"I feel like something very large is laughing at me."
— Michael Swanwick
It's not a rainy day by any reckoning, but virtually speaking, it has been a month of apocalyptic floods. I might as well return to the winter of 2009, when I spent some quality time with some of the world's best writers at the World Fantasy Convention in San Jose.
One of my favorite memories is talking to Michael Swanwick, a writer who has written in just about every genre or non-genre you care to imagine.
The world has changed a bit since I performed this interview, but not so much as to be unrecognizable. When I sat down with Michael Swanwick, I realized that I could put on any hat I so desired; science fiction, fantasy, mystery, non-fiction, literary fiction interviewer – because Swanwick has written them all.
My interviews have many plans and approaches before I sit down. Usually, those get tossed by the wayside as the conversation emerges. Here's a fine example opf that stretgy of no-strategy, ecnause the conversation makes demands that the interviewer must follow.
06-09-10: A 2010 Conversation with Paul Provenza and Dan Dion
"I was raised to respect the printed word so much, when I was in school, I couldn't highlight books..."
—Paul Provenza
You set up an interview with a comedian and a photographer to talk about their book about comedians, and you get some preconceptions. The gig is at The Booksmith, the same folks who presented Chuck Palahniuk, but this one is at the bookstore and I was unsure of where I'd be doing the interview — maybe in the back of the store by the children's books? No, they were kind enough to put us upstairs. But, though the date was wrong, it was in fact the first day of summer. They were jackhammering outside, so I had to close the window and turn the little desk area into a sort of sweatbox.
For this reason, I always bring cold water. No actually, the reason I bring cold water is so that in the event I have a horrific coughing fit from some rogue allergic reaction, I can at least manage not to make my guests think I'm going to expire right in front of them. But the cold water came in handy as we talked and all my carefully planned thoghts went right off the rail.
Sure, I could have asked these gentleman, Dan Dion and Paul Provenza, about the funniest lines they heard, and the wild antics they endured. But that just didn't feel right, and I found myself exploring another avenue entirely, which was an attempt to get at the book as a revelation of how comedy gets done — and to do so without spoiling the joke, so to speak.
Thus, while we had plenty of fun, our conversation covered a lot more of the craft of comedy than playing through a greatest hits parade. I found both Dan and Paul to be very immersed in that craft aspect, and willing, yes, eager to talk about it. Of course we had a lot of fun and this being a podcast, well, Paul managed to meticulously use every one of the seven words I'm not supposed to broadcast on the radio. (I have managed to pull off broadcasting both "asshole" and "bullshitting." I will never forget the look on my co-interviewer's face when I blithely read a line from a book with the word "asshole." She was ready for her role as a vampire on some CW series, before there was a CW or any series about vampres.) You can hear our conversation — and Paul Provenza meticulously hanging up on everyone unfortunate enough o try to call The Booksmith while we spoke — by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
06-08-10:A 2010 Interview With China Miéville
"...I do like trying to change the voice book from book."
—China Miéville
Readers who subscribe to Interzone may have noticed that I wrote for that magazine from time to time, when I have something that really grabs my attention. Not surprisingly, 'Kraken' managed that feat, no problem. The next step was setting up an interview, over the phone, since Miéville won't be in the US until July for ComicCon. Fortunately, I'm an early riser, so an 8AM curtain call (4 PM in the tentacle-enshrouded remains of London) is not a problem.
When we think of China Miéville, sure there are a lot of us who enjoy his utterly grotesque, baroque "pulpy romps," as he described them. And it is easy to get distracted by his incredibly detailed surfaces, his ability to conjure up in the reader's mind something akin to a $30-million dollar Giger sculpture underneath the streets of London in a few short sentences.
But as I spoke with Miéville, I was reminded that his ability to work with such power and ease comes not from wallowing in the pulps so much as wallowing in the classics, in this case, Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow.' There was a point back in 1970 when Pynchon's landmark was up against Sir Arthur C. Clarke's 'Rendezvous With Rama' for a Nebula and lost.
