love and sorrow; a western, an unsentimental love story, an unidealized picture of the American past, a tough, sweet, painful, truthful novel.
— Ursula K. Le Guin, author of Tales of Earthsea — read the full review
Ledoyt is sweet and true and heartbreaking, echoing with the actualities of our old horseback life in the American West. Carol Emshwiller has got it dead right.
–William Kittredge, editor of The Portable Western Reader
Leaping Man Hill
Mercury House, 1999Leaping Man Hill is a satisfying novel, with complexities not susceptible to easy summary, as well as those quirky characters and some playful language. Finally, though, it is dominated by Emshwiller’s sure development of Mary Catherine. Readers who grow with that young woman may remember this book a long time.
—San Francisco Chronicle Book Review
[Leaping Man Hill is] another strong, satisfying western . . . a headstrong young heroine succeeds in finding her niche in the ranch country of post-WWI California. . . . An exuberant yet exquisite portrait of a woman coming into her own.
—Kirkus Reviews
Emshwiller is particularly good at showing the ways we aspire to self-sufficiency to insulate ourselves from a world beyond our control…. Leaping Man Hill is, if anything, a love story…. Love, strange and complicated, has been a theme of Emshwiller’s from her earliest, fantasy-tinged short stories, in which characters float, shrink, grow wings, and cohabitate with aliens under its influence. As Emshwiller knows, implausibility and affection seldom rule each other out, and in some cases the combination effects amazing transformations. In Emshwiller’s carefully drawn, realistic western context these changes are less pronounced, but no less revealing or remarkable.
— San Francisco Bay Guardian
— read the full review
Carmen Dog Mercury House, 1990** Small Beer Press reprinted Carmen Dog in June 2004 through their new Peapod Press imprint. More.
Emshwiller has produced a first novel that combines the cruel humor of Candidewith the allegorical panache of Animal Farm. In the hyper-Kafkaesque world ofCarmen Dog, women have begun devolving into animals and animals ascending the evolutionary ladder to become women. . . . there has not been such a singy combination of imaginative energy, feminist outrage, and sheer literary muscle since Joanna Russ’ classic The Female Man.
—Entertainment Weekly
This trenchant feminist fantasy-satire mixes elements of Animal Farm, Rhinoceros and The Handmaid’s Tale…. Imagination and absurdist humor mark [Carmen Dog] throughout, and Emshwiller is engaging even when most savage about male-female relationships.
—Booklist
An inspired feminist fable…. A wise and funny book.
—The New York Times
— Winner of the 1991 World Fantasy AwardEighteen short fantastic fictions comprise Emshwiller’s third superb collection. . . . again, her improvisations include inventive fabulisms and feminist satires, many with a science-fictional spin to them…. Emshwiller’s fabulisms court a sense of the sacred but cleverly undercut that sense with tongue-in-cheek playfulness. The ensuing deft balance between mystery and skepticism is touching — and often aesthetically triumphant.
—Kirkus Reviews
Emshwiller’s characters embrace the unexpected and extraordinary; their lives leap from the mundane to the wondrous in a surreal instant, and the reader feels transported too.
—Publisher’s Weekly
Verging on the Pertinent Coffee House, 1989“I have loved her work for years. Her imagination is fierce and funny, never mean.”
–Grace Paley
“[She] must be read, watched for, nurtured as an original and exciting new talent.”
— Doris Grumbach
Venus Rising, a chapbookEdgewood Press,1992A stunning story of an alien exiled to an exotic world, the peaceful inhabitants he finds there and his attempts to “civilize” them.
