A couple weeks ago, I wrote a column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency on Amish/Christian romance, "Ten Thousand Zombies in Bonnets." I wrote at some length on the models who grace the covers of these books, idly wishing that someday I might have the chance to talk to one, ask her all the questions I have.

Today is that day. Through the magic of the Internet, Claire DeBerg, actual Amish romance cover model, has graciously agreed to answer some of my questions.

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Let's start off with the question that I'm sure we're all thinking: Are you a zombie?

Wow, you really cut to the chase. I thought we’d ease into that question over the course of our conversation. Let me answer with some insights so you can come to your own conclusion: I have spent a considerable amount of my life rocking in place with bloodshot eyes, and I may or may not have had drool extending from my mouth to the floor. But usually during those hours of Ultimate Rocking Monotony I had a baby in my arms, and it was occurring at an un-sane hour of the day like 3:06 am, so there’s that.

I see what you did there.

I have also been known to describe my children as tasty little morsels though I have yet to fully test that insight. And while I’m not entirely undead, I’ve oft described myself as having an old soul since I’ve lived a lot of life already by age 35 (but that’s an interview for another time).

Given what you know now…are you absolutely sure I’m not a zombie?

I'll just go with "not entirely undead." Okay, so, Amish romance cover modeling. Here's you on the cover of Beverly Lewis's The Prodigal. How did you get the chance to actually model for this book? Do you have an agent or know someone involved in the cover shoot? Is there like some sort of special classified section that lists job opportunities like this?

I am a model for a variety of different segments of our society: those who indulge in Amish romance novels, for instance, and those that want to, say, buy a tent at Target…or buy a lure! I was in a commercial for Rapala once.

But I digress.

I hadn’t honestly thought of doing modeling, especially after my friend in high school once snorted and said: “Models get paid to make other people feel bad.” Turns out that’s not true, but what is true is you get to choose what you consume in the media and then you even get to choose how to feel about it (gasp!). If you choose to give models the power to make you feel bad, well, then, good luck with that. While there are women who are super tall and super skinny they are not the majority of models…those women are the runway models and they’re incredibly fierce and awesome at what they do.

In fact, the vastly tall, terribly skinny profile is precisely what places like Target and Best Buy (the two largest retailers in Minneapolis) are not looking for in models. They want people who look normal…like the segment of the population they want to reach with their advertising...the people they want to buy their products (which is the overwhelming majority of the population). Not to say that those long and lean giants don’t buy towels at Target and TVs at Best Buy, but do those retailers want their ads to look like New York’s Fashion Week? No way. They want normal moms, nice dads. Ho-hum. So I guess what I’m saying is: I’m pretty normal looking. I’m not emaciated, and I’m not over 5 feet 9 inches (I’m 5 foot 8½ inches [but who’s measuring, right?]).

Let me pause briefly to thank you for using double parentheticals ([]). It's like the dependent clause version of Inception. Okay, continue.

So when an agent approached me from a modeling and talent agency (actually she came up to me on the dance floor at a wedding while I was possibly channeling a bit too much Elaine Benes), I considered her offer for a week or so and eventually decided, “Well, this could be fun.” And it has been fun because I’m not competing with anyone. I am reminded of the distinction between competing in a cross country race in high school because I had to and then years later just going out for a run around a lake…because I wanted to. The feeling of joy in the choice is incomparable. With modeling I’m at the run around a lake stage—I do it because I can and because it is fun and because I want to (plus the fringe benefits are pretty fantastic).

I’m 35, and I have some seriously delicious plans and dreams that don’t include wearing blankets of makeup and getting fitted for a shoot with clothes I’d never buy. Because I keep the opportunity to model fun, it remains a wonderful way to learn about the industry from a different view. Plus I can earn extra money (and yes, it pays very well but I’m too polite to talk dollar signs). I will say, though, that each of my family members has landed modeling gigs (my husband for Medtronic, my daughter for Tony’s Pizza, my son for Huggies) and we’re beautiful and we’re normal.

The singular reason I was approached was because the agent felt I looked the part that production houses are currently seeking: ethnically ambiguous. Am I Latina? Am I Greek? Am I Native? Am I Caucasian? Am I Middle Eastern? Am I Italian? Am I Brazilian? What’s your guess?

Didn't we cover this with the "not entirely undead" ethnic designation above? Although, I'm assuming that's not quite what they were going for.

