"I think love stories do have a lot of terror in them."
—Mona Simpson
Interviewing Mona Simpson, as we discussed her superb novel, 'Casebook,' I could not help but be impressed by the combination of human insight and sheer intelligence she brought to the conversation. Her characters seem real to readers because she builds them in her own mind with an intimate degree of detail.
'Casebook' is a very intense novel to read. It's often very funny, then quite terrifying, then unbelievably poignant. Bu as a reader you never notice the transitions until after they have transpired. Her prose has the prickly feel of real life, and she's able to discuss how she achieves these effects.
Simpson and I also discussed her vision of Los Angeles. In the novel it feels spot-on, but my description of that differed sharply from hers. I've lived in both LA and Northern California as both an adult and a child. I was brought up as a child in both places, for long stretches of my life, and I brought up my own children in both places as well. It was fun to try to chart out why we had such different takes on the same sun-baked streets.
04-23-14 UPDATE:Podcast Update: Time to Read Episode 158: Mona Simpson, 'Casebook'
Click image for audio link.
Here's the one-hundred fifty-eighth episode of my series of podcasts, which I'm calling Time to Read. Hitting the two-year mark, I'm going to make an effort to stay ahead, so that podcast listeners can get the same sort of "sneak preview" effect that radio listeners get each Friday morning. This week, I seem to be on top opf the game, but who knows what the hell might happen. I am hoping to stay back up and stumbling.
My hope is that in under four minutes I can offer readers a concise review and an opportunity to hear the author read from or speak about the work. I'm hoping to offer a new one every week.
The one-hundred fifty-eighth episode is a look at Mona Simpson and 'Casebook.'
Click image for audio link.
Photo Credit Zane Williams.
"..when you read really trashy newspapers about people killing each other and all, they're usually in the midst of a divorce."
—Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore is extremely good about letting her work speak for itself. She's a great live reader of her own stories. But she's also a teacher and her ability to convey ideas about her own writing came to the fore when we sat down to talk about the stories in 'Bark.'
Discussing a collection of short stories is a huge challenge for me, as I prefer to let readers explore the prose and the stories on their own. So when you pull out the plots and the actual prose from a short story, you have to be careful not to tear what remains to shreds, but again, Moore knows her own work and she lives in the canon. So a discussion about Lorrie Moore's work with Lorrie Moore is doubly informed.
Divorce is, of course, much on the minds of the characters in 'Bark,' but it's not the only thing. This is a book first and foremost that offers readers snapshots of how we live today. In a sense, this book is sort of a documentary, and while the stories are all fiction, it tells you more about the way that most Ame3ricans are getting by in the early 21st century than a raft of non-fiction, and in a manner that is much more charismatic.
Charisma is actually a key here, I realize in retrospect. Lorrie Moore has the easy authority that lends the writer an aura of the charismatic, the hypnotic. I suspect that this is because she knows us better than we know ourselves. She also knows literature better than most of us, and readers will find the literary allusions we discussed in the stories really quite fascinating. After hearing her, your reading and re-reading will be all the more enjoyable.
08-21-15: Agony Column Podcast News Report : Senator Claire McCaskill is 'Plenty Ladylike' : Internalizing Determination to Overcome Sexism [Incudes Time to Read EP 211: Claire McCaskill, Plenty Ladylike, plus A 2015 Interview with Senator Claire McCaskill]
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Emily Schultz Unleashes 'The Blondes' : A Cure by Color [Incudes Time to Read EP 210: Emily Schultz, The Blondes, plus A 2015 Interview with Emily Schultz]
07-05-15: Commentary : Dr. Michael Gazzaniga Tells Tales from Both Sides of the Brain : A Life in Neuroscience Reveals the Life of Science
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Michael Gazzaniga : "We made the first observation and BAM there was the disconnection effect..."
04-21-15: Commentary : Kazuo Ishiguro Unearths 'The Buried Giant' : The Mist of Myth and Memory
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Kazuo Ishiguro : ".... by the time I was writing this novel, the lines between what was fantasy and what was real had blurred for me..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2015 Interview with Marc Goodman : "...every physical object around us is being transformed, one way or another, into an information technology..."
Agony Column Podcast News Report UPDATE: Time to Read Episode 199: Marc Goodman : Future Crimes: Everything Is Connected, Everyone Is Vulnerable and What We Can Do About It
