"Irrationality has a great role in American life"
— Peter Straub
Need we say more? As far as I can tell, irrationality has the primary role in American life. America seems possessed by magical thinking, and our understanding of how that affects our literary life is only now beginning to catch up. For almost a century, we were convinced that serious literature must by definition exclude our dreams and nightmares.
Need we say more? As far as I can tell, irrationality has the primary role in American life. America seems possessed by magical thinking, and our understanding of how that affects our literary life is only now beginning to catch up. For almost a century, we were convinced that serious literature must by definition exclude our dreams and nightmares.
Peter Straub has managed to do something about that, something very concrete. As editor of the Library of America's 'American Fantastic Tales,' and their edition Lovecraft, he has lead the way in the effort to canonize the fantastic. Yes, we can blame the pulps for this. Before the pulps, there was no genre divide. After the pulps, there were stories for boys and stories for men and women. I talked to Straub at the recent World Fantasy Convention in San Jose about his work for the Library of America and his two recent books, 'The Skylark' and 'A Dark Matter,' as well as his work on some new graphic novels. (And, I never knew this, his occasional role in the soap opera, One Life to Live.) Straub's one of America's great writers; obviously somewhere down the road, some lucky kid who is now geeking out while reading Straub's work in junior high, will have the honor of assembling his Library of America volumes. Here's a link to the MP3 audio file of our conversation.
Scott "SG" Browne
11-24-09: Scott "SG" Browne Interviewed at SF in SF
"It gives me the opportunity to meet some of my influences"
— Scott "SG" Browne
Here's the deal; I saw Scott Browne a lot at the World Fantasy Convention, and it struck me, when I was talking to him at SF in SF, that he might have been kind of new to the scene. But I should have remembered that he'd written and published horror fiction in the 90's. In fact, I probably saw him, without know who he was, at the last World Horror Convention in San Francisco. That said, we did have a nice chat at SF in SF, and you can hear what he has to say about conventions and the current short-fiction publishing landscape by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
New to the Agony Column
02-01-12: Commentary : Stan Lee Splashes 'Stan Lee's How to Write Comics' and 'Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics' : Lessons in the Form, From the Master
01-23-12: Commentary : Sara Paretsky Nails 'Breakdown' : The Machine Stops
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Interview with Sara Paretsky : "Everything in a courtroom is a story; it's not justice, it's combating narratives."
01-18-12: Commentary : Téa Obreht Conjures 'The Tiger's Wife' : The Grammar of Vision
01-13-12: Commentary : Hard Case Subterranean Block : Not from Bob's Basement Tapes
Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2012 Phone Interview with Lisa Randall : "...there seems to be some evidence, especially from one of the experiments."
01-10-12: Commentary : Archive Review: Terry D'Auray Catches Lawrence Block and 'The Burglar on the Prowl' : "A show well worth the price of a ticket."
12-29-11: Commentary : My Life in the Bush of Books : Island of Vice by Richard Zacks, Iago by David Snodin, The Coincidence Engine by Sam Leith and The Dipatcher by Ryan David Jahn
12-21-11: Commentary : Cold Hand in Mine by Robert Aickman : From the Seedy to the Sublime
Agony Column Podcast News Report : Three Books with Alan Cheuse : 'Kill Bin Laden' ; Ryu Mitsuse, '10 Billion Days and 100 Billion Nights' ; Michael Crichton and Richard Preston, 'Micro'
12-20-11: Commentary : David Blackbourn Visits 'Marpingen: Apparitions of the Virgin Mary in a Nineteenth-Century German Village' : Externalizing a Culture Clash
12-15-11: Commentary : Ayize Jama-Everett Reveals 'The Liminal People' : The Powers That Be
Agony Column Podcast News Report : The Agony Column Live with Lisa Goldstein and Ayize Jama-Everett, and music by Fenyang Smith, December 10, 2011 : "... let's look at what happens if people have abilities that other people don't have ..."
11-28-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Scott Wallace : "Within months of first contact, these groups experience a huge die-off."
11-22-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Charles Frazier, Part Two : "It's not me telling you, there's this storyteller voice."
11-21-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Charles Frazier : "If we're going in the wrong direction, we could turn around and go back."
11-17-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Gianni Mola : "The only way you can learn, I told them, is to watch me cook it."
11-11-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Karl Marlantes : "...the way I "think" about things, with quotes around think, is I tend to write them down..."
10-31-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Colson Whitehead : "In the Apocalypse, somebody's gonna have to do the grunt work..."
10-17-11: Agony Column Podcast News Report : A 2011 Interview with Russell Banks : "They are in a sense, permanently marked and thrown into this darkness..."
