Newtonville Books Community Blog

Ryan Boudinot is the author of Blueprints of the Afterlife, Misconception, and The Littlest Hitler: Stories.

–Name a childhood hero.

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….)

Peter Orner is the author, most recently, of Love and Shame and Love

–Name a childhood hero.

The great first baseman, Willie Stargell

–Name a work you wish you’d written.

Any sentence by Isaac Babel. Any one sentence by Alice Munro.

–If you had to order your work by how successfully you tend to complete what you set out to accomplish, what would that list look like?

I’m not sure it would be a list, I think it would more like a smatter, or a splatter, something along these lines.

–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary of and why.

Dickens, to read him in his own time, and at his own serialed pace, especially a book like Bleak House would, I think, be even more amazing than reading him as we do today.

Also Isaac Babel, I would like to think I would had the courage to stand up for him when he was kicked and kicked.

–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.

I’m continually surprised that the Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, a book about a pretty obscure southern Africa, resonates with people who have never and will never go to Namibia.

–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or fewer.

In spite of the above, I wish more people read my work in order to have misconceptions about it! I think some people want more action out of work – but for me, sitting at the kitchen table and ruminating on one’s failures can be very riveting. At least it was this morning. For me anyway.

–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.

The great Irish poet Patrick Kavanagh said, “Tragedy is underdeveloped comedy.” For years I have been planning to get this tattooed on my ankle. Any writer who isn’t funny, forget it. It’s not tragic. Life is tragic and hilarious and the two loop around and chase each other all day long, every day.

–Name your five desert island films.

The Sure Thing, Ordinary People (which is funny in a tragic kind of horrible way), My Cousin Vinny, Squid and the Whale, and to be all highbrow but by that Swedish guy…Winter Light (my kind of movie, not much happens), same Swedish guy, Fanny and Alexander. All the President’s Men. I think that’s more than five.

–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.

John Edgar Wideman’s Philadelphia Fire.

–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.

The Bible.

–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.

The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, needs even more sex.

–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.

That Melville was in love with Hawthorne, really in love. But maybe everybody knows this? I for one love both of them.

–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.

An odd choice, but very much the truth, a painfully beautiful book, Plains Song by the way too unknown Nebraskan writer, Wright Morris.

–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.

Always write by hand, stay the hell away from any computer.

–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.

Jesus, where do I start? Where does anybody? There’s not enough room in my rom capacity or whatever its called.

–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.

Being ruthlessly honest in every given moment in a story.

–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.

“Name a regret, literary or otherwise.”

–Name a question you wish you had been asked.

“Why did you beat up Evan Kushner at Camp Androscogin in 1982?”

Wow, I’m so glad you asked that. That little asshole really had it coming, wouldn’t let up on me from being a hick from the midwest who couldn’t even hit a proper backhand that what did I do in Illinois, have sex with cows while the rest of the world was playing tennis?….but I wish it was true that I beat him up; this would, to be perfectly candid, unfair to that little asshole, Evan Kushner. Both of our noses were bloody. I’d say it was a draw actually, and I’ve been waiting something like thirty some odd years for a re-match, in this my first and last fist fight. But again, I’m pleased by the question, and with the implication that I actually won. Thank you for it.

Stuart Nadler is the author of The Book of Life

–Name a childhood hero.

Larry Bird. He’s still a hero.

–Name a work you wish you’d written.

Cloud, Atlas by David Mitchell. A big book about the big issues: humanity, civilization, progress, love and life and death. One of the most stunning books.

–Name some of the original working titles of your work before it was published.

For a while, I called the book The Moon Landing, after the third story in the book.

–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary of and why.

Charles Dickens. I read recently that he wrote Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist at the same time. And it only took him thirteen months. How ridiculous is that? I’d have loved to be have been able to see that kind skill up close.

–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.

A story of mine – “Visiting” – appeared in the Atlantic’s Fiction issue a few years back. Every so often, someone will come up to me after having read it, and will tell me about having had a tough relationship with their father. It’s always good to see people respond so viscerally to short fiction.

–Correct a misperception about you–as a writer or a citizen–in fifty words or fewer.

Oh, I don’t think I’m anywhere well known enough to have created any misconceptions. I hope.

–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.

Arrogance.

–Name your five desert island films.

