Tag / interview

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Insulted by Authors

In this 30 minute radio interview, Insulted by Authors proprietor Bill Ryan discusses the celebrity-industrial complex and why authors recoil from insulting the reader when asked to do so.

Bill Ryan recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #384. He is the proprietor of the website Insulted by Authors.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Insulted by humorless people.

Guest: Bill Ryan

Subjects Discussed: Taking unexpected tumbles in life, why insults are the best way to pop the cherry of the author-reader relationship, being the son of a scientist, dodging dodgy publicists, being identified as “The Bill Plus Insult Guy,” picking away at the celebrity industrial complex that has been built up around the author, being frightened by Salman Rushdie, whether there is something inherently wrong in asking an author to insult the reader, difficulties with humorless authors, Nicole Krauss’s post-profanity titter, how the prelude to an author interaction sets up strange expectations, Rick Moody’s refusal to sign older books, book autograph prospectors, being afraid of preconceptions, taking the denial of an insult personally, when joie de vivre is mistaken as a threat, hero worship and naivete, the protective personality traits of authors, looking at the dilemma from the “why not an insult?” position, ideal readers vs. material readers, Banksy, being inclusive of quirky ideas within a marginalized medium, non-monetary value and books, and the dangers of being drawn too close to the apotheosis of fame.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Ryan: Salman Rushdie was in my top four of insults I’d love to get. The Mount Rushmore of insults or whatever. I was so frightened ahead of time for some reason, despite the fact that this is a guy who’s reading a children’s book in front of a crowd of people who showed up at an art gallery. To hear someone read a children’s book. I was nervous! Because it’s Salman Rushdie. And I approached him. And I have tweaked my approach, depending upon the author. Like with Salman Rushdie, I was very deferent. “Mr. Rushdie, I’m sorry to be the kind of person to ask you this. But if you have a moment, if that’s okay, could you add an insult to my personalization?” And I’m worried almost that the fact that I’m scared, intimidated by the very thing that I kinda want to break down, is maybe a problem with my scientific approach. (laughs) Do you know what I mean?

Correspondent: Well, maybe it’s an emotional approach. Because here you have Rushdie. You hope that he will defy your expectation, that he will insult you. And what does he do? He decides, “Why do you want to do that?” And it’s sort of a big letdown. It’s almost like maybe you were nervous about setting yourself up for this letdown. Is that safe to say?

Ryan: It’s like: What did I do wrong? Okay. Exactly, yes! The scientific approach where I was waiting in line and I had everything lined up like a series of actions that I had just lined up in my mind. And I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to approach Mr. Rushdie. I’m going to set down my book. Very gently.” I’m going to say, “Mr. Rushdie, thank you very much. Blah blah blah. By the way, my name’s Bill. Insulted by Authors.” So I went back over after the fact. And for whatever reason, I got really really nervous and really excited. Just the fact that I’m disrupting whatever silly little convention that there is behind the whole signing of a book. I may be blowing it up way, way too big in my mind. But afterwards, my heart was pumping. And I was like, “Okay, what did I do wrong? What was it that Mr. Rushdie didn’t understand about….”

Correspondent: Just call him Salman. (laughs) Mr. Rushdie? He won’t appear on this program. So we can go ahead and be informal about him. If it’s any consolation.

Ryan: (laughs) So Salman. Yeah, I had to go over for the next twenty minutes. And I actually, literally, sat right outside the signing — or stood right outside the signing — and was breathing deep. And all these people.

Correspondent: Breathing deep?

Ryan: Yeah. I was breathing deep. I was actually…

Correspondent: Hope you weren’t hyperventilating.

Ryan: A little bit! A little bit, man. This is how much I put into this for whatever stupid reason. And all these people who had heard me talking to myself in line slowly filtered out around the corner. What did I do wrong? How can I perfect this asking for an insult? How can I make this more accessible to the Rushdies of the world? But also equally accessible to the AL Kennedys of the world.

Correspondent: Or the Amy Sedarises.

Ryan: Exactly. Exactly.

Correspondent: Well, on the other hand, what do you to deal with the reality that some authors — particularly the Old World, anti-online, anti-Tumblr, anti-Twitter types — they’re going to go ahead and say, “I’ll never stoop to that. Because I am an author.” Rushdie may be one of the last ones. Along with say, maybe, Richard Ford. I don’t think he would insult you.

