What is the music that Party Shuffle has turned you on to and
what do you ordinarily listen to? What is in your personal iPod?
You mean now that I’ve got over playing Mozart’s
“Requiem” on a loop every day? Here’s a sampling: Kristin
Asbjornson’s “Slow Day.” It’s got a dragged-down, way-too-slow
waltz rhythm to it that just tears my heart out. Bebo y Cigala’s
“Corazon Loco” and “Veinte Años”; Nina Simone’s “Don’t Let
Me Be Misunderstood”; Van Morrison’s “Carrick Fergus”; it’s the
saddest song of all time. Fleet Foxes’ “Oliver James”; Taj Mahal’s
“John the Revelator”; Tom Waits’s “Chicago” and “Face to the
Highway”; Alt J’s “Fitzpleasure”; Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab”;
The Mars Volta’s “The Widow”; The Kinks’ “Milk Cow Blues”;
Marianne Faithfull’s “Why D’ya Do It?”; Jennifer Warnes’
“Famous Blue Raincoat”. Lastly, Jet’s “Are you Gonna Be My
Girl?” From the opening bass line to the first hammered guitar
chords, this is quintessential balls-to-the-wall rock and roll.
Perfect. Flawless. Nothing but pure energy. Go ahead, set your
ears on fire.
You have just returned from a book tour, and you often travel to
the big cities; is there a difference among the literati you mingle with
who have chosen to live in those cities, as opposed to others who’ve
found solace and inspiration in smaller venues, such as Montecito?
Yeah. They’re the geniuses; we’re the schmucks. For instance,
New York, the literary capital of the world. They all schmooze
each other; one hand washes the other, etcetera. This was entirely
true fifty years ago: if you didn’t live in New York, that was it. But,
because of the proliferation of writing programs, writers can live
anywhere and be perfectly happy doing that.
I grew up in New York, suburbia; I am comfortable only in
suburbia. I love cities for a week. After a week, they get to me.
Particularly as I am getting older, I just don’t want to deal with
it. I don’t want to deal with anybody. My pleasure here in this
property is not to see anybody if I don’t want to, and my pleasure
up in the mountains (where we own a home) is to walk out the
door through the national forest and never see anyone.
By living so removed from your fellow writers, don’t you feel
you are missing some sort of stimulation that may help you in your
writing?
No. Not al all. I’ve never been that kind of writer. I’m
very social, but only on my terms. I know most of my fellow
writers and we are on friendly terms, but I don’t hang out
with any other writers; I don’t
know
any other writers to
hang out with. Everybody likes to romanticize the idea of
cross-pollination and I’m sure it happens, but that’s not for
me. I’m way too crazy for that. Which is why, of course, that
I’ve never worked in the movies. I couldn’t imagine having
a meeting with anybody, or listening for one second to what
anybody would say about an artistic choice. I’d rather kill
them.
Writers, for the most part, are introverts, which is why
they are writers in the first place. I happen to be a little of both
introvert and extrovert, so when I’m
not
on tour, you won’t
see me. But when I am on tour, I’m a real performer. I love it.
When I do Speaking Of Stories (in Santa Barbara), they let me
be the actor and I
am
an actor on stage. It’s a whole other way of
communicating with the audience, and it’s thrilling.
You are working on your next novel,
The Terranauts
. Can you
tell us a little about that?
Sure. It is a book about a theoretical second closure of
the biosphere experiment of the early 1990s in Arizona. Eight
people, four men and four women, are locked inside an artificial
environment with 3,800 species and kinds of animals, three acres
enclosed. Nothing in, nothing out; completely sealed. Can you
have a self-replicating environment like this? Earth is biosphere
one; that was biosphere two.
What happened to that experiment?
It all broke down. They were going to have fifty two-year
closures. Halfway through the second closure, six months into
the second closure, it all broke down. It was, typically, a fight
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