While that might seem like a monumental failure of vision now, it hardly matters in the long run, as Pynchon was at work shaping a new generation of visionaries, including China Miéville. He and I talked about Pynchon's influences on his writing at a prose level, and I do believe that they are a large part of what makes his work both extremely entertaining and ultimately, rather powerful.
I transcribed most of my interview for Interzone, but space did not allow me to transcribe it all, and I'm guessing that they won't have space for the pertinent Pynchon quote that Miéville sent me after our interview, which I offer here:
"The rest of us, not chosen for enlightenment, left on the outside of Earth, at the mercy of a Gravity we have only begun to learn how to detect and measure, must go on blundering inside our front-brain faith in Kute Korrespondences, hoping that for each psi-synthetic taken from Earth's soul there is a molecule, secular, more or less ordinary and named, over here - kicking endlessly among the plastic trivia, finding in each Deeper Significance and trying to string them all together like terms of a power series hoping to zero in on the tremendous and secret Function whose name, like the permuted names of God, cannot be spoken... plastic saxophone reed sounds of unnatural timbre, shampoo bottle ego-image, Cracker Jack prize one-shot amusement, home appliance casing fairing for winds of cognition, baby bottles tranquilization, meat packages disguise of slaughter, dry-cleaning bags infant strangulation, garden hoses feeding endlessly the desert... but to bring them together, in their slick persistence and our preterition... to make sense out of, to find the meanest sharp sliver of truth in so much replication, so much waste... [Gravity's Rainbow, p. 590]"
—Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow was typing on his computer when I arrived, checking email as I set up my recording gear. He's a busy guy — just check out the accompanying article on his new project 'With a Little Help,' toss in a stuffed-to-the gills tour for his new novel, 'For the Win' and his usual busy slate of daily contributions to Boing Boing, and an interview can totally understand why Doctorow's hands rarely leave the keyboard.
Cory Doctorow did leave the keyboard behind when he sat down to talk to me in his hotel room about his latest novel and whatever else was on both our minds. Yes, I have to admit it, I started with a totally obscure question about an obscure Belgian techno artist named Speedy J. I first discovered Speedy J on a Warp Records compilation (with Aphex Twin) and proceeded to buy his work. And I made a kind of judgment call, in that I didn't ask Doctorow to elaborate on why I found Speedy J's track title, "The FUN Equations" so relevant, because to my mind, it'[s one of the joys of his new novel 'For the Win' to discover that yourself as a reader. But trust me it does have something to do with something in the novel!
We talked a lot about 'For The Win,' and also about his collection 'With a Little Help.' Now, just to be clear, I had read the PW piece before going in. However, I didn't expect to actually see a hardcopy and I'm sure my eyes bugged more than a little when I did see it. I tried to be demure, but I'm a page-slavering book addict. And it was really quite unexpected when Doctorow was so kind as to say, "Well, this book is getting heavy anyway.... why don't you take it off my hands?" No hesitation here! You can hear our conversation by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
09-07-10: Commentary : Mario Guslandi Reviews 'Dark Faith' : ".. beneath the gore, the violence of horror, there is often a spiritual undercurrent that remains unexplored."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Two Books With Alan Cheuse : 'Freedom' by Jonathan Franzen and 'The Fall' by Guillermo Del Toro and Chuck Hogan
09-06-10: Commentary : Brendan Connell Tells 'Unpleasant Tales' : Close-up and Too Close-up
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Guy Gavriel Kay : "I'm telling myself you bloody well better figure out where this is going because you have to start heading there sometime around now."
09-03-10: Commentary : The Eternal Youth of 'Madame Bovary' : "To be simple is no small matter."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Bruckner Chase at Blue Ocean Film Festival : "...a breath to your right and look at the moonset over the Pacific, and a breath to your left and see the sun rise over the mountains..."
