{"id":355,"date":"2008-05-20T09:48:18","date_gmt":"2008-05-20T14:48:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?p=355"},"modified":"2012-02-25T19:14:05","modified_gmt":"2012-02-26T00:14:05","slug":"ed-park-bss-211","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/ed-park-bss-211\/","title":{"rendered":"Ed Park (BSS #211)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ed Park is most recently the author of <i>Personal Days<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><img src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/05\/edpark.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"edpark\" align=\"center\" \/><\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_4556\"><!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-355-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\">http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Listen: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?powerpress_pinw=355-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"segundo211.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Running Time: 1:02:34 &#8212; 57.3MB)<\/p>\n<p><b>Condition of the Show:<\/b> Plagued by brutal downsizing.<\/p>\n<p><b>Author:<\/b> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ed-park.com\/\">Ed Park<\/a><\/p>\n<p><b>Subjects Discussed:<\/b> Literary people named Ed, writing <i>Personal Days<\/i> and using vacation days while employed at the <i>Voice<\/i>, counting words written per day, B.S. Johnson, Jonathan Coe&#8217;s <i>Like a Fiery Elephant<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/staff.xu.edu\/~polt\/keeler\/\">Harry Stephen Keeler<\/a>, staying productive as a writer, the other Ed Park novels (<i>The Dizzies<\/i>, <i>Chinese Whispers<\/i>, <i>The Diet of Worms<\/i>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fivechapters.com\/the_oblivion_arms\/index_full.php\"><i>Dementia Americana<\/i><\/a>, et al.), <i>Stone Reader<\/i>, lost books, writing within tight stylistic constraints, the section titles, &#8220;restructuring,&#8221; references to Hollywood and the quest for narrative, figuring out &#8220;Operation JASON,&#8221; waiting for the Eureka moment, making patterns emerge, patterns within character names and working within limitations, the use of italics, writing the third part without a period, having an affinity for exclamation points, Lester Bangs&#8217;s <i>Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung<\/i>, Elizabeth Crane&#8217;s &#8220;My Life is Awesome!  And Great!,&#8221; the office as a microcosm for New York, William Gaddis, Harry Matthews, <i>Cigarettes<\/i> and <i>The Journalist<\/i>, the relationship between the ability to calculate vs. the loss of the first person plural, consciousness in attrition, Joshua Ferris&#8217;s <i>Then We Came to the End<\/i>, <i>The Office<\/i>, avoiding the influence of other topical art, Crease in <i>Personal Days<\/i> vs. Creed in <i>The Office<\/i>, style vs. content, specific typographical symbols, voice recognition and gobbledygook, William Gibson&#8217;s <i>Pattern Recognition<\/i> and Gaddis&#8217;s <i>The Recognitions<\/i>, office detritus, paperclips that pierce, setting limitations when veering down dark and scatological territory, and the pathological corporate impulse.<\/p>\n<p><b>EXCERPT FROM SHOW:<\/b><\/p>\n<p><b>Park:<\/b> It&#8217;s such a pleasure to talk to someone who&#8217;s also named Ed.<\/p>\n<p><b>Correspondent:<\/b> Yes, I know.  I mean, it&#8217;s a hell of a first name.  There needs to be a Society of Eds set up in the five boroughs.<\/p>\n<p><b>Park:<\/b> It&#8217;s pretty rare.<\/p>\n<p><b>Correspondent:<\/b> I know.  I wanted to ask you a commonplace question and then get to the nitty-gritty of this book.  I know that you wrote a good chunk of this book while you were working at the <i>Voice<\/i>.  But the sense I got was that you didn&#8217;t write all of it at the <i>Voice<\/i>.  So I&#8217;m curious as to how much of this was written in a <i>Voice<\/i>-less setting, so to speak.<\/p>\n<p><b>Park:<\/b> Well, if you mean by &#8220;at the <i>Voice<\/i>,&#8221; while I was still employed by them, that&#8217;s true.  Most of it was written before I left the <i>Voice<\/i>.  I was let go at, basically, Labor Day.  Right before Labor Day Weekend of &#8217;06.  But by that time, I did actually have a draft. There were many changes that I knew were necessary.  I wrote it though.  In terms of physical space, I could never even write my articles at the <i>Voice<\/i>. Just in the <i>Voice<\/i> office.  I was hired as an editor.  Basically editing, sending emails, on the phone, stuff like that.  So it wasn&#8217;t really a place where, ironically enough, I could get a lot of writing done.   So all the writing took place in my apartment.  I was living on 89th Street.  A lot of it was the same as I&#8217;d done for my previous fictional projects, where I would just try to write in the morning before coming into work.  What was a little bit different about this book was that, as things got more tense at the <i>Voice<\/i>, as things really looked like they were going in a bad way, I took some vacation days, personal days, and would really treat the book as my job in a way.  <\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_4557\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-355-2\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3?_=2\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\">http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Listen: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?powerpress_pinw=355-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"segundo211.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Running Time: 1:02:34 &#8212; 57.3MB)<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ed Park is most recently the author of Personal Days. Condition of the Show: Plagued by brutal downsizing. Author: Ed Park Subjects Discussed: Literary people named Ed, writing Personal Days and using vacation days while employed at the Voice, counting words written per day, B.S. Johnson, Jonathan Coe&#8217;s Like a Fiery Elephant, Harry Stephen Keeler, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n<div class=\"powerpress_player\" id=\"powerpress_player_4558\"><audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-355-3\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3?_=3\" \/><a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\">http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3<\/a><\/audio><\/div><p class=\"powerpress_links powerpress_links_mp3\">Listen: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_pinw\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Play in new window\" onclick=\"return powerpress_pinw('http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/?powerpress_pinw=355-podcast');\" rel=\"nofollow\">Play in new window<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/_mp3\/segundo211.mp3\" class=\"powerpress_link_d\" title=\"Download\" rel=\"nofollow\" download=\"segundo211.mp3\">Download<\/a> (Running Time: 1:02:34 &#8212; 57.3MB)<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1084],"tags":[16,100,359,356,9,10,357,143,358],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355"}],"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=355"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2308,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/355\/revisions\/2308"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.edrants.com\/segundo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}