Well, turns out it doesn’t really matter what ethnicity I actually am (I’m Cherokee) because it is a boon that I can’t be pegged by any one group. So I am accepted by nearly all groups.

Maybe for this Amish book cover the question posed to my agency was: Does she look Pennsylvania Dutch? When my agent sent me an email to see about my interest in modeling for this book cover, I knew she’d sent the same email to all her talent that fit her profile needs. She sought a woman, in her mid-30s, dark hair, dark eyes….AND the model needed to appear as the aged character from previous books in the series. In my agent's long list of talent she could narrow her email to a handful of potential models.

I let her know that yes, I could make the shoot dates work so then she sent me requests for very specific headshot poses as per the publisher:

• Facing camera, non-smiling
• Side profile, non-smiling
• Side profile, hair up
• Front, hair down

So apparently these pictures got me the job (thanks to my dear, sweet husband, Darren, who happens to be a really excellent photographer).

So explain what the process of actually shooting this was like. How long did it take? How many people were involved? How often did the photographer tell you to "look more wistful?" Did they put you in Amish shoes and socks, or just clothing from the waist up? How uncomfortable was your neck at the end of it?

This was a very interesting shoot. It took place in the photographer’s studio, which is located in his quite beautiful, spacious home, in the suburbs of Minneapolis. I was the only one on camera…there was no other talent there so I wasn’t able to swoon in reality to the hunky Amish chap in the background of the final cover.

So it was me, the photographer, the hair/makeup/wardrobe assistant, and the publisher hanging out on set. The assistant was very perfumey and adorable and when she wasn’t texting she was snapping her gum and explaining how she pretty much knows how to “do” authentic Amish hair because according to her rough calculations she has done the hair for “a million of these covers.” I went into the bathroom to get changed into my plain clothes and taped all over the mirror were several pictures of Amish women stuck there as inspiration. Since Amish people regard photographic images of themselves as sin given the 2nd commandment, all the pictures are of Amish women shot from very, very far away.

I put on my dress (backwards, at first…turns out the small buttons go in the front, not the back) and my little v-shaped coverlet, which goes over the chest like a chevron. I was actually wearing mukluks for the first few shots (I live in Minnesota, Jordan, mukluks are the winter uniform) but then the crew wanted me to do some slow turning and spinning so I ended up barefoot by the end of the shoot.

I love dressing up—and more specifically I like playing dress-up in costume-ish kinds of clothing over dressing up in fancy garb which is why this particular job was appealing to me. One idiosyncrasy about me is I do so love fashion, but I so do not love shopping. I’d rather eat my own hands than “go shopping” (as though shopping were a recreational sport). You’d think online shopping was my personal savior…alas, the types of clothing I like to wear can’t be discovered online. When I do find myself perusing the rack at my local consignment shop I specifically look for items that hang funny on the hanger or don’t look right on the hanger or have buttons in awkward places or a ridiculously scooped, open-backed situation or have zippers where no zippers need be. I like individual pieces of clothing and then bringing several pieces together to create some outrageous outfit that I can safely assume will not be on anyone else I might meet.

This is why I loved this Amish book cover shoot so much: because I was in costume. Most of the modeling jobs I land, wardrobe sends an email with a list of your own clothes to bring to set—but this was fun because it was character work and I gravitate to this kind of guise.

Anyway, before the camera shutter went haywire, the publisher caught me up on the premise of the novel…Leah, the main character and the woman I would represent, is raising her sisters after their mother has died and is faced with myriad challenges with her sisters: a stillborn baby, a young widow, a wayward youth, lots of family secrets, and barely time to think of falling in love herself. He asked for my deepest concerns in my personal life to emerge in how I held my body and let my face be the stoic yet hopeful answer showing tentative resolve.

Hold on, quick recap. He wanted, in one single expression: specific, multi-layered grief, loneliness, deep concern, stoicism, hope, and tentative resolve.

Did it come across? I’ve never had his kind of intense direction on a set previously. After two hours of turning and craning my neck and holding still, and drawing my brows down or smiling ever so slightly and 800-some-odd pictures later, they got their shot, and it was a wrap. No seriously, 800 pictures.

Ok, so here's the part where I ask a bunch of questions about the bonnet. Is it a real Amish-style bonnet? How long did it take them to get the bonnet situated perfectly on your head? What was it made out of? Was it comfortable? Did they have a specific place for the tassels to fall, or did that just happen naturally? Did it make you feel elegant and/or classy? Because I feel like if I was a woman that's how it would make me feel. Is it weird that I just said that?