“I have always thought that Carol had the most inventive mind in science fiction. It is not possible to summarize her work as a whole nor describe it satisfactorily piece by piece, but it does all have a particularly tough kind of feminity that appeals to me very much. Her heroines generally rise to the occasion and they do this with only their courage and their imagination and they do this in ways no one else would. And yet, as a reader, you always liked her heroines just fine before they were heroic, so there is a bit of sadness there, that the world is the sort of world that forces nice, ordinary people into heroism. Other writers can be funny one moment and heart-breaking the next, but Carol is routinely both at once and she makes it look effortless or accidental.” — Karen Joy Fowler
“Here is a female living out among the breakers. Here is a man from the land-dwelling culture. When they meet, the encounter touches on culture-clash, gender politics, evolution in its manifold forms, relative civilization, even murder and kidnapping. No one else has a voice like Carol Emshwiller’s. She should be heard.” — Locus
Venus Rising is wonderfully Emshwillerian: lyrical in its language, delightfully idiosyncratic in its thinking, filled with laughter and strange pain.” — Pat Murphy
Another review. (Warning: this is a slow-loading PDF file.)
Emshwiller knows well the marvelous inexplicability of love, jealousy, and heroism.
—Library Journal
First and foremost, Emshwiller is a poet — with a poet’s sensibility, precision, and magic. She revels in the sheer taste and sound of words, she infuses them with an extraordinary vitality and sense of life.
—Newsday
Notes Toward an Article on Carol Emshwiller Gavin J. Grant
Carol Emshwiller, who has been publishing superb, stirring, challenging fiction for over 50 years, is a perfect Guest of Honor for Wiscon, the only Feminist Science Fiction convention.
If someone were to compile one of those futile lists of the top hundred writers in the world right Now! I’d have to hack into the results and replace the name of one of the politely-angry young men in the top ten with Carol Emshwiller’s. I wouldn’t put her in the top five, but only to avert the pollsters suspicions. Number six then, or number seven.
I imagine that when they discovered I’d spoofed their poll, said pollsters might be ticked off. But if they attempted to track me down, I expect there would be a Spartacus moment (perhaps without all the cleft chins) as writers from all around the world would stepped themselves forward to say, “I put Carol Emshwiller in the top ten,” or, “It was I who fixed your silly poll,” and so on.
Carol Emshwiller’s writing, and she herself, inspires that kind of action.
But why would someone need (or want) to put Carol’s name forward that way? Surely the cream will rise to the top? Well, some will, but for the most part, it takes work to get there (as well as some odd mechanical processes which aren’t an appropriate extension of this metaphor). As sharper critics than I have pointed out, Carol’s writing manages to both demand the reader pay attention and at the same time depends on the willingness of the reader to invest their imagination in the story to be fully appreciated. This is why I would fix that poll. This is why others would defend me. This is why Carol’s readers are very happy people and are always putting her books into other people’s hands.
Carol’s writing can rarely be satisfyingly pigeon-holed. Her latest novel which we were extremely happy and proud to publish, The Mount (2002), is science fiction; but it can also be described (or defended or attacked) as allegory, a coming-of-age story, or fantasy. Or even romance. Ledoyt(1995) is a biographical historical Western coming-of-age story. Carmen Dog(1990), a novel that I hope every Wiscon attendee will read, is transformative in many senses of the word. As for Carol’s short stories: they are many, they are awesome, and each one is worth an essay to itself. Carol, of course, is well aware — and not at all bothered — that her fiction is not easily categorized.
Among the many resonances and influences in Carol’s writing are the mountains and landscape of the American West, personal relationships, the odd moments of war, and the actions and effects of people who may or may not be more damaged than the rest of us.
Recently, Carol has written a series of war stories including “Boys” (Scifiction), “The General” (McSweeney’s No.10), and “Repository” (F&SF), which explore war from typically Emshwilleresque viewpoints. Soldiers are unsure of who they are, who they are fighting, or why. War is the question, not the subject.
I look forward to reading many more of Carol’s questions.
Steve Berman has put out the first issue of a new magazine, Icarus, through Magcloud, one of those Web 2.1 long tail site thingies where you can publish what you like on any scale. Since niche mags are dying off like dinosaurs after a meteor crash, it will be interesting to see how this develops.Not sure if we will put out LCRW through them the way we did with Lulu; the ebook + zine format ($5 vs. $13) works quite well at the moment.
