I had decided to retire the literary Would You Rather series, but didn't want to stop interviews on the site all together. Instead, I've pulled together 40ish questions - some bookish, some silly - and have asked authors to limit themselves to answering only 10 of them. That way, it keeps the interviews fresh and connectable for all of us!
Today, we are joined by Terese Svoboda. Terese is the author of 19 books of poetry, fiction, biography, memoir and translation, Terese has won the Guggenheim, the Bobst Prize in fiction, the Iowa Poetry Prize, an NEH translation grant, the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize, a Jerome Foundation video prize, the O. Henry Award for the short story, and a Pushcart Prize for the essay. Her opera WET premiered at L.A.'s Disney Hall. Her most recent book, Theatrix: Poetry Plays was named one of the best of 2021. Roxy and Coco, my 20th book, 8th novel, will be published in 2024. Dog on Fire is the fourth book she's published in five years in four genres.
Describe Dog on Fire in three words.
Grief – laughter – grief.
What are some of your favorite books and/or authors?
Karen Russell and Jennifer Egan write about seemingly
imagined worlds with a kindness and generosity that's seldom found in mortals.
Maybe they are immortals. The much less attractive Padgett Powell writes
amazingly playful books. Have you read Ali Smith? What she can do with a
sentence.
What is your favorite book from childhood?
My childhood was too long ago. I set out to write closer to my children's early
years and was influenced by Tove Janssen's Moomin people, and William Steig's
matter-of-fact fabulism.
What are you currently reading?
I'm wallowing in New Directions, having just finished Bloater by
Rosemary Tonks and Ferdinand Melchor's Hurricane Season. I also
recommend Africa is Not A Country by Dipo Faloyin – such excellent
essays, and Jim Ruland's novel Make It Stop about super-punks in rehab.
If you were stuck on a deserted island, what’s the one book you wish you had with you?
I was stuck on Mangaia, a sort-of desert island, for three weeks several decades ago and had to escape by stowing away on a pineapple boat.. Because it was the Cooks, the only book available was the Bible. Nobody was going to let me go off and actually read it – they don't encourage such solitary endeavors, better I spend the day making leis or collecting snails off rocks. Of course I wrote a book about that, A Drink Called Paradise.
What is under your bed?
I usually sleep on a Murphy bed, so there's just an expanse of relatively clean floor that I skate across in the morning to the shower, having stuffed the bedclothes and pillows into the wall willy-nilly. Oh, yes, there's usually a book cast over the side the night before, marooned and exposed by the bed's disappearance.
If you could spend the day with another author, who would you choose and why?
Jim Ruland, the punk critic.
He's interested in everything, has done everything and had it tattooed
everywhere. Well, I'm not sure about the last.
What is your favorite way to waste time?
Dog training. Fred, the moth-eared papillon, who responds well
to hot dogs.
Do you DNF books?
I threw
Donald Antrim's first book against the
wall because it was so frustratingly disgusting – and then of course I had to
finish it. The key word is “so.” Excess is attractive, lack is less. Books that
don't blossom or resonate won't get finished. I'll read anything as long as it
retains a scrap of intensity.
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Everyone likes ghost stories – except Dog on Fire isn't exactly that. Imagine a sad-funny elegy, Cather channeling Saunders, with infusions of sly wit. Imagine a sibling who is so inscrutable he seems to be from another family entirely, who dies before you get to know him. Of course the family in Dog on Fire's dysfunctional: an alcoholic mother who carves wax guns, a father whose passion is smoking anything vaguely edible, a sister who hears her dead brother in door molding. A dreadful dust storm gets the book off to a good start with the glimpse of the shovel-wielding ghost. What Dog on Fire does best is haunt, and its succinct almost-poetry seeks to enchant you.
"A contemporary “Dustbowl Gothic” novel.” – Rone Shavers, author of Silverfish
"Haunting and darkly witty reckoning.”-- Dawn Raffel, author of Boundless as the Sky
"Thrillingly alive to this bewildering moment."-- Rene Steinke, author of Friendswood
buy a copy here:
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