While I sort through the wreckage, go check out Condalmo, where Matthew Tiffany has posted an interview with Brian Evenson, whose novel The Open Curtain was recently published by Coffee House Press. I wasn't aware of Evenson's stuff before, but after flipping through the interview, I'm going to have to correct that. Excerpt from the interview follows, click through for the rest:
MT: I wrote a bit on my site about my own preconceptions about a "literary thriller" genre. Basically, I didn't think the form held any appeal for me; I didn't think I could get the feeling of unease, a chill, "creeped out" - for lack of a better term - from a book. I'm glad your book was recommended, because I've got my foot in my mouth, gladly. Who are your contemporaries in the genre? And are you OK with seeing yourself labeled in that way? Because, if not, I'm going to need to make room for the other foot. (Incidentally, if you were to respond with a fiery "I have no contemporaries!" it would make for great press on the next book.)
BE: No, you can take your foot (or feet) out of your mouth. I used to be offended by those labels and then I found myself identifying less and less with what gets pushed as literature, at least by the big presses. I'm very interested in the way that literature can play with genre and give all, or at least a lot, of the satisfactions of it and still do something more. I guess in that sense what I'm doing often crosses lines between "literary" fiction and genre fiction ("horror", "mystery," "thriller," "sci-fi"). I guess I'm hoping that something about what you call the thriller aspect of the book keeps people reading but that they'll go away at the end with the book still eating away at them and other things happening philosophically to them. I think that comes from the fact that when I was young I used to read books that were too hard for me, and that I felt that things were happening that I couldn't quite grasp. But that made them somehow all the more powerful. That was something I loved, and something I keep trying to replicate, I think, in the way my books work for my readers.
Coffee House Press, incidentally, also published TDAOC-fav and litblogger-raved The Exquisite by Laird Hunt. Also, Lauren Snyder from CHP recently dropped by to suggest some "next steps" for potential fans--and early-stage fans, such as myself--of Gilbert Sorrentino. I think my next Sorrentino will be The Moon in Its Flight--but, that all happens in a hypothetical future universe in which I survive Gravity's Rainbow....
Also--so long as I'm here--on a strictly technical note, my apologies to TDAOC readers coming via the LJ feed. Seems any time I make a change in the Matrix you poor souls get blasted with a friend's page worth of deja vu. I believe that's completely out of my control, but if anybody knows of anything I can do to make that not happen, feel free to drop me a line.
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