The Deer Hunter; Breathless; Singing in the Rain; Back to the Future; Goodfellas

–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.

Gilead, by Marilynne Robinson. I just love that book. Every sentence is a treasure.

–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.

Ulysses. Or Salman Rushdie’s Satanic Verses.

–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.

Probably “Catherine and Henry” – not because I think it’s unfinished, but because it was the story I worked on the longest. Every nine months I’d try a new draft. It feels in a way like it’s about time for that.

–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.

I love the story of Norman Mailer punching out Gore Vidal. Supposedly, Gore Vidal looked up at Norman Mailer from the ground, and uttered: “words fail Norman Mailer yet again.”

–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.

Collected Stories: John Cheever. And Emperor Of the Air by Ethan Canin.

–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.

Write every day.

–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.

I always regret the stories that don’t get finished. Or the stories that end up in a drawer. There’s always so much potential in every failed idea.

–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.

I think it’s the same struggle we all have – to write something others will want to read.

–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.

“Where do you get your ideas?” This questions gets asked all the time. Everywhere. Even by the people closest to me. There’s no good answer to this question.

–Name a question you wish you had been asked.

“What can we expect next from you?” My novel Wise Men will be published at the beginning of 2013. It’s a big epic book about love, race, and money. A plane crashes in the first sentence. I can’t wait for people to read it.

Leah Hager Cohen’s most recent novel is The Grief of Others

–Name a childhood hero.

Woody Guthrie

–Name a work you wish you’d written.

The Lore and Language of Schoolchildren, by Iona and Peter Opie

–If you had to order your work by how successfully you tend to complete what you set out to accomplish, what would that list look like?

I don’t actually place value in accomplishing what I set out to accomplish. I like it when the work surprises me by turning out to be something different than what I’d supposed.

–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary of and why.

Marcel Proust. Odd duck though he undoubtedly was. I feel a deep (and frankly embarrassing) affinity for the obsessive, exhaustive involutions of his mind, his need to come as close as he possibly could to expressing with language the way life revealed itself to him.

–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.

I never thought Train Go Sorry would prove so enduring.

–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or fewer.

That’s so funny that you say “fifty words or fewer” – is this the one question people seem to go on and on about? Some reviews have called my work “precious,” and while the criticism may be fair, I truly, truly never mean to be precious.

–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.

Certainty. “Deplore” is a strong word, but I’d say I tend not to care for books that seem to be the product of certainties the writer had at the outset. When a writer allows her ideas to be altered by the writing process, I think this generally shows in the complexity and integrity of the work.

–Name your five desert island films.

The Sting
Big Night
Days of Heaven
To Have and Have Not
Five Corners

–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.

It feels too presumptuous to wish a single book on every individual. I wish we all could come by experiences that deepen our understanding of humanity, but one person’s Middlemarch might be another’s A Long and Happy Life might be another’s collected works of Wislawa Szymborska might be…

–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.

I think most people nowadays feel no such pressure – for better and for ill. I was on the phone recently with my sister, who said, “I’ve got to go. I have book club tonight.”

“Nice,” I said. “What are you reading?”

“Oh, we don’t read books anymore – we just get together for the brownies and wine.”

–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.

I’d go back to the beginning and rewrite each one, with fewer words.

–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.

I’m f***ing Matt Damon.

–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.

Dime-Store Alchemy, by Charles Simic

–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.

I read my own words aloud under my breath constantly, which I didn’t even realize until someone pointed it out.

–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.

I can’t.

–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.

To stop apologizing.

–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.

“Why don’t you try writing a bestseller?”

–Name a question you wish you had been asked.

“Do you see your writing as being useful?”

Anna Solomon is the author of The Little Bride

–Name a childhood hero.

Pippi Longstocking

–Name a work you wish you’d written.

Housekeeping, by Marilynne Robinson

–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary of and why.

John Cheever. I’d like to ask him what it was like to be of so many worlds. (Though maybe his stories and novels answer that better than he could.)

–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.

THE LONG NET. This story won the Missouri Review Editor’s Prize last year. So it was received really well, and fêted, and that was great. But I didn’t realize – until I heard readers’ feedback – just how dark the story was. (It’s about two young girls exploited by a male photographer.) This often happens to me. I think I dissociate when writing difficult stuff. Only after, when I hear other people describe my work, do I really grasp its effect.