Ryan: Probably not.

Correspondent: Philip Roth might, I think.

Ryan: I’d like to think that.

Correspondent: (laughs) I’d like to think that he would. Cynthia Ozick might, if you could get her.

Ryan: Yes!

Correspondent: But, on the other hand, you’re dealing with a lot of self-important authors who, let’s face the facts, are humorless. So where does the challenge kick in? Is it less about trying to bump your head against the wall? And more about seeing how they will react? I mean, it was actually rather astonishing to me to learn that Allegra Goodman would refuse to insult you and that post has not gone up, I noticed.

Ryan: Not yet. Not yet. I went through a transition between — I still don’t quite know what I’m trying to do with all this. Like I’m just trying to have fun. And I’m a book collector, in general. And I treat books as objects in addition to being books. Which is somewhat tragic, I’m sure. But also — whatever. I mean, everybody has something they’re trying to change about them. But I feel like everyone would be able to give me an insult if I somehow approached them in the right way or it was the right situation. Or something. There’s all these other outline — like little things that can mess with my amazing idea, incredible idea for insults.

Correspondent: You think you can develop the perfect pretext for any situation.

Ryan: (laughs) Exactly.

The Bat Segundo Show #384: Insulted by Authors (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Aminatta Forna

In this 45 minute radio interview, author Aminatta Forna discusses The Memory of Love, Sierra Leone, getting arrested, and how injuries lead to creative inspiration.

Aminatta Forna appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #383. She is most recently the author of The Memory of Love.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Trying to remember where his lost car keys are so he can learn to love again.

Author: Aminatta Forna

Subjects Discussed: Writing about Sierra Leone without naming the country, adopting a tone that is simultaneously universal and specific, combating the “news vision” of the Western mind set, the moon landing and the historical sense, “Kung Fu Fighting” in a different context, media mechanisms and attempts to memorialize, Albert Dada and roaming travelers, fugue controversy, narrative ideas emerging out of research, having to leave some research behind, entering other people’s lives, spending two weeks in an operating theater, carrying over the character of Adrian from Ancestor Stones, when “lesser” countries are asked to explain their existence, Adrian playing a role for the reader, the disparities between Kai and Adrian in The Memory of Love, kinship between cooking and surgery, challenging someone to a race on a beach and breaking an Achilles tendon, how similar character qualities can be a benefit and a risk, characters and a prefigured narrative, writing a perspective from the male vantage point, roadside stops and car moments used to foreshadow tragic events, getting arrested, the ethics of colluding with corruption, “writing like a scientist,” avoiding conscious thinking about metaphor, conflating fiction with fact, how a “unique” Sierra Leone story is ubiquitous in Sierra Leone, Argentina as an early influence for The Memory of Love, “pasting the facsimile of a smile on my face,” being a people person, why “not being evil” doesn’t necessarily make you good, PTSD as a normal characteristic, “write about what you know” versus “write about what you want to find out,” and the novel as a medium for relative normality.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to talk about Albert Dada, who is a figure in A History of Mental Illness, the invented book within the book. You have Adrian come across the case of this guy, who decided to abandon his gas station. And this, interestingly enough, is a psychiatrist. And then he goes ahead and starts traveling at 70 kilometers a day. Just becoming this crazy, wild, roaming traveler. I’m curious how that served as this cultural reference point. Because he’s not exactly as popular as, say, Neil Armstrong.

Forna: Oh, well it went the other way around actually. It went the other way around. I was told a story about a woman. A true story. By a human rights worker. A Sierra Leone human rights worker. And I was told a story about what this woman had suffered during the war. How she had fled to a refugee camp in a neighboring country and then come back. And what she found, this human rights worker told me. And I don’t want to give the story away. But it was so shocking. It absolutely left me speechless. And that story returned to me when I came to write The Memory of Love. And I wanted to create a patient for Adrian. You know, Adrian is there looking — he’s there to help himself as well. But anyway, what happened was that I tried to think of, to actually imagine, if that happened to you, what your mind would do. Or what it would do to your mind. How can we survive that? And I came up with something that I had already seen happen a little in Sierra Leone, which was that people often did step out of their lives. And women in particular often did just step out of their lives and go walking. Not in that fugue state. Not in a dissociative state. It was just a self-healing thing. They would say, “I’ve got to get away from here for a bit.” And they would just go traveling and they would come back. And nobody thought this was curious. It was just part of the culture. So I thought, “Well, here’s something she might do.” Because she has suffered this extreme trauma.