I was given a (surprisingly) long back-story about the bonnet I was to wear before I was even allowed to see the stash of bonnets. And by stash, I mean the very carefully stored pristine Amish bonnets—each in their own special container (which may or may not have been temperature-controlled) so there is no chance of crushing these delicate, starched head coverings. The photographer for this shoot does lots and lots of Amish romance novel book covers and has been summoned for so many that he is a premier source of authentic bonnets and Amish plain clothes for Hollywood studios.

The week my shoot was scheduled he just received a bonnet back that he’d rented out to a movie set shooting a film in California. It was returned completely crushed, bent and not even in its original container. I think I saw a tear emerge when he showed it to me, but I can’t be sure. He was very distraught because authentic Amish bonnets are not easy to come by and they can be expensive. I actually never touched the bonnet that was pinned to my head. The photographer took it out of the container and the assistant pinned it to my hair.

I know it sounds like this photographer was on the verge of needing some serious group therapy about those bonnets but the truth is I respected his knowledge and care for this seemingly small yet hugely significant moniker of Amish faith communities. Somebody besides Amish women has to care about these things, and I’m glad he does.

Would you do another cover?

I would…and indeed I have! The next book cover I did was a connection Valerie [Valerie Weaver-Zercher; see below] had as she works for a Mennonite publishing house that was having a book cover shot in Minneapolis. This book, however, was of an Amish woman from the mid- to late 1800s. There was much discussion about the type of bonnet I would don, and we ended up taking several shots with lots of different props (a basket of dried meadow flowers, a falling apart Bible, a shawl wrapped in my arms) as well as two different head coverings. This time around it wasn’t as tense because it was a totally different creative company doing the shoot so there were no bonnets in special boxes (and the dress wasn’t Amish-made) but…it was still fun so for me it was perfect. That book should be coming out in 2015.

So as an actual Amish Romance cover model, what did you think of my column?

Honestly I thought it was bright and relatively spot-on, tongue-in-cheek though some parts were. Amish romance novels are hugely popular (hence your wall reference). I learned so much more about the phenom of the plain woman romance when I got to know Valerie Weaver-Zercher, author of The Thrill of the Chaste: The Allure of Amish Romance Novels and appreciated her Wall Street Journal article “Why Amish Romance Novels Are Hot,” where she describes what keeps those books flying off the shelf. The top three most popular authors have sold over 23 million of these books, combined.

And, you’ll be happy to know there is a series of Amish Vampire books—your quest is over, Jordan! Sleep well…or sleep worried, I guess, that those nice plain pious women are creatures of the night…will they pray for you or suck your blood?

Either way, I think I would probably try to interview them first. So what do you do when you're not modeling for romance covers? (aka 99.9999% of your life?) Where do you live? What's your day job like? Do you have a family or pets or people you talk to at Subway a lot?

When I’m not an unfamous model in the Twin Cities, I am an editor of the magazine Timbrel a publication from the organization for which I work, Mennonite Women USA. I also run a successful freelance commercial writing business, Tasty Text, and write blogs, website content, e-newsletters, white papers, brochure copy, Facebook posts, and really any number of text communication needing a serious virtual refreshment.

I live in Minneapolis in a 50s-style modern house in a neighborhood I call The United Nations because of the diversity of all the families living here. We’re just a few miles from hopping on the 60-some miles of bike trails in this urban wonderland and a new co-op is opening next spring three blocks from our house, so I’m twitterpated.

I have two humans (2 and 12), and I’m surprisingly thrilled with the ten-year space between their births (see Zombie question above for more insight) because I really get to know their sweet souls in a singular way, and I’m in love with them. Gloria is a classical guitarist and rock climber. She takes the city bus to 7th grade at her Montessori school in St. Paul so obviously she rules. Harold is this charming flaxen-haired boy with an affinity for memorization and airplanes. He has very good diction and careful enunciation, which thrills his Montessori guides and tickles us to no end. We attend Emmanuel Mennonite Church in Minneapolis where I lead singing in the worship band. (That’s right…a band. We’ve been known to rock...)

After running 7 marathons (including Boston!) I am on the prowl to find a sport that offers the same requirements for stamina and mental prowess that marathons demand. I’m open to suggestions in this realm. Other than being committed to the written word, my husband and I love making our own things (tables, toys) and watching good cinema. We super enjoy not being on Facebook and some shared hobbies are loving up our littles and going on bicycle adventures around the lakes. We would rather spend money on ridiculously good food and powerful experiences than material things any day. I eat heaps and heaps of peanut butter, and I’m a closet ballerina.