–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or fewer.

Honestly, I don’t know that there are many perceptions about me yet. Maybe next year I’ll have an answer to this one.

–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.

Arrogance.

–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.

The Bone People, by Keri Hulme

–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.

Jane Eyre. But they should.

–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.

I’m rewriting all the time. I try not to read things (at least critically) once they’re published – I’m sure I’d want to rewrite all of them. My story THE LONG NET, which I mentioned earlier, is in many ways a rewrite of my story WHAT IS ALASKA LIKE? (published in One Story in 2006). I didn’t know that when I wrote it, but then I realized: it’s a retake in a lot of ways. And I think (hope) it shows my growth as a writer.

–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.

John Cheever – drunk – liked to sled down the great staircase in the mansion at Yaddo. (Most Yaddo-ites know this, so not sure if it counts as a secret.)

–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.

Birds of America, by Lorrie Moore

–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.

Writing in the morning, before taking care of any other business. So I guess that’s called: FOCUS. STAY IN THE CHAIR.

–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.

When I’m between projects. I hate that period, after I’ve finished something and before I’ve started something else. It means I’m not doing the daily work of writing, which keeps me grounded. And it causes me great confusion and ambivalence – what should I work on next? I always have lots of ideas, I just don’t know which ones to prioritize, and which to let rest. Once I make the jump, I’m happy again.

–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.

“How do you get inside your characters’ heads?” I can speculate. I can try to explain it. But the truth is, that part of the process is pretty innate. And thank goodness for that, since so many other parts aren’t.

–Name a question you wish you had been asked.

“What are you working on next?” A novel, tentatively tiled PEAR.

John Dalton is the author of The Inverted Forest and Heaven Lake.

–Name a childhood hero.

The Swiss Family Robinson (Disney version)

–Name a work you wish you’d written.

Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go (though I’m greedy / foolish enough to want to write it my way… in the third person).

–If you had to order your work by how successfully you tend to complete what you set out to accomplish, what would that list look like?

The bigger the project (i.e. novels) the more likely I am to finish.

–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary of and why.

Someone who was well known for being kind to other writers: William Maxwell.

–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.

I had worried that my first novel, Heaven Lake, about a disgraced American Christian volunteer in Taiwan, would upset Christians. What I found instead is that the book was warmly embraced by certain Christian book clubs. It turns out that the truest and most thoughtful believers are willing to acknowledge religious doubt in fiction…and in real life.

–Correct a misperception about you as a writer in fifty words or fewer.

Here’s a misperception about writers in general: that we write because we overflow with artistic passion. Often the best writers and artists are unassuming people who, for whatever reasons complicated or simple, have a nerdy, lifelong devotion to their chosen craft.

–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.

The tendency to forget that, as hard writing is, as difficult as a career in writing is, it’s still a great privilege.

–Name your five desert island films.
Tree of Life (2011)
Raise the Red Lantern (1991)
Fanny and Alexander (1982)
Around the World in 80 Days (1956)
Duck Soup (1933)

–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.

What Goes On (Selected and New Poems 1995-2009) by Stephen Dunn

–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.

The Bible, The Koran, The Upanishads

–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.

When I was 19, I wrote a story for the sole purpose of impressing a girl. I’d rewrite that one. It’s the only time I pandered to the audience.

–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.

As the story goes…on the day William Faulkner accepted the Nobel Prize, he got drunk at a party at the American Embassy in Stockholm. Somehow he lost his Nobel Prize medallion. The next day an embassy housekeeper found it half-buried in a potted plant.

–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.

Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates

–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.

When it comes to starting a novel, I tell myself that I am definitely not writing a novel. I’m just noodling around, I tell myself. This is away of denying the enormous task ahead.

–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.

During my time as a struggling writer (nearly 10 years), I spent a lot of time feeling ashamed for not having a published book. This made for a lot of angst and insecurity…but it was also one of the things pushing me forward.

–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.

The same struggle we all face: time management.

–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.

It’s the question that as a young man I wanted to ask every established writer I met: “How is it done?”

–Name a question you wish you had been asked.

“Is it true, Mr. Dalton, that the act of writing saves you from yourself?”

Alethea Black is the author of the story collection I KNEW YOU’D BE LOVELY

–Name a childhood hero.

