Ryan Boudinot is the author of Blueprints of the Afterlife, Misconception, and The Littlest Hitler: Stories.
My grandfathers: John Harbert, a three-war veteran; and Robert Boudinot, a visual artist.
–Name a work you wish you’d written.
“Everything Ravaged and Everything Burned” by Wells Tower. I tried writing a Viking story years ago and it was a disaster. When I read Tower’s story, I saw how it was supposed to be done.
–Name some of the original working titles of your work before it was published.
The one that I remember is Otherworldly.
–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary of and why.
Bruno Schulz. So I could attempt to save his life.
–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.
I have always had a pretty good sense of how my work will be received, positively and otherwise. I have yet to be really surprised.
–Correct a misperception about you–as a writer or a citizen–in fifty words or fewer.
I honestly don’t know how to answer this question.
–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.
Maybe deplore is too strong a word, but I try to resist the notion that being a writer puts you in a special category that allows you to behave according to separate rules. I don’t really think there’s anything all that special about being a writer that gives you a pass to be an asshole.
–Name your five desert island films.
The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky
This is Spinal Tap, Rob Reiner
Being John Malkovich, Spike Jonze
Synecdoche New York, Charlie Kauffman
Brazil, Terry Gilliam
–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.
White Noise, Don DeLillo
–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.
The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck
–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.
None.
–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.
You really don’t want to know.
–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.
Certain stories—“In the Penal Colony,” Kafka; “Sea Oak,” George Saunders; “Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius,” Borges
–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.
No habits, really. I just plunge forward as best I can.
–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.
I really regret selling my drum set when I was 12.
–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.
Understanding when something isn’t finished.
–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.
“How do you write something funny?”
–Name a question you wish you had been asked.
Who are some contemporary writers you admire? (Answer: Trinie Dalton, Gary Lutz, Stacey Levine, Grace Krilonovich, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Michael Klein, Victoria Nelson, Vladimir Sorokin, Aase Berg, Sjon, and on and on….)










Anthony Bourdain’s new collection of essays, Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook, comes out 10 years after Kitchen Confidential. The essays span a wealth of topics, including people he detests (such as Alice Waters), being humiliated by Sandra Lee, the David Chang phenomenon, tricking his daughter about McDonald’s, being a judge on Top Chef, and spending a crazy day with a fish specialist at Le Bernadin.