I noticed in some of your emails that you also write fiction. What kind of stuff do you write?

I used to say, “I’m writing a novel, therefore my house is immaculate,” but I’ve just completed my Novel Marathon Training, and my full manuscript is complete (huzzah!). So I’m shopping it to agents this fall. My novel takes place in Southern Turkey at the base of Mount Olympos in a remote fishing village. I was inspired when I visited Turkey and fell into a helpless love affair with the Mediterranean Sea and a sweet old couple who made my breakfast each morning when I was a guest at their home. I guess I didn’t want to leave, so my novel is the next best way for me stay without actually staying. The story is a tragedy and definitely a testament to love. It is injected with beautiful, aching, lovely and terrifying magical realism. I worry about my characters and love them desperately and am shocked by the horrible and wonderful things they do and thoughts they hide. I was just sharing with a friend that writing my novel, for me, is an opportunity to work out the conversations I know I’ll never have in real life.

My latest personal writing project is…wait for it…an Amish romance story. I know, I know. Truthfully I’d rather have my name on a cover than my mug, but what can I say?

Well, I can't say that I will read it, but I can say that I will go to Barnes and Noble and stare at the cover for a long time when it comes out.

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You can read more about Claire at her website, clairedeberg.com.

My newest McSweeney's column is now live, where I talk a little bit about one particular bookshelf at Barnes and Noble. Here's a little preview:

I think about this shelf a lot. Sometimes I just stand in the store and wonder who all of these women are. There must be some special contingent of them out there, some unique modeling subgroup that continually dons turn of the century clothing and stares wistfully off into the distance. I wish I could talk to one. I have so many questions.2 Surely there are not enough of these books made for the models to earn a living off of them. So what else do they do, when they are between covers? Do they also sell lace gloves, or let their hair down occasionally for a Land’s End catalog? Do they have an ongoing, bitter rivalry with the milk-skinned, red-lipped army of brunettes that leer out of the vampire romance novels two shelves over? Do the two groups have crazy brawls at modeling conventions, Anchorman-style, aiming only at legs and torsos to avoid damaging each other’s faces? Or are they, perhaps, actually the same group of women, just done up in different colors?

Read the rest at McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

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If you're still waiting for the sequel to The Towers, don't worry. I'm diligently working on it in between baseball games.

As some of you know, I write an occasional column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, "Speaking for all Christians Exactly Like Me." The column came about as a result of McSweeney's annual contest, which awards ten or so people with an opportunity to write for the site for a year. Today, I'm continuing an ongoing series of interviews with the other nine winners (or as many of them as I can track down and get to return my emails).

Today’s guest is Wendy C. Ortiz, author of the McSweeney's column "On the Trail of Mary Jane." You'll probably figure this out on your own, but my questions and responses are in italics.

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JJ: I guess I'll start with a couple of political questions, given the topic of your column. What do you think of the current drug policy in the US?

WO: I vacillate between decriminalization of many (not all) drugs and just a simple change in approach by which people are treated justly and fairly for crimes involving drugs. I'm certain that I don't agree with standard drug policy as is.

JJ: What drugs would you want to keep criminalized? As a resident of the Midwest, the strongest argument for me against decriminalization of hard drugs is meth. It seems to be about the fastest way to ruin your life. Though this is coming from someone who has never consumed anything stronger than a Trappist ale.

WO: Have you read Methland? What an incredible book. Yes, meth is harsh. Heroin is harsh. I have a hard time imagining decriminalizing these two. And then there are the legal drugs that have a hold on so many people: prescription drugs, for example. I have lots of ambivalences here.

JJ: I have not read it, though it looks pretty good. And that hits more at the heart of where I'm going with this. Meth doesn't just ruin people's lives, it ruins whole towns, whole counties. How do you think medical marijuana dispensaries affect the communities they are in?

WO: It remains to be seen. From my own journeys into the nine dispensaries and one prescribing doctor, and taking a cursory look at the surrounding neighborhoods, these businesses don't appear to negatively affect the communities they're in, and yet it would take a lot more research to learn if this is true. I can only speak from what I see, and at face value, I don't see outright harm. What I'd love to do is look at this more deeply, with the help of existing data about the neighborhoods and in conversations with residents. That, however, is another different and larger project.

JJ: So who do you think of as your audience?