So I began to read about fugue. And then I realized that there was this whole controversy around it. I wrote a book about it. And it all seemed to fit. It fit with what Adrian was there to do, which was try to find something that might advance his career. As well as help the country, of course. But you know, he had other motivations. It fit with Agnes: the character, the patient he sees. So these are wonderful moments where you get this perfect storm in your research. But that’s the way I work. I do quite a lot of research and after the research comes the ideas usually. I go places. I know some writers work like this and others have a plot and then they fit everything to the plot. But I tend to go and see. And then the stories arise out of that.

Correspondent: But there must be a danger in getting bogged down in too much research. The idea perhaps that you attempt a narrative, but that it doesn’t necessarily flesh out. Is this an issue with you?

Forna: Yes. Both of them. (laughs) The “too much research” — it’s less of a problem because I used to be a journalist. So we got used to having to leave some of our research out. We knew that you can’t get it all in. Which is always the danger. The first failing of young journalists. Attempt to use everything they’ve discovered. I know that there will always be a place for it in a later book. And I was once asked this by a creative writing class that I was talking to. “Well, what do you do with the research that you don’t use?” And I said, “Well, it’s usually the next book.” Or it’s the one after it. So nothing’s ever lost. I don’t worry too much about that. And what was the other part of the question?

Correspondent: Oh. It was about the amount of research and also what happens if some finding doesn’t work its way into the narrative. Yes.

Forna: Well, of course, my books are character-led rather than plot-led. So I will always refine the plot to what they are likely to do. But research is important for all kinds of reasons to me. Because it sparks so much. I love it. The reason I am a writer, the reason I was a journalist, is because I love entering other people’s lives. So in that period before I actually sit down to inhabit the character that I’ve created and become that person, I spend quite a lot of time trying on parts of their life. So for Kai, I spent two weeks in an operating theater. For Adrian and Attila, the African psychiatrist that is rather ill-tempered who he works with, I also spent two weeks in a mental hospital in Sierra Leone. So I try on their lives to see if they’ll fit when I come to create the characters. Somebody called it “method writing.” And maybe sometimes I go too far. But I enjoy it a great deal. I enjoy all of that. And when I come to write it, I feel that I fully constructed this person. And now I can be them.

The Bat Segundo Show #383: Aminatta Forna (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Adrian Tomine

In this very special one hour interview, graphic novelist Adrian Tomine discusses Scenes from an Impending Marriage, the intersection between private art and public art, illustrating for The New Yorker, and contending with a nitpicking audience.

Adrian Tomine appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #382. He is most recently the author of Scenes from an Impending Marriage.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Attempting to reconcile the impending with illustrations depicting events from years ago.

Author: Adrian Tomine

Subjects Discussed: Doing time in Sacramento, veiling a personal experience with a sex change, which of Tomine’s characters is least like him, the liberation that comes in fabrication, scratched out names and Victorian literature, the original small audiences for Scenes and 32 Stories, the father’s fund, taking criticisms to heart, the drawbacks of working in the same realist vein, Tomine’s wife as the “first audience,” the artist’s fragile ego, the influence of printed literature and storytelling upon art, humbling versions of inspiration, Tomine’s degrees of aspiration and ambition, living a life in service to the drawing, facing the world, the “strenuous” exigencies of cartoonists, drawing panels without decor, Tomine’s perfectionist qualities, the freedom in pursuing work that isn’t going to be reviewed, feeling highly scrutinized, the pleasure in publishing harsh letters, the look of the ranger, using the fewest lines to get the maximum amount of detail, settling upon the three panel approach, maintaining a private style in secret scrapbooks, varying levels of creative insulation from the public, the very low frequency of sound words, the tongue licking in “Alter Ego,” seeing external details that other characters cannot, the grotesque reality of Chris Ware’s furry cats, the number of people who read books in Tomine’s New Yorker illustrations, the Venn diagram between 1990s subcultures and digital culture, disappearing subcultures, cartoonists who detest hippie and hipster culture, gesture and look, Alison Bechdel’s elaborate photographic process, and the pursuit of “realism” in an “unreal” medium.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: I wanted to get into the ineluctable autobiographical angle through a different mechanism. Interviewers, critics — they’ve all said, “Oh, well, Tomine is totally autobiographical.” But here, you are tempting fate again with the subtitle of the book: “prenuptial memoir.”

