03-11-11:Diana Paxson Interviewed at SF in SF on January 15, 2011
"I served as leader of the Covenant of Goddess for Two Years..."
—Diana Paxson
It's hard to imagine how deep the lives of writers can be. Diana Paxson is clearly one of the most talented and unusual writers you could hope to come across; the stories she has written are important and have resonance, they are mythic in the best sense and yet her own story is equally mythic.
And yet, I really didn't know much about her beyond the books she had written; those in themselves were clearly important. The Westria books and her Avalon novels, written with Marion Zimmer Bradley, are the kind of books that live in people's lives and memories. You mention her name or her books and the reactions are inevitably strong. And if you have any question as to what moves people, I refer you to the reading I podcasted earlier. She's a powerful writer.
But beyond her writing, her own life is like something she might have written about. She was there at the beginning of the Society for Creative Anachronism, and has spent much of her life in the Pagan religion. The upshot of this was that I ended up talking to her twice as long as usual, and was rewarded with a hurry-up from the moderator. You can hear her story by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
03-09-11:Rudy Rucker Interviewed at SF in SF on January 15, 2011
"These things we like about science fiction, the good old things; the monsters, the time travel, the telepathy, the aliens, the UFOs..."
—Rudy Rucker
It's always fun to talk to Rudy Rucker. He has a really unique authorial presence, that I believe is really quite clear when you get him on tape. He has so much with this fiction, and this comes across quite easily when he speaks.
My introduction to Rucker was the Warez Tetralogy, 'Software,' 'Wetware,' 'Freeware' and 'Realware,' some of them now dog-eared, much loaned paperbacks that have really made the rounds. These books have an enchantingly goofy feel to them, even while they are being really, really smart and inventive. Rucker manages to create complicated, even intense thought-experiments with the tone of a screwball comedy. In fact, and here's the important thing, he manages to make readers believe that the screwball comedy approach is a natural follow-on to brilliant innovation.
I talked to Rudy about the new Prime Books edition of these four seminal titles, and about Flurb, his online magazine. We also talked about a passel of forthcoming titles and one of his means of approaching science fiction. He likens his approach to the genre to the way the Ramones did rock and roll; he takes the basics and rocks with them. You can hear Rudy Rucker's take on power chord by following this link to the MP3 audio file.
03-08-11:A 2011 Phone Interview With TC Boyle
Photo by Jamieson Fry
"Well, God, when he was writing this book, and I think it was a bestseller in its day, he didn't really take into account the fact that we, ourselves, are animals."
—TC Boyle
There are few pieces of news so good for readers as the arrival of a new novel by TC Boyle. Boyle writes, and he writes for readers of books, the sort of books that grab you and take you out of yourself in manner that only books can accomplish. He doesn't mess around with any kind of literary style, his work embodies what has made books such a powerful force in civilization. He can harness the raw power of fiction.
Before he arrived in town recently, I rang him up in his hotel to get the lowdown on his latest, 'When the Killing's Done.' It's a fantastic piece of work, full of knockout set-pieces and driven by two of the most memorable characters you're going to find. Moreover, he manages to create a conflict that is a model of murky. If you're looking for moral clarity, you're going to find that 'When the Killing's Done,' while being perfectly clear in every respect, manages to embrace opposing ideas with a power that is kind of spooky.
Boyle himself always manages to match his books in entertainment value, even when he's holed up in a hotel room in Seattle on a book tour that seems nearly as intense as one of his novels. He and I have spoken numerous times and it is always fun to chat with him, even if we have to talk about the alienation of man from himself and nature via the alienating nature of man's creation, the telephone. This is the sort of question that crops up early and often in 'When The Killing's Done.' Hairless apes come down from the trees, build houses from sticks. If stick houses, the invention of those hairless apes, are natural, then wouldn't the eventual invention of the telephone also be "natural"? This is the sort of question you'll be asking yourself as you read 'When the Killing's Done.'
"I didn't want her to think that there was anything she had to do because she was a girl."
—Peggy Orenstein
Peggy Orenstein has a strong written voice; conversational and funny. As we sat down to talk at KUSP it was clear that she has mastered the difficult art of letting readers "hear" her speak. She arrived during the first day of Pledge Drive, and the station was in a rather chaotic state. But as a both a mother and reporter, she's used to chaos, and she adapted well as we convened not in the comfy spaces of the conference room, but instead, in a back office. Charles Kruger Litseen was there to record the interview on video, which proved to be a bit of a challenge in the confined spaces. But we eventually got set up and situated.
I'm not the prime audience for this book, but I really enjoyed it. I suspect that my take on Orenstein's study of extreme consumerism was something of a surprise to the writer. I'm guessing that most readers don't quickly identify the monster in this book. But it is clear that something is stalking American girls, and it is every bit as insidious as anything Wes Craven, or for that matter Stephanie Meyer, could dream up. Of course, it could actually be Stephanie Meyer doing the stalking.
Orenstein is an easygoing and entertaining reporter, who works from what I perceive to be an usual perspective. On one hand, she's very interested in the academic studies of all stripes, and she finds some very interesting numbers and experiments to talk about. She sends herself out on hazardous assignments to cover the odious little-girl beauty pageants, but takes them and those who participate in them seriously enough to make the story complex and interesting. She's a thorough and engaging reporter of facts.
But Orenstein also talks with great skill and passion about the influence of this marketing mania in her own life. Her daughter is right in the cross-hairs of the industry. She interviews the mothers of Daisy's school friends and goes on trips to the American Girl store with friends and their daughters; but she leaves her own daughter behind. You can hear by following this link to the MP3 audio file of our feature-length, in-person conversation.
New to the Agony Column
02-15-12: Commentary : Michael Saler Lives in the 'As If' : Fantastic Fiction Matters
02-14-12: Commentary : Archive Reviews: Jeffrey E. Barlough Awakens 'Dark Sleeper' and 'The House in the High Wood' :Bold, Unique, Horrific, Enchanting
02-08-12: Commentary : Thrity Umrigar Reveals 'The World We Found' : Slow-Burning Loss of Control
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Thrity Umrigar : "...I walked away from that meeting in 2008 with an old friend of mine and literally saw at least the outline of the book in front of my eyes..."
02-06-12: Commentary : Eric Weiner Posts 'Man Seeks God' : Religious Pilgrimmage and Mordant Wit
Agony Column Podcast News Report: A 2012 Interview with Eric Weiner : "...by the end, given all the amazing people I met out there, I've changed my views about that."
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."
12-15-11: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..."