WO: As much as I'd like to say I don't think of my audience, I do. It depends on the venue, though. The audience I imagine for my memoir coming out this summer (aside from GENERAL and WIDE, hopefully) are young women like myself, who were once 14, 15, 16 years old, trying to navigate potentially dangerous situations.

The audience I think of for my McSweeney's column is composed of people who have not stepped foot inside a medical marijuana dispensary but have a curiosity about them, what goes on inside them.

The audience of my second book coming out later this year might be poets, artists and others who've lived on their own and struggled with trying to make money and do their art for the first time in an earnest way. My perfect reader is one who is open, with a strong sense of curiosity.

JJ: So I'm curious about that first sentence. Why would you like to say that you don't think about your audience? Do you find it restrictive in some way? Mostly I ask because I've always viewed my writing primarily as communication, rather than, say, expression or even art, broadly conceived. I usually find that I can't even start writing until I have an audience in mind, even if it is only a single person that I know. And by "person that I know," I mean "person I am married to."

WO: It seems freeing to write with no thought of audience, but I do write with an audience in mind, whether it's me (past or current versions of self), one other writer (usually someone I admire or have a connection with), or a readership of an established literary journal.

JJ: Why do you write? And how'd you get started writing?

WO: There have been times when I have found myself without enough time, space or energy to write and during those times I have felt a malaise which, at its worst, had me feeling nearly suicidal (luckily I can say the last time I felt this way was many years ago). I would joke and say it made me homicidal but what I really meant was, I don't know if I want to live if I can't write.

I started writing for a general audience when I created my first zine in second grade. My mother photocopied it at work for me, and I tried to sell it for 25 cents to my classmates.

JJ: That's a pretty stiff price for second grade. What did you write about in it?

WO: I don't remember. But I do remember the cover being a hand-drawn picture of the interior of a box of chocolates.

JJ: When you're not working on your column, what do you do?

WO: I'm a registered marriage and family therapist intern, which means I provide psychotherapy to clients in a private practice setting under the supervision of licensed therapist. I set fees at the local nonprofit counseling center where I received much of my training. These jobs take up about ten to twelve hours of my work week. I'm also what is known as a "stay at home mother" though I'd hardly say I "stay at home." I go to parks, museums, and other places my three-year-old loves. I write, occasionally teach creative writing to undergrads, and run the Rhapsodomancy reading series.

JJ: Do you like teaching the creative writing classes? I find a lot of the people I know who do that sort of thing are rather ambivalent about their jobs.

WO: I am totally, utterly ambivalent. Yep. I love teaching, I have been told directly and in student evaluations that I'm a great teacher, but the amount of energy and work that goes into it is not compensated fairly or well, I find.

JJ: What's the last book you read that you loved, and why did you love it?

WO: I can't just include one book, so let me list a little. The last three books I read and loved: Meatheart by Melissa Broder; The TV Sutras by Dodie Bellamy; and Ditch Water by Joseph Delgado. The first and the last mentioned are poetry. I'm doing a spree of Melissa Broder books right now. I will read anything Dodie Bellamy puts out because she is amazing, and I'm hooked on the tweets of poet Joseph Delgado, so a book of his poetry was like eating a meal after many many delicious appetizers.

JJ: I read Bellamy's The Letters of Mina Harker a couple years ago. It was one of those books where I felt like I was missing half of what was going on, but it was weirdly fascinating anyway. The cover still freaks out my wife.

So last question, that I like to ask everyone. Let's say that somebody you loved was going to enter the McSweeney's column contest next year. What advice would you give them?

WO: First, I'd assume they're familiar with McSweeney's. Then I would ask them, what would you want to write even if it wouldn't appear in McSweeney's? What kind of ongoing writing project would interest you enough that you'd want to write it monthly for a year and not know if anyone would pick it up?

JJ: Bingo. That's exactly the way that I approached it when I decided to enter. I thought about my own site, and the sort of thing that I thought was missing. Really, I used the process of entering the contest as a way of developing a repeatable concept that I wished I could read.

WO: Right? And have you suddenly come up with more ideas for columns? I have at least a couple, after this experience.

JJ: Good. We'll have something to look forward to then.

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Wendy's new book Excavation: A Memoir is now availabe.

Dear Mother,

Sorry it's been so long since I last wrote you. I'd give the usual excuses, about a new job and a move and a brief alien abduction, etc, but the truth is simply that I've made other things a priority. Yes, some of those things are important, like my new job and our new place and fighting my way free of the gladiatorial slave pits of Gromlan X. But I still look at the date on my last letter and cringe.