Tomine: Right.

Correspondent: You mentioned in the introduction to 32 Stories that you “learned the useful trick of taking a personal experience and veiling it with a sex change or two.”

Tomine: Right.

Correspondent: So we have to talk about this. But I’m going to ask you: Which of your characters is least like you? How much of Scenes [From an Impending Marriage] emerged out of your reality? Or is there some liberation, so to speak, in the fabrication?

Tomine: Oh completely. I mean, everybody has been focusing on the autobiographical nature of this book and I think some of the promotional materials are talking about how it’s such a personal work or something. But I think in truth, in some ways — well, I wouldn’t say the least personal, but it’s certainly no more personal than the other books. And I think that definitely in the fictional stories, I feel a lot of the freedom that you refer to. And the flip side to that is there’s an inhibition that comes along with drawing yourself as the main character. And I think this book, this current one, is all definitely drawn from real experience, but very carefully edited and selected.

Correspondent: Yeah. Starting with the first story, where we see scratched out words of names and places and the like. Which, to my mind, didn’t necessarily mean privacy, but possibly meant an ode to the Victorian literature, where you have the first letter and the line long after that.

Tomine: Yeah. And also I think that this was the first time I just embraced the idea that this would be intended for as wide of an audience as possible. So it set up the ending, where I have the one swear word of the book scratched out too. So it doesn’t quite jump out as much as it would otherwise.

Correspondent: So wait a minute. I understood that this started out as something to be disseminated to wedding guests.

Tomine: Yes, that’s right.

Correspondent: Okay. So was it always intended for public consumption?

Tomine: No.

Correspondent: No.

Tomine: No. The original version that was slimmer. There were fewer pages. It was basically just Xeroxed and assembled. And it was meant to just be given out at the wedding. So the only audience was really going to be our close friends and family.

Correspondent: Well, this is interesting. Because 32 Stories came back in a third life, I suppose, by having that box of minicomics. And it seemed to me from the introduction that it also came about under a certain amount of duress. I’m wondering if people have to push you or kick you into getting things published these days. How does this come about?

Tomine: Well, I think that if someone really wanted to read between the lines and investigate. The dedication of this book explains a lot about why it’s now in stores. Because it’s dedicated to Nora, who’s my one-year-old daughter.

Correspondent: Aha! The father’s fund.

Tomine: Yeah, exactly. We know a lot of people are confused. They say that in the book you say your wife’s name is Sarah. Who’s this Nora that this book is dedicated to?

Correspondent: Your mistress, I thought.

Tomine: (laughs) Right. My Irish mistress.

Correspondent: (laughs) Yes.

Tomine: Yeah, my wife was actually joking about that and saying, “Nobody ever has an Irish mistress.” I mean, there were a lot of reasons that went into the decision to actually publish it. But if I’m honest, one of them would definitely be just a bit of that new father panic of “I’ve got a life that I’m responsible for other than mine now.” So that was part of the thought process. At the same time, there was also the element of just how off the beaten path this book was for me. And that was appealing. Because when I finished my previous book, and digested a lot of the reviews and the response, that it was really clear to me that whatever it is that I publish next had to be pretty different. I think people had their fill of that specific tone and that meticulous realistic style of drawing. I don’t think it was — well, I take — the criticisms of that I took to heart. Not that it was poorly done, but that I’d been putting out a lot of that in that same vein for a number of years. So I didn’t really have a plan of what I was going to do next. But then it was kind of a relief to me when I realized that I basically had a complete book just sitting in my sketchbook. And it was as dramatic of a change as I was looking for.

Correspondent: Well, we’ve brought up a number of things just in the first few minutes.

Tomine: Right. I derailed you.