Not sure if you can subscribe or not, but you can preview and order the first issue here:
Icarus is the first magazine devoted to gay-themed speculative fiction and writing – from fantasy to horror to science fiction, and all the weird tales that fall between the cracks. Our first issue features short stories by Jeff Mann, Joel D. Lane, Jameson Currier and Tom Cardamone; interviews with Dan Stone and graphic artist Peter Grahame; poetry by Lawrence M. Schoen; plus book reviews, an article about the Gaylactic Network, and brief happenings in gay publishing. Icarus is published by Lethe Press.
We’re having an internet nofun time with all our @smallbeerpress.com emails not working. Boo. Old emails: info @ lcrw.net for instance still work. One of these years we will change over prop’ly, one of these years.
Update: snafu all untangled and everything is working again!
IndieBound just added a list widget so that people can have multiple wish lists (one for family, one for, er, friends?).
Of course we abused it right away to make a list of Small Beer books. Actually, Small Beer Press books, will have to go back and make a small beer booklist later. Copy and paste at will.
Michael Northrup’s firstnovel, Gentlemen, just got a review in the NYTimes and Michael, well, he’s a funny guy, so: lifted from his site:
I am having a contest on my website to celebrate the review of Gentlemen in today’s New York Times Book Review. The money line of the review is the last one: “Northrop’s first novel is creepy, yet it has what can pass for a happy—or at least satisfying—ending.” Yet it could be so much moneyer! That’s where you come in.
Simply write your own ending to the sentence: “Northrop’s first novel is creepy, yet…”
For example, Northrop’s first novel is creepy, yet so is Northrop. So much fun! So much easy! Just leave your entry as a comment on my site. The winner will be picked by a celebrity guest judge and will receive amazing prizes! (You know, kind of.)
It took a while to organize but we’ve just posted Michael’s great picture of Greer Gilman’s Cloud & Ashes. These angled shots give a much better idea of what one of our books look like and this, thanks to Kathleen Jennings’ wonderful cover, is one of the more beautiful ones we’ve put out:
Greer Gilman’s novel, Moonwise, is decidedly thorny. It won the Crawford Award and was shortlisted for the Tiptree and Mythopoeic Fantasy Awards. “A Crowd of Bone” is one of three linked stories, variations on a winter myth. The first, “Jack Daw’s Pack,” was a Nebula finalist for 2001, and the subject of a Foundation interview by Michael Swanwick. A sometime forensic librarian, Gilman lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and travels in stone circles.
Reviews
Cloud & Ashes
“A work that reads like language stripped bare, myth tracked to its origins. Seasons, weather, lust, pain, sacrifice … the stuff of old ballads becomes intensely real, with the natural contradictions of a cold wind that both chafes and dances…. And the payoff is immense. I finished Cloud & Ashes almost tempted to write a thesis that compares it favorably to what James Joyce did in Ulysses and tried in Finnegan’s Wake, yet feeling like I’d lived through it all.”
—Locus
“Moving, engaging, mysterious, glorious…In her flying pastiche of words and images Gilman does in the fantasy vernacular what Joyce aimed for.”
—Tangent
A Crowd of Bone
“Gilman’s ‘A Crowd of Bone’ . . . is dense, jammed with archaic words and neologisms . . . but the story—complex, tangled in narrative as well as syntax, and very dark—rewards the most careful of readings.” —The Washington Post Book World
“Greer Gilman’s diamond of a novella . . . might reward a lifetime of re-reading. A question like ‘What is it about?’ is as useful applied to Gilman’s novella as asked of a snow leopard. Both simply are.” —Locus
Moonwise
“Greer Gilman is a writer like no one else. Many try to employ the matter of myth and folktale, but their tongues are inadaquate—Gilman can employ words as the bards of Ireland did, to make realities . . . Moonwisedoesn’t resemble a work of the past age—it is the past age come back new, in its clothes and its language and its dark riddling heart. Moonwise simply has no peers.” —John Crowley
KL: Were there any particular writers or stories that influenced the writing of the story that will be appearing in Trampoline? If so, how exactly did they influence the writing of your story?
