Home : Interviews : Amazon.com
How did you begin writing?

I can't remember a time when I wasn't writing. When I was eight, I wrote a story about how I wanted to be an orphan and mailed it to "The Ladies Home Journal." My mother still has it. She didn't seem to find the story in any way alarming. I still remember how beautiful the rejection slip was. I thought it was made just for me. It inoculated me against rejection slips forever.

Originally, I intended to become a doctor. It wasn't until I was in my junior year in college that I gave up and faced the inevitable. No matter where I thought I was going, or thought I wanted to go, writing always seemed to be waiting for me at the end of the road.

I don't begin a book until I become obsessed with a subject. I begin writing when it's easier to write than to avoid writing. I suspect I am fundamentally the laziest person on earth, although when I am working, I am quite undistractable.

What books do you like to read? What books have had a strong influence on your writing?

I have very narrow tastes. I go through crazes. A few years ago, I read every word written by Marguerite Duras. This year it was the Japanese writer, Yasnuri Kawabata. The first modern writer to mesmerize me was Vladimir Nabokov. But I am not necessarily influenced by these writers. It is my theory that the things we read when we are young have the most profound influences, so I imagine that the Brontes, Sigrid Undset and the three million books of science fiction I read were extremely strong influences. At the moment, the Guyanese writer Roy Heath is my favorite writer. I want to be as good as the people I admire, although I don't want to imitate them.

Did you ever go to school for writing? Can creativity be taught?

I went to school at the University of Chicago, but not for creative writing. I am still homesick for Chicago and Hyde Park, although I left in l967. It's a great place, especially if you like gargoyles and I love gargoyles. Also, you never find yourself standing around some time in March asking, "What happened to all the snow?"

I taught creative writing at Brooklyn College for twenty-eight years. I still don't know if it's teachable. But I had a great many very talented students.

Could you describe the mundane details of writing: How many hours a day do you devote to writing? Do you write a draft on paper or at a keyboard (typewriter or computer)? Do you have a favorite location or time of day (or night) for writing? What do you do to avoid--or seek!--distractions?

I write whenever I'm not doing something else. I've always considered this a schedule, although other people say this is no schedule at all.

I write fiction on the computer, but I write poetry out by hand. The rhythms of each genre are so different I need to write down versions of stories and poems at completely different speeds. After I write a draft of a work of fiction, I print it out, revise it, enter the corrections, and do that again and again. Finally, I retype the entire story or novel because otherwise I lose a sense of the story as a whole.

I tend to work in the same place--in my study, in front of a window. I can't seem to write if I'm facing a wall. Writing early in the morning is best, but it isn't always possible. Once I begin writing well, any time is the best time, but when I run into difficulties, I do my best work in the morning. I am hard to distract. Once a fire started on the first floor of the house, the fire engine came and left, and I had no idea anything had happened. Of course, if I don't want to be working, I can be distracted by the life story of a fruit fly.

Do you meet your readers at book signings, conventions, or similar events? Do you interact with your readers electronically through e-mail or other online forums?

I meet readers at readings and at book signings and through letters they write me. I've just set up a website for The Autobiography of Foudini M. Cat, and am beginning to learn how to use the Internet. Up until now, I've been a Web illiterate and have only managed to handle e-mail.

How did you get started on the Net?

I began using the Net for e-mail and use it to communicate with everyone else who knows how to use e-mail.

What do you do when you're not writing?

I can spend days watching snow fall. I also work on doll houses, especially if I'm writing a long novel. The two processes seem to go together--in each case you're building a tiny world that looks like the real thing if you get the scale exactly right. Also, I'm studying Japanese. I don't know if this is a hobby; I'm too fanatic about it. I'm not sure what a hobby is. It's something you love, isn't it? Then why isn't work a hobby too? Why aren't my cats hobbies? If I love something, I take it too seriously to consider it a hobby. Probably I take everything too seriously.

Kurasawa's "Kagemusha" is my favorite movie, closely followed by Kurasawa's "The Seven Samurai," closely followed by Kurasawa's "Ran." I've been accused of being one-track minded, I can't imagine why. "The Ballad of Narayama" is not bad either--not Kurasawa's, but still Japanese.

If you could have only one book to read, what would it be?

If I were taking book to a desert island, I'd take the old Book of Knowledge. It had everything in it--I blame it for having made me into a person who is so curious about the world. Various people want to get my set away from me but they can't have it. I wish someone would reissue it.

Is there anything you don't like about being an author?

Is there anyone else out there who thinks that more civilians (i.e. non-writers) should be reviewing books? There are too many conflicts of interest when one writer reviews another, not the least of which is a kind of disabling professional sympathy. You don't have to be reviewing your best friend or your second cousin to feel as if you're an axe murderer when you have something horrible to say about another writer's book.

Professional sympathy can be very inhibiting. So can professional loyalties, which lead to good reviews that are nothing but proof of friendship. Whenever I say this, everyone tells me that academics write very dull reviews. But academics can learn; that's what they're good at--learning. By their second or third review, they'll know how to write an interesting piece. Of course, in time, they too will be absorbed into the writing community and lose all objectivity, but there is always another pool of academics to choose from. I know far too many people who say they no longer trust reviews, and I think I know why. This is a complicated matter, and an important one, and I wish there could be serious discussion of it. One book review editor said that he likes to have an author review another author because then there are two names to attract the reader's attention. Is this a good explanation? I don't think so.

What's the one thing you most want to accomplish before you die?

What do I intend to do before I die? Get a good night's sleep. It may be a long trip.