Correspondent: No, no. It’s great. I love this. Working on art for money. Working on art for audience response. And then simultaneously mining from your own personal life to generate narratives that often take an immense amount of time. In the case of Shortcomings, four years. So this leads me to wonder whether there’s possibly a double-edged sword here, if you are revolving your creative process around what the audience is telling you. Clearly, you still read reviews.

Tomine: Yeah.

Correspondent: Clearly, there is an interest to stay in this business. Obviously. But on the other hand, the fact that this book, this latest volume, came from a safe place. Where you were almost buffered by the possibility of critics dissecting every little aspect of your work. I mean, how does this work? How do you gravitate between the two? Or is it all one unified theory here? So to speak.

Tomine: No. I think you touched on a lot of the things that were in my mind really. Because this wedding book was definitely the most breezy and loose and — a word that’s never applied to my work, but — fun. And I think it was because of what you’re talking about. The idea that it basically wasn’t meant to be published. And that no one but a handful of people that I knew and loved would be seeing it. And really, even though I knew the people at the wedding would be seeing it, the only real audience I had in mind when I was creating it was my wife, Sarah. A lot of it was just a question of not “Is this going to be a great strip?” or “Is this going to be beautifully drawn?” or anything like that. But just “Is this going to make her chuckle at the end of the day?”

Correspondent: So really she’s your first audience.

Tomine: For this, especially.

Correspondent: Do you see that being — she’s going to be your future audience? Her and Nora perhaps?

Tomine: Yeah.

Correspondent: I mean, how do you insulate yourself from the constant probing?

Tomine: Well, I mean, whether I like it or not, she’s going to be my first audience. Just as the nature of working at home, and her curiosity. When she scrolls through my studio each day, she does take a look at what I’m working on. But at least so far, it’s been a real asset to me. Because she’s more well-read than I am. She used to work in publishing. And she has editing experience. She also, along with that, knows the fine art of dealing with the fragile ego of the writer or the artist. And she also just has a really good sense of humor. And I think that she’s, if anything, encouraged me over the years to try and tap into that a little bit more in my work.

(Image: Sarah Brennan)

The Bat Segundo Show #382: Adrian Tomine (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Eduardo Porter

In this 35 minute radio interview, author Eduardo Porter discusses The Price of Everything. Is a belief in prices a religious faith? And what of the neoliberal blind spots?

Eduardo Porter appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #381. He is most recently the author of The Price of Everything.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Shopping for a new religion.

Author: Eduardo Porter

Subjects Discussed: Faith and the Pascalian wager, whether or not Americans perceive faith in fair prices, the idea of a price embodying the making of a thing, Marx and labor, how our understanding of prices is a function of transaction, worker exploitation, Dan Ariely and behavioral economics, “buying a sense of our own goodness,” tipping in Japan, Porter being needlessly concerned with the price of a Los Angeles condo he sold years earlier, new economic frontiers without speculative bubbles, Robert C. Wright and predicting bubbles, Keynesian beauty contests, orange juice and the weather, derivatives and probability, the inability to separate legitimate bubbles with sham bubbles, subprimes and low interest rates, John Rawls and society maximizing the well-being of the least fortunate, the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, ephemeral jobs and speculative bubbles, unfair income redistribution and prices, diversity and labor, William Julius Wilson, Sir Nicholas Stern’s idea of the wealth of the individual remaining steady throughout the years vs. human life as priceless, the 9/11 Commission and Kenneth Feinberg’s compensation discrepancy, anti-egalitarianism, competing subjective viewpoints about the price of a life, economic consequences that emerge from changing a speed limit, the value of a person toiling in a maquiladora vs. the value of Clive Owen, connections between pricing and elitism, time and the value of human life, France’s price on Haiti, and the colonialist implications of price.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Porter: In the mid-1990s, a study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change tried to come up with an early estimate of the economic impact of global warming. And to do this, it used some of these estimates of the value of life. And it decided that the value of life in poor countries was $150,000 and in rich countries $1.5 million. Now you can imagine that didn’t go down very well at an international meeting with rich and poor countries. I mean, this was a rebellion. “What do you mean?” So if rising seas are going to wipe out Bangladesh, it’s cheap. But if something is going to happen in Switzerland, then we really have to worry. So ultimately, at the end of the day, they came to a political compromise. And they redid this, valuing everybody at $1 million.

