Nobody is required to be interested in them at all. That’s the only reason I ever write anything, because the words must leave me through some avenue. Talia Lakshmi Kolluri: I think I contend with it by assuming that nobody has any interest in what I have to say about anything which is why it’s always a nice surprise when people do! I wrote this book because I needed to write it. As someone who has lived a life on the periphery with their very existence deemed illegitimate from birth, I have no hubris, just an excess of depression and self-doubt.Ĭhelsea Martin: You’re the one asking me questions. Homes: I don’t assume anyone has any interest. Like Kafka, I stand quietly in a corner, content that I can breathe.Ī.M. Hua Hsu: A friend came up with the idea of the “negative threshold”-a book that you keep on your desk not to inspire you but simply to remind you that plenty of people produce mediocre works, and that’s fine, you can do that too. And I am mindful of the many ways in which place informs a story and I’d like to lean into that more. A little more narration would be helpful. I always forget to write about the trees, the background, the lamps on the table. What would I like to be better at-narration. I started off as a playwright and hope to return to the form as I find it to be the most powerful. I love listening to people talk, noticing how they reveal their “true” selves through language. Homes: Dialogue-I learned the power of a single line from playwrights Edward Albee, Harold Pinter, Caryl Churchill. Steve Stern: I am especially deft at undermining crucial dramatic moments with warmed-over third-rate jokes, and I wish I could cut it out.Ī.M. What craft elements do you think are your strong suit, and what would you like to be better at? The only trouble I would have with this career is having to focus on just one animal for an extended period of time, because I want to learn about all of them.
Talia Lakshmi Kolluri: Animal behaviorist. Steve Stern: I would like to be a tree-trimmer dangling from dizzy heights with my trusty chainsaw, Lucille, always harboring in my heart an ambition to prune the Tree of Life. For the Rolling Stones, well, they are the greatest rock ‘n roll band and I’ve got some moves and a pair of drumsticks that need to move. I love listening to people talk about their bodies-their relationship to health and how they experience dis-ease. To me the practice of medicine is an art and a craft. As a kid I went to the National Medical Library in Bethesda Maryland at night to read books about medicine. Homes: I would be both a doctor and a musician in the Rolling Stones. If you could choose a career besides writing (irrespective of schooling requirements and/or talent) what would it be?Ī.M. But since “ineluctable” is the only word I despise, I can’t say I really despise any other words that people have used when describing my writing.Ĭhelsea Martin: “Honest.” How tf do you know? I don’t think anyone’s ever described my writing as “ineluctable” (I also don’t know what this word means despite it appearing in an essay I’ve assigned every year for the past decade and a half). Hua Hsu: The only word I despise is “ineluctable” because it’s so hard for me to pronounce. A desire for more apple pie-with a better crust. A deep love of the idea of the American Dream. The need to laugh when the going gets tough. Seeing weird things-the enormous inequity of the American experience. Homes: The surrealism of everyday life, a childhood spent in Washington D.C., friends whose children didn’t know where their father’s worked. Hua Hsu: I grew up obsessed with songs that seemed loud and quiet at the same time.Ī.M. Without explaining why and without naming other authors or books, can you discuss the various influences on your book? And as much as it is a story about how we got to where we are politically it is also equally a story about a family, about the power of secrets to disrupt, about coming of age, coming to consciousness and embrace one’s own identity and desire. The Unfolding is an illustration, a cultural road map charting the intersection of dark money and the political establishment having lost touch with the American people. The desire for those in power to hold onto power-at any cost. Steve Stern: The kind of outsize vision that displaces everything else in experience, Paris when it was the dead center of the cultural universe, Paris when the Nazis came and the lights went out, fugitive Jews making beautiful and terrible images despite God’s caveat, the romance of self-loathing.Ī.M.
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