What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received in your writing career so far?
I don’t exactly think of having a writing career, so much as trying to cultivate a writing life. Which has its own set of problems and considerations when trying to build a set of priorities. I can’t always align with convention, ease and security. But I remember a conversation with a friend in graduate school where we spoke about the value of equanimity and both of us having experiences of arriving at the desk one morning and finding our work to be so exciting, alive, fresh and compelling. Then arriving at the desk at exactly the same time, exactly the same space the next day—to the same page—and thinking that everything we’d written was terrible and a waste. Trying to develop a certain level of poise and almost a non-attachment—to feel these feelings of doubt and joy and continue working in spite of them—I think is the most important thing.
What books have you loved lately and what’s on your TBR pile?
I recently picked up The Golden Ass by Apuleius which is described as one of the earliest novels of the Roman Empire. It is tender, sweeping and tremendously debauched—it’s just disgusting in a really fantastic way. So that was a real romp!
About once a year I make a pilgrimage back Stig Sæterbakken’s Through the Night, which is a novel that drastically altered and elevated what I thought a novel could do, so I return to it as often I can.
I’ve also picked up Margarita Garcia Robayo’s The Delivery, which I’m really excited to read. Some of her early work is really honest and direct in a way that I feel is lacking a lot these days, so hers is work that I really love.
Lastly for some philosophy and cultural theory, I’m returning to Byung-Chul Han’s Topology of Violence.
You can pick up a copy of The Degenerates at your local bookstore today.