GG: Folk songs and ballads, mostly, ravelled out and rebraided. Lots of Anon. Some formal poetry: Hopkins and the Gawain poet, for the hedge-entangled language; Andrew Marvell, for the mowers. And for the soliloquies, a slew of playwrights. It’s a winter’s tale, a late romance. I wrote it for the ear, as much as for the imagination. There are two sorts of voices here, in counterpoint: Cloudish vernacular and a high Jacobean iambic, endlessly enjambed.
I owe the vision of the Scarecrow/Hanged Man/Child Sacrifice to the late miraculous Lal Waterson. Her song, “The Scarecrow,” haunts me, and it has for years.
Oh, and Thea’s magic is inspired by the art of Andy Goldsworthy.
KL: Is your Trampoline story generally representative of the sort of story you usually write? To elaborate: is this story a departure in style or subject matter (or any other sort of departure, for that matter) for you? If so, what was different or new for you in the writing of this story? Do you think it is a new direction for your writing, or simply an experiment?
GG: I keep moving inward. It gets bigger.
KL: What’s your favorite cocktail?
GG: Chocolate.
KL: Which of the seven deadly sins is your favorite these days?
GG: Don’t know whose friends they are, but Sloth and Gluttony keep hanging around my kitchen playing cards.
KL: What’s your favorite rule of thumb?
GG: When you come back for it, it won’t be there.
KL: Do you have any pets? How many? And if so, how do they affect your writing (if at all)?
GG:No. None. Not at all.
KL: What is the writer’s role in inhabiting the commercial spaces of publishing?
GG:Waiting anxiously in hallways.
KL: Best trampoline story you know (or, in lieu of story, rules for best trampoline game you’ve played).
GG: The one with the castellated blancmange and the roller skates has seldom been attempted.
KL: Where do you hope to haunt when you’re gone (or, I guess, when you come back)?
GG: A kitchen table with old friends. A library. Woods in autumn. An English wood in spring. A winter hillside on a starry night. My desk when I’m writing well. The seacoast of Bohemia.
KL: What are your favorite kids’ books? What was your favorite when you were a kid (say, 10)?
GG: Say five, six, seven.
I always loved Mary Poppins and Irene’s Great-Great-Grandmother (in The Princess and the Goblin). They were my first intimations of godhead. Mary Poppins is Artemis. (“Is this a Nursery or a Bear Garden?”) Prickly, aloof, but a great protectress if she’s yours. And the sun, moon, and stars dance for her: she’s a strange attractor for the numinous.
But Irene’s Grandmother — ah, she indwells. I’ve been writing about the moon ever since. And threads and labyrinths and rings, and children lost in houses which are dreams.
Alice got into my warp as well. Everyone she meets is so rude. And that row of asterisks as she’s shrinking — chin to foot — gave me a sense of the magic in typography, of spell.
What else? I loved The Golden Almanac, which gave me my fascination with the turning year. October had “The Wraggle Taggle Gypsies, O!” in a whirl and tatter of leaves — so ballads keep for me that vivid restless melancholy.
Oh, and fairy tales. “The Snow Queen” for the shards of mirror and the puzzles of ice; for the winter hag who is fell and beautiful, the crones in their reeky hovels, and the robber girl. And “The Twelve Swans” and “The Dancing Princesses.” I loved the nettleshirts that bound winged creatures to the earth, the wood of silver underground.
The Oz books, alas, have faded for me, though I read them all with passion. I still have my Scarecrow and my Witch, but she’s indelibly Margaret Hamilton.
There are other children’s fantasies I love — The Wind In the Willows, Earthsea,and Green Knowe, stories by Joan Aiken and Diana Wynne Jones — but I found them long afterward.
And a little later on–at eight, nine, ten — I read and loved The Secret Gardenand A Little Princess; Hitty: Her First Hundred Years; all the Alcott books; Elizabeth Enright…All the girl books, and whatever I could lay my hands on. But the fantasies came first.
KL: Tell me a little about when you left home to live on your own.
GG: Oh, I just snailed away, carrying myself with me.