You remember that song, "Don't Know What You Got (Till It's Gone)" by Cinderella? I've been thinking about that a lot lately, as I find myself struggling with a bunch of stuff I want to write, and only ten to fifteen hours a week with which to write it.

Three reasons I love this song:

• I really appreciate the intentionally bad grammar of "you got" instead of "you've got."
• I really appreciate an all male rock band naming themselves after a domestically abused princess.
• How awesome would it be to play piano on a beach wearing a woman's nightgown?

Also, it does not apply to me. That is to say, I did know what I got (till it's gone). I had forty hours a week to spend in front of my computer and my notebook last year, writing stories and columns and letters and book reviews and documentary reviews and books. And I loved almost every minute of it, even those times when I was frustrated beyond belief because the words wouldn't come, even when the words that did come turned into crappy stories that no one bought or read. I did what I loved, and I treasured it. Because I knew that at the end of the year it would be over.

This is an old, familiar story with old, familiar conflicts - conflicts of money and love and time. No one ever seems to have enough of them. That's why old stories always end the same way, with two rich people getting married and living happily ever after. (Cinderella, of all bands/princesses, should understand that.) They go off into the distance with as much money, love, and time as they could ever want.

I know in my heart that God will always provide enough love. And I know in my head that God will always provide enough money. But time is in short supply, and always will be in this life. For we are a mist that appears for a little while, and then vanishes, as James tells us.

There's a book I read a few weeks ago by Thomas Merton called No Man is an Island. Great book, if you ever get a chance to read it. At one point, Merton is talking about humility, and what it means to be a humble person, what it means to know one's place in relation to God. Here's what he says:

One of the chief obstacles to this perfection of selfless charity is the selfish anxiety to get the most out of everything, to be a brilliant success in our own eyes and in the eyes of other men. We can only get rid of this anxiety by being content to miss something in almost everything we do. We cannot master everything, taste everything, understand everything, drain every experience to its last dregs. But if we have the courage to let almost everything else go, we will probably be able to retain the one thing necessary for us--whatever it may be. If we are too eager to have everything, we will almost certainly miss even the one thing we need.

There is nothing that will destroy the value of your time like the fear that you're not spending it wisely. This is a truth that I find myself learning, day by day, as I work and pray and read and relax and socialize...and write a little. Someday I hope to spend more time writing, before the cares of this world blow away in the breeze. But until then, I'll use what time I have, and send you letters when I can.

Love you always

Your son,

Jordan

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Jordan Jeffers writes letters to his mother on the Internet because stamps are a form of witchcraft. He is currently hard at work on a new book, The Nothing Sword, and a half-dozen other things.

My latest McSweeney's column is now up, with thoughts on Donald Sterling, Parks & Recreation, and loving your enemy. Here's an excerpt:

I won't repeat everything Sterling said here; you can look up the full tape online if you really care to hear the whole mess. Most of the responses to the tape have been of two varieties: those who condemn Sterling for being a horrible person and those who condemn him for being a horrible person while carefully wondering aloud whether illegally taped comments should serve as evidence for forcing a person to sell property. That second one is a vaguely interesting question, probably good for a discussion in a college civics class. But I'd like to talk about Sterling in a different way, as an enemy of humanity, as a villain.

And to do that, I have to talk about Ron Swanson, Leslie Knope, and Parks and Recreation.

You can read the rest of it on McSweeneys Internet Tendency.

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For those of you wondering why it's been a month or two between updates, I started a new job and some other things. Hopefully updates will come more frequently as I adjust to the new schedule.

As some of you know, I write an occasional column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, "Speaking for all Christians Exactly Like Me." The column came about as a result of McSweeney's annual contest, which awards ten or so people with an opportunity to write for the site for a year. Today, I'm continuing an ongoing series of interviews with the other nine winners (or as many of them as I can track down and get to return my emails).

Today’s guest is Janet Manley, author of the McSweeney's column "Testomania." You'll probably figure this out on your own, but my questions and responses are in italics.

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JJ: So I noticed from various things you've put on the Internet that you do stand up / variety / live performance shows of various types. What do you think are the biggest differences between writing for live performance as opposed to writing a column like Testomania?

JM: I think readers, if there are any, aren't going to get as many clues about how the voice should sound, and just how ridiculous the column thinks itself is. You also get pretty fast feedback if something