09-02-10: Commentary : Collecting Philip K. Dick : The Books That Launched A Thousand Films
08-30-10: Commentary : David Doubilet Captures 'Water Time Light' : Painting with Pixels
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview With David Doubilet and Jennifer Hayes : "Everything people have always feared about photography comes true underwater."
08-25-10: Commentary : Vendela Vida 'The Lovers' : Reading and Revelation
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Live Reading and Interview with Vendela Vida At Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...there was an owl that came into this place we were renting one day..."
08-24-10: Commentary : Jeff VanderMeer and 'The Third Bear' : Absurd Is as Absurd Does
08-20-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes 'Deadman's Road' : Deader Than Thou
Agony Column Podcast News Report : On the Phone with Vendela Vida : "You do all this background information, most of which never makes it into the book."
08-19-10: Commentary : Gary Shteyngart Tells a 'Super Sad True Love Story' : Retro-Prescience
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Gary Shteyngart Live Reading and Interview at Bookshop Santa Cruz : "...please like me, this will make up for Hebrew school if all of you like me.."
08-18-10: Commentary : Mark Pilkington Unleashes Weapons of Mass Deception : "ECM+CIA=UFO"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett and Barry Eisler for The Agony Column Live at Capitola Book Café, August 7, 2010 Q and A : "This is NewSpeak."
08-16-10: Commentary : Howard Norman Asks 'What is Left the Daughter' : The Past Always Rises
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with Howard Norman : "I'd wanted to write from the beginning an epistolary novel; this is just an epistolary novel that's consisting of one letter."
08-12-10: Commentary : James O'Neal Copies 'The Double Human' : Proceeding into the Future
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler and David Corbett Live at Capitola Book Café on August 7, 2010 : "If anyone thinks it's absurd that the government might assassinate the founder of WikiLeaks, it's quite a bit less absurd than I wish it were".... — Barry Eisler
08-11-10: Commentary : Joe R. Lansdale Takes Huck Finn to 'Dread Island' : "Classics Mutilated"
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Barry Eisler Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "...they'll pick up that angle and run interference for us..."
08-10-10: Commentary : David Corbett Asks 'Do They Know I'm Running?' : Crossing Borders
Agony Column Podcast News Report : David Corbett Reads at The Agony Column Live on August 7, 2010 : "These Families are making incredible sacrifices..."
08-09-10: Commentary : David Mitchell and The Thousand Autumns of Jacob De Zoet : The World is Ever the World
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2010 Interview with David Mitchell : "The periodic table of the human heart is still the same now as it was then."
08-06-10: Commentary : Tim Powers Sails 'On Stranger Tides' : History, Fantasy and the Reality of Reading
08-03-10: Commentary : Robert M. Price Spins 'The Tindalos Cycle' : Terrorize, Horrify, Repeat
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A Short Chat with Gary Shteyngart : "...the technology is outpacing our ability to absorb what it is doing to us..."
08-02-10: Commentary : A Second Tour Through 'The Passage' : Sending Characters into Time
07-30-10: Commentary : Subterranean Press and Robert R. McCammon Wake at 'The Wolf's Hour' : The Time Before Cheese
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : Allegra Goodman, 'The Cookbook Collector,' Noam Shpancer's 'The Good Psychologist' and Elie Wiesel 'The Sonderberg Case'
07-28-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space 2 : En Route, RJ Frith and Peter F. Hamilton
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010: Q & A : "The people you deal with at the publishers ... if they last the end of the week, you're lucky."
07-27-10: Commentary : Rule Britannia, In Space : UK Space Opera Demonstrates Excess is Not Enough (Part one, the Arrived)
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Brian and Wendy Froud at SF in SF on Monday, July 19, 2010 : "Well, I thought if I do faeries then nobody's going to say that I've got it wrong."
07-26-10: Commentary : Brian and Wendy Froud Seek 'The Heart of Faerie Oracle' : Cards, Books and a New Perspective