KL: If you could have a writer of your choice come live with you, who would it be and what writerly stuff would you want to talk to them about?
GG: Dear me. I wouldn’t dream of imposing my company on strangers. They have their own friends, or ghosts of friends; their own rooms on earth or elsewhere. Unless by chance we meet in that publisher’s hallway…? And then drift away for tea. I’d love to talk with Sylvia Townsend Warner. And Angela Carter. Hope Mirrlees? I’d be shy of Shakespeare, though I’d love to watch him in rehearsal. And I’ve always wanted to take Jo March to the movies.
KL: When’s the last time you changed your mind about something? I think I mean a radical shift of personal values — regarding art (“Suddenly, I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday, in fact, I’m not even sure I’m spelling her name right”), regarding anything (“Actually, you can go home again”).
GG: I do change my mind, but glacially. Hard to remember what I thought in the Mesozoic.
KL: What book or books do you press upon friends?
GG: Whatever book is Three-Bearically right for that friend. I get a huge kick out of perfect matches. I don’t press.
KL: What can we, as a group, do to increase the popularity of multi-stage bicycle racing as a spectator sport in America?
GG:Free lemonade?
KL: I once had a creative writing teacher tell me that he didn’t understand why authors used science fiction or magical realism to tell a story or impart a theme. Why do you think we do, when good old realism might do the trick?
GG: For the tang of it, the taste of Otherwise; for all the flavors of quark: not just Truth and Beauty, but up, down, charm, and strangeness.
KL: My story has a semi-wild chimpanzee in it; does yours?
GG: Alas, no.
KL: Have you found that during the Reagan-Bush-Bush-Quayle-Bush-Cheney era the quality of your writing has gotten a little dodgier?
GG: No. My life, maybe. Not my writing.
KL: What, in your opinion, is the relationship, if any, between the so-called real world and your particular imaginary one?
GG: Aslant. Their landscape is like the north of England; but their laws are otherwise. It’s as if the White Goddess and the Golden Bough were true, as if metaphor and myth were physics. Metaphysics. Cloud has the same stars as this world — our sky is their Wood Above — but their constellations are strange. Somehow this world is bound to theirs: the back side of their brighter tapestry.
Can I quote myself?
“Not that there aren’t quilt knots here and there, stitching heaven and earth. Houses, in the astrological sense; or sacred places, which are realer than the world, and have a way of disappearing like the egg in Alice. Woods, stone circles, sheepfolds. And the one long seam, the Milky Way.”
KL: If you could live in a book, which one would it be?
GG: Oh, I’d like to travel in many books. Sadly, I can’t envision stories while I’m reading them, so I’d dearly love to see a score of other worlds. And talk with their denizens. But here’s where I live.
KL: Can you say something, particularly in light of these grave times, about the writer’s role or responsibility in the creation of work that is purely literary, that is the work of the imagination, as opposed to work that serves more overtly and directly as a voice of conscience?
GG: With all respect for the voices of conscience, it would be a sad grey world without works of pure imagination. Wodehouse. Austen. A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery.”
KL: Gertrude Stein said: “I have destroyed sentences and rhythms and literary overtones and all the rest of that nonsense, to get to the very core of this problem of communication of intuition.” The relationship of form to content. Form as it facilitates communication, particularly communication of the remote, of the mysterious. Form as it permits the dramatization of states of mind. As it serves to make comprehensible the incomprehensible. What are your views on this subject?
GG: Fugue, rhyme, rainbow — I love all sorts of patterns and forms. Conjugations and crystals. Self-assembly. Mathematics. I think people are made to make patterns, to see them with delight. Defy entropy!
The Baum Plan for Financial Independence and Other Stories (2008). He edited Feeling Very Strange: The Slipstream Anthology (2006) and Rewired: The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology (2007), and The Secret History of Science Fiction (forthcoming from Tachyon) with James Patrick Kelly. He teaches American literature, science fiction, fantasy, and fiction writing at North Carolina State University.
Jeffrey Ford
Benjamin Rosenbaum
A couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform, 
Bio
