Condition of Mr. Segundo: Finding creative ways of using Photoshop.

Author: Antoine Wilson

Subjects Discussed: Tonal beacons within The Interloper, Martin Amis, stifling the Nabokovian influence, frisbees and sex, conformist thinking, allusions to Sisyphus, technical writing, emotional candor, psychological experiments, generic establishments, reflection vs. invention, thong underwear, Roman mythology and Southern California, the relationship between Don Quixote and Knight Rider, technological being, Photoshop, Owen and Luke Wilson, prioritizing events, writing fictitious letters vs. writing narrative, how The Interloper made the rounds and ended up at The Other Press, and paperback originals and satirical novels.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Wilson: Maybe some of the more classical allusions came from the fact that I was reading Don Quixote while I was writing the book.

Correspondent: Oh, okay.

Wilson: And also had only recently realized that Knight Rider was a recapitulation of all those knight errant stories. So I was sort of interested in that kind of thing and…

Correspondent: But, wait, Knight Rider, you say?

Wilson: Yeah, the TV show.

Correspondent: Yeah. The relationship between Knight Rider and Don Quixote.

Wilson: Yeah. Knight Rider, Michael Knight, is a knight errant.

Correspondent: Yes.

Wilson: He roams the countryside looking to perform acts of chivalry for various people on his trusty steed, KITT, and then he’s got his patron, Devon, and then his woman is totally desexualized — well, she’s sexy, but she’s not sort of in a sexual relationship with him. The other woman on the show.

Correspondent: Bonnie was Dulcinea? Jesus.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Not suffering scoundrels riding on past television achievements.

Author: Gabe Kaplan

Subjects Discussed: Why those duped by email wanted to be included in Gabe Kaplan’s book, celebrity stature, celebrity auctions, Scientology and John Travolta, television ratings, Dick Clark Productions, sixty-year-old celebrities fighting each other, Sioux City, Iowa and parades, the art of composing email, X-rated rap songs, Letters from a Nut, career-planning, Gabe Kaplan merchandising tie-ins, how Radar was duped by fake Stalinist history, Wilt Chamberlain, the ethics of duping people, Jerry Falwell’s refusal to be included in the book, why so many standup comics end up being cast in positions of authority, and television high-school teachers.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Kaplan: They picked me and I was, I think, the first person who they did a sitcom about, basically, their standup comedy. I would talk about being in a school with the Sweathog type of guys, and growing up in that kind of New York City school system where they always put you in the class with people who were as brought as you were. And this was my act. So we just translated it into a sitcom where the only fictitious character is Kotter. Everybody else was based on someone I had went to school with.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Responding to the recent allegations concerning Bat Segundo and Vanessa Hudgens.

Author: Marianne Wiggins

Subjects Discussed: Fictive alter egos, Philip Roth’s The Counterlife, James Frey, Kurt Vonnegut, Hemingway’s screenplays, Edward Curtis, ephemera, patriarchy, W.G. Sebald, 20th century photographers, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, truth vs. legend, “book time” vs. real time, photo manipulation, the similarities between Photoshop and Soviet propaganda, Abu Ghraib, novels as news source, literary antecedents, Absalom! Absalom!, disclaimers, dialogue, long em-dashes, the difficulties of writing novels in London, California geology, the exhaustion of writing measured prose, Las Vegas and Hunter S. Thompson, and bathtub symbols.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Wiggins: One interviewer said to me that he thought I wrote in the equivalent of jazz improvisation. And fortunately, given the luxuriant elasticity of the English language and our grammar, you can make all these elliptical riffs. You can put a dash in a parentheses and keep a whole thought going seamlessly, if — I mean, I hope the reader doesn’t get lost midway through the sentences and say, What? (laughs) Where is this going and what is this about? But my mind moves in that, with that rapidity. So it’s almost a musician’s notation more than a grammarian’s.

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