Correspondent: But on the other hand, for the sake of argument, if you have some central authority making such an insensitive statement — that a person born in one country is worth less than someone born in an industrialized nation — wouldn’t that open up the fact that we’re all living within unseen disparities? That the value of someone toiling right now in a maquiladora or an export processing zone is, we all know, worth less than the life of President Obama. Or the life of actor Clive Owen, who is probably worth more than either of us ever will be.

Porter: Well, yes. This is a manifestation of the inequities in life. That it’s just a replication after death of a very unequal distribution of opportunities and rewards. That’s true.

Correspondent: Well then. If pricing essentially confirms that, it’s almost as if pricing confirms an Ortega y Gasset-like notion of elitism. That really what we’re denying in denying these crude and cold and insensitive prices is denying the inherent elitist nature of the capitalist system that we live by in this purported democracy that you, in the book, actually uphold.

Porter: I would say that that’s essentially correct. I mean, capitalism is not an equal society. And I don’t think it can work as an equal society. Disparities are what steer resources to be allocated into one place or another. Pay differentials lead people to take one choice rather than another. To move into one job or another. To get one type of education or another. So the idea that everybody must be paid equal is, I don’t think, functional. It does not function within a capitalistic society. If you’re asking for my opinion on the ultimate — I don’t want to use the word “justice.” If you’re asking for my opinion on whether this is an ideal way to live, I would tell you no. But it’s because of the depth of the disparity. Not because of its existence. I will agree that disparities will exist. I have a problem with the size of them.

Correspondent: You mention Bangladesh earlier. And this is in relation to climate change. William Nordhaus’s idea that in estimating future damages, we need to use a rate that reflects the productivity of long-term investments. Then of course, you’ve got Sir Nicholas Stern’s idea: “The welfare of a person hundreds of years from now is worth the same as as the welfare of someone alive today.” And of course, not everybody can agree on that either. Now we’re adding time to this. Even more problems. If you were to look at the history of Haiti, you see France in 1825 — they don’t wish to recognize Haiti’s sovereignty unless Haiti paid them 150 million gold francs. Haiti, of course, couldn’t pay back the money until 1947. And they had to take up long-term interest loans.

Porter: That’s incredible.

Correspondent: This is the ultimate in a big joke about price. Haiti wanted to be recognized as a nation and they have to pay this considerable amount of money. So this leads me to wonder if price — I seem to think, particularly after this conversation — is a huge mess that creates ever more problems about other viewpoints, other peoples, and simply existing. The more we think about the way money is attached to an individual person, the more we realize that certain systematic norms cause the person to be trivial. I think that’s rather sad.

Porter: The thing is that here we’re moving between senses of price that are really kind of unrelated. The purchase of Haiti’s independence, I think, has very little to do with capitalism. It has more to do with colonialism.

Correspondent: Capitalism could be argued as a strand.

Porter: But this deal could have been made outside of a capitalistic society. This deal is not a function of capitalism. It is a function of the fact that one country controlled another and would not relinquish it unless getting something in return. And in fact, this has been a characteristic of colonialism way back into pre-capitalistic times. I wonder whether you’re not attributing too much significance to the idea of price as an ultimate driver of things that functions throughout history. And always in the same way. It seems to me that when you’re talking about the price of Haiti or the price of gas or the price of milk, the processes that you’re describing, with which you arrive at this ultimate variable of price, are totally different. And the transactions that are involved are totally different. And so yes, they’re all prices of course. But I’m not sure that they’re comparable. They seem a little bit like apples to oranges.

Correspondent: Even though price has a serious consequence upon a human life in some capacity, you’re saying that it’s best to look at price in terms of who sets the price and the consequence? I think I’m looking at it consequentially and you’re looking at it from a causist standpoint.

Porter: Well, yeah. But consequentially. Let’s say clothes have enormous consequences. Lack of clothes have enormous consequences. The fact that having or not having the appropriate clothes for the appropriate weather is consequential. I’m not sure that that allows me to go any further in trying to tell me anything about the dynamic underlying clothes or the goodness of clothes. They are consequential. Sure.

The Bat Segundo Show #381: Eduardo Porter (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Toby Ball

In this 40 minute radio interview, novelist Toby Ball discusses The Vaults, Germanic influence, and is interrupted by two inquisitive children approaching the table and asking about the mikes.