Perhaps not a hero exactly, but for many years I had a serious crush on Pepé Le Pew.

–Name a work you wish you’d written.

Any poem by Tony Hoagland

–Name some of the original working titles of your work before it was published.

Great question. “Mollusk Makes a Comeback” was originally “Please Continue to Hold.” “We’ve Got a Great Future Behind Us” was originally “Mistake.” “Double-Blind” was originally “The Flight of the Bumblebee.”

–Name a writer in history of whom you would like to have been a contemporary and why.

Any of those writers who died in penniless, depressed obscurity who are now famous – Kafka, Zora Neale Hurston, John Kennedy Toole (who killed himself the year I was born) – I would love to be able to buy them a whiskey and whisper in their ear: “There are things about the future you don’t know …”

–Name a work of yours whose reception you’ve been surprised about and why.

I have a short story called “Proof of Love” that has a whole lot of Jesus in it. The main character has a very strong but very idiosyncratic faith. I was worried about this story, and used to joke to myself: “You have something here to alienate everyone” (said protagonist is also very liberal). But people have, much to my grateful astonishment, really loved and responded to that story.

–Correct a misperception about you–as a writer or a citizen–in fifty words or fewer.

I think people misinterpret gentleness, both in me and in others. If you are compassionate or generous or forgiving, they assume you are weak. But really the opposite is true. I felt my boyfriend understood me best the day he told me I was all silk on the surface and all steel underneath.

–Name a trait you deplore in other writers.

Ha! I don’t like it when they avoid answering questions.

–Name your five desert island films.

ME AND YOU AND EVERYONE WE KNOW; ATONEMENT; LOVE ACTUALLY; ELIZABETH; and THE ELEGANT UNIVERSE. Although really none of these because I hate to see a movie where I already know the ending.

–Name a book not your own that you wish everyone would read.

The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien

–Name a book you suspect most people claim to have read, but haven’t.

War and Peace

–If you could choose one of your works to rewrite, which would it be and why.

You know, I only recently – as in, a few months ago – painstakingly edited every word of every one of my stories, to the point of reading them aloud to myself (one of the many reasons it’s a good thing I live alone) before I turned the final manuscript in to my publisher. So I’m currently at that point where I feel as if this forthcoming book, which is my first, is the best it can be. What you need to do is come back and ask me this question in three years … or maybe the day after the reviews come out.

–Share the greatest literary secret/gossip you know.

You know more than you think you do.

–Name a book you read over and over for inspiration.

He and I by Gabrielle Bossis

–Name the writing habit you rely on to get you through a first draft.

Actually, I love first drafts, when the jokes are new and the suspense is genuine and the surprises are real, even for me. It’s editing that used to bore the breath out of me, but I’ve tried to learn to see it as more creative and less of a chore.

–Name a regret, literary or otherwise.

A few years ago I finally got around to writing a thank-you note to my favorite high school English teacher — something that had been on my to-do list for about a decade. About a week later I received a lovely hand-written letter from her sister, saying she had died a couple of months before.

–Name your greatest struggle as a writer.

I *would* say staying away from Facebook and the like, but to be honest, I just had a story solicited and accepted via FB, so I shouldn’t be ungrateful. (Plus I secretly love knowing what other writers like for breakfast.) I guess one of my struggles as a writer and as a person is having the courage to follow my own voice, regardless of what other people think.

–Name a question you get about writing to which there really is no good answer.

You know, when people ask me why I write, or what made me want to be a writer, I can tell them how my father informed me that I used to say I wanted to be a writer all the time when I was a little girl (“well, why didn’t you REMIND me?” I asked); I can tell them how I used to read really good short stories when I was in my twenties and be so moved that I couldn’t eat or speak afterward; I can tell them how part of my desire to write was the feeling that other writers had given me a gift, and I wanted to give something back. But really it is all and it is none of those things. It’s ontological, it’s solipsistic, and it’s ultimately one of the great examples of the ways in which we are mysteries to ourselves. It’s like that wonderful Philip K. Dick story, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale,” where they get into Douglas Quail’s brain, and they discover that he wants to be a Martian explorer because he already is a Martian explorer.

–Name a question you wish you had been asked.

“What are you working on now?” A novel called The Lucky Brother.