{"id":302,"date":"2008-04-05T19:02:33","date_gmt":"2008-04-06T00:02:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?p=302"},"modified":"2012-02-25T20:00:30","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T01:00:30","slug":"lydia-millet-ii-bss-194","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/lydia-millet-ii-bss-194\/","title":{"rendered":"Lydia Millet II (BSS #194)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Lydia Millet is most recently the author of <i>How the Dead Dream<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/04\/lydiamillet.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"lydiamillet\" align=\"center\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_716\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-302-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\">http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Listen: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?powerpress_pinw=302-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"segundo194.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Running Time: 33:34 &#8212; 30.7MB)<\/p>\n<p><b>Condition of Mr. Segundo:<\/b> Battling upholders of decency.<\/p>\n<p><b>Author:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.lydiamillet.net\/\">Lydia Millet<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Subjects Discussed:<\/b> The &#8220;nation&#8221; of ideology, empathy as an endangered species, graying hair color compared against graying landscape, obnoxious cell phones, subconsciousness vs. the innate design of a novel, the life cycle of animals, wild pastures that &#8220;bear fruit,&#8221; big novels, finding a middle road between John Irving and William Gaddis, the short books of Gaddis, being underedited, Richard Nash, the blank pages vs. calibration, the <i>How the Dead Dream<\/i> trilogy, the instinctive pursuit of concision, living in a green desert, global warming, answering pessimism with a novel, activism as a grind, being around lawyers, the relationship between humor and pessimism, cartoon-like peripheral characters, earnestness, cruelty at zoos, accredited zoos, and trying to avoid patterns.<\/p>\n<p><b>EXCERPT FROM SHOW:<\/b>  <\/p>\n<p><b>Millet:<\/b> Humor for me has to be a part of everything that I write.  I mean, I&#8217;m not saying that it&#8217;s always successful or anything like that.  But it has to be part of it for me.  Partly because the lexicon I was just talking about is a very earnest one. And I get so sick of earnestness.  On the other hand, I really don&#8217;t have much time for the sort of cynicism that completely decries earnestness.  So I want to forge a middle ground between those two.  That&#8217;s why I end up having these very cartoonish characters.    Even in this book, which is sort of a serious book.  But there are all these cartoon-like peripheral characters.  And I can never seem to give those up.  You know, the Fultons.<\/p>\n<p><b>Correspondent:<\/b> Well, they stand in juxtaposition against earnestness.  I mean, what&#8217;s so wrong with earnestness though?  How would you define earnestness?<\/p>\n<p><b>Millet:<\/b> That&#8217;s a really good question. I guess it&#8217;s a humorlessness that is purpose-driven.  That talks only about &#8212; you know, that&#8217;s a really good question.  Because there&#8217;s earnestness and then there&#8217;s irony.  And there&#8217;s always these twin poles.  And I want to live in a world that contains both of them really.  And so my books &#8212; and certainly this one &#8212; try to do that.  I think that you can have irony without being cynical.  And I think you can have earnestness without being repulsive.  Or without being off-putting.  There&#8217;s a way to talk seriously about things and not be devoid of laughter, I hope.<\/p>\n<p><b>Correspondent:<\/b>  I think what you&#8217;re objecting to is not so much earnestness.  Because empathy and hope and doing something, that&#8217;s a very earnest&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>Millet:<\/b> Position.<\/p>\n<p><b>Correspondent:<\/b> Yeah.  And I don&#8217;t see anything necessarily wrong with that.  But I think what you&#8217;re&#8230;<\/p>\n<p><b>Millet:<\/b> It just has to be interesting.  That&#8217;s all.<\/p>\n<p>(To listen to our previous conversation with Lydia Millet, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/the-bat-segundo-show-12\/\">go here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_717\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-302-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\">http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Listen: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?powerpress_pinw=302-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"segundo194.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Running Time: 33:34 &#8212; 30.7MB)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lydia Millet is most recently the author of How the Dead Dream. Condition of Mr. Segundo: Battling upholders of decency. Author: Lydia Millet Subjects Discussed: The &#8220;nation&#8221; of ideology, empathy as an endangered species, graying hair color compared against graying landscape, obnoxious cell phones, subconsciousness vs. the innate design of a novel, the life cycle [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_718\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-302-3\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3?_=3\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\">http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Listen: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?powerpress_pinw=302-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo194.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"segundo194.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Running Time: 33:34 &#8212; 30.7MB)<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1084],"tags":[16,252,9,251,253,167],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2330,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions\/2330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}