Condition of Mr. Segundo: Dwelling on legal inconsistencies.

Author: Katha Pollitt

Subjects Discussed: The pragmatism in learning to drive, being lazy, observation as a strength and weakness, “webstalking” vs. Googling, responding to Toni Bentley’s review, what a feminist is supposed to be, whether or not Susan Salter Reynolds has a sense of humor, on writing life stories, Deborah Solomon, the book vs. the person, the politics of writing, whether or not “men are rats,” double entendres, inflammatory reactions, the specifics of sentences, being picked apart in The Nation, reader interpretation, meteorological solecisms, humor and sadness, observation, driving with other cars on the road, Saul Bellow’s “departure mode,” the creative destruction of New York, landmarks being torn down, Coney Island, individual writing vs. community, parental secrets, public information, self-analysis, structuring, poetry, women cast under a spell, Anais Nin, dropping romance, “sperm sisters,” and writing stories.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Pollitt: Well, this is the great thing about writing. You don’t have to give everybody a vote. You are not the community board. You’re you. I write what I think. And if somebody else feels differently, they can write their own story. Now in the real world, the people who didn’t like Coney Island won. They won.

Correspondent: I know.

Pollitt: And the people who do like Coney Island lost out. And I think that they tend to lose out. They tend to lose out. Because I think kind of a mass and corporate development is really zooming ahead in a way that, I think, is very sad.

Correspondent: I’m going to come in here with a raging burst of optimism and say, yes, the Coney Island thing, I find that personally sad. I find many things about the world extremely sad. But one must have some sort of optimism, I guess, in order to kind of carry on. One must believe in something, believe in some sort of good to at least kind of carry on in the face of a lot of terror.

Pollitt: Oh sure!

Correspondent: So I guess I’m wondering why this was not so pronounced. You actually say in this particular piece, I’m going to come across as one of those “Back in my day” kind of people. So why not go for this more all-encompassing reality of what it is to be alive?

Pollitt: Well, I think that’s in other stories.

Correspondent: Okay.

Pollitt: I think that the piece, the book as a whole, does not convey the sense of a world-weary person.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Objecting to snobbish Manhattan types who use three names.

Author: Brian Francis Slattery

Subjects Discussed: Matt Cheney’s “leap of faith,” paranoia, the advantages of writing in Guatemala, secret economies, food as cultural shorthand, the underground world of Darktown, H.P. Lovecraft and other fictive antecedents, disparate relationship models, writing sentences without many verbs, locative and temporal fugue states, writing to African music, polyrhythm, disorienting the reader, Square video games, dialogue, ellipses, em dashes, William Gaddis, quotation marks vs. dashes in dialogue, sticking in one’s hometown, attempting to classify the book, coming to New York vs. coming to America, Spaceman Blues as a “systems novel,” sentences, not casting judgment on characters, cockfighting, warning the reader of weirdness, on not knowing the ending, apocalyptic novels, hyperverbosity, resisting the 9/11 card, Don DeLillo, and Pynchonian character names.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Slattery: For a while, I thought that I would have those scenes take place in a specific neighborhood in New York. And I spent a long time thinking about, well what group would I want to focus on and where would I want it to be? And then, the more I thought about it, the more I realized I kind of wanted to talk about the immigrant experience — generally. I didn’t want to have to tie it to a specific group. And in some ways, I wanted to talk about the ways that the various immigrant groups, when they get here, will tend to work together. There’s such a thing as an immigrant community. And I wanted to be able to talk about that in a sort of cool and engaging way, and also to really get across the point that that’s this full network that you don’t see. You know, it exists here. But you have to know where to look in order to find it.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Finding uses for his Kleenex supply.

Author: Chimamanda Adichie

Subjects Discussed: Young novelists and ambitious war novels, horrible Nigerian critics, the novel as the ideal prism for the Biafra conflict, A Woman in Berlin, the advantages of small details, J.G. Ballard, twins, the advantages of narrative dichotomies, adultery and monogamy, relationship fidelity vs. national fidelity, sensuality, specific sexual positions, serial adultery, the skin metaphor, jumping around in time periods, High Life music, the faults of education as a revolutionary galvanizing point, the ethical vacillation of Ugwu, whether sparse details convey the complexities of war, Toni Morrison’s reluctance to write about sex in detail, the advantages of teaching writing classes, names, whether Half of a Yellow Sun is a political book, an unexpected digression concerning Ms. Adichie’s cell phone, and sermonizing in fiction.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to actually talk about the violence in this book. You describe if often very sparsely. The bodies are decapitated. The people are massacred through brutal racism. But you don’t dwell on really elaborate detail of these particular — of this violence. And even Ugwu’s finale — near the end, I mean, his choice at that bar, it’s only like a half page of ethical vacillation. So I wanted to kind of ask you about that. Do you feel that stopping short sometimes really conveys the complexities of war? Was this an issue for you? Or is this more about the narrative than it is about depicting war?

Adichie: I think it’s about both. I do think that, in much the same way that details work better when you’re writing about something huge. I also feel that if you’re writing about something difficult, violent, that less is more. You know? And that sometimes you run the risk of having it become pornographic. I didn’t see myself — I didn’t want to, quite frankly, describe those bodies over and over. I sometimes feel that one tiny detail is enough. I remember reading something about Toni Morrison, where she said, for her, sex scenes were — she tells the reader, a man is on top, the woman is underneath, and she leaves it there, you know. And I remember reading that and thinking — and she lets the reader and she thinks that’s enough. All you need to know is who’s on top and then you make up the rest. I don’t share that when it comes to sexuality. I sort of want to tell you what happens. But when it comes to violence, I think I do. You know, I want to give you a tiny detail and then — I just don’t want it to get…I think that it’s very easy to go overboard with violence and it makes me uncomfortable. And I think that it also might have something to do with the fact that I was always aware that I was writing about something that really did happen to people. And there’s a kind of — I don’t know if it’s respect. Maybe it’s community that I wanted to bring to those scenes of violence.

Correspondent: I can totally see what you’re saying, but doesn’t this kind of get in the way of pursuing the truth further and really getting at this…?

Adichie: No, I don’t think so. I actually think that sometimes it might make it closer to the truth.

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