Toby Ball appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #380. He is most recently the author of The Vaults.

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Condition of Mr. Segundo: Spilling green ink all over the public records.

Author: Toby Ball

Subjects Discussed: The descriptive connection between sound and voice, Ball’s background in teaching, envisioning a scene before writing it, devising a 1935 parallel universe, alternative forms of photography, prethinking information technology, children who intrude upon the conversation and ask about the microphones, telling an old-fashioned pulp yarn, the Berlin Document Center, the Nora chapters as placeholders within The Vaults, the frantic qualities of pulp literature, characters locked in location, Hard Case Crime, Nicholson Baker’s Room Temperature, detecting another person’s typing from observing the strokes, keylogging, Suge Knight as inspiration, the Anti-Subversive Unit inspired by 9/11 propaganda, designing a three book arc, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle, marijuana cigarettes, Hearst and the criminalization of marijuana, mentioning alternative countries (Poland, et al.) instead of the key players in World War II, the city as physical space, ideological information, character life that comes from specific limitations in vernacular, turning a preexisting rumor into narrative fodder, working at Congressional Quarterly, Red Henry’s mistress reading Nietzsche, and tight consequential corners.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: It is interesting how the voice — somebody’s voice — tends to be imposing. More so than the bigness of Big Henry and the like. It’s very interesting to me that sound seems to be the linchpin. Particularly because the technology in this book is rather interesting. I mean, here we are roughly around 1935. A little parallel universe. And we don’t really have motion pictures. We have some possible version of photography with the replacement system that comes in the Vaults. And that’s why it is very interesting to me why sound is such an important quality. It’s almost as if sound in your world matters more than image to a large degree.

Ball: That’s an interesting idea. And I think a lot of the book is about information. Both the information that is overt and then there’s a certain amount of information that has to be gleaned from other pieces of information. And I think that the idea that people can assert powers in ways other than the physical or through violence or through having political power or whatever sometimes comes through. Certainly with your ability to dominate things vocally. Maybe not even verbally. You don’t have to necessarily have a great way with words. But if you can take up more space around you than the other person to serve as an alpha male thing, I guess.

Correspondent: Well, did you prethink any of the technology in the book? Or for that matter any of the history? We do have allusions to the Great War. We also have the Birthday Party Massacre, which is both a funny and a grisly idea. And it makes me wonder whether you had any masterplan for this alternative history or you were inventing things and filling in the gaps as you went along?

Ball: Well, what I was most interested in, I think, was how do you organize information. And because of that, it had to be before a certain period. Say the 1960s. And moving it back to the ’30s and combining it with these ideas we have about the ’20s and ’30s gangs, and things like that, I think that that was the first step in doing it. But I also wanted to create a complicated and…

[Two children walk up to the table and start staring intently at the microphones.]

Child #1: Where did you get that?

Correspondent: Well, hi.

Ball: Hi.

Correspondent: There’s a…

Ball: The microphones?

Correspondent: Yes, the microphones. You can get these microphones at just about any audio place. We have a child here who’s decided to…(laughs). Hi. What’s your name?

Child #2: (more aggressively) Where’d you get that?

Correspondent: Well, we got these through — I got these through an audio supplier. So.

Ball: Pretty cool.

Correspondent: But anyway, you were saying?

Ball: Well…

Correspondent: We have an audience. (laughs)

Ball: We have an audience of two. So from there, while I kind of wrote and sort of developed some more things I was interested in writing about, I think that’s where things kind of move on. What’s the importance of having accurate information? What’s the value of that? What can you get by taking discreet facts? And simply by organizing them, by insuring their purity, how does that in itself become information? And to try and combine that with — you know, I think there’s a certain fun aspect to the ’20s and ’30s. Where you can get this noir-y feel abut things. To a certain extent, the book has to be fun too. You have to want to read it, and the atmosphere, and things like that. Does that kind of answer your question?

Correspondent: It sort of does. I think what I’m also kind of curious about — since you are talking about information as a starting point, when did you drift off this focus on information and more into just telling a good old-fashioned pulp yarn?

Child #1: (still enraptured by microphones) Do those really work?

Correspondent: Yes, they do.

Ball: Yup, they work.

The Bat Segundo Show #380: Toby Ball (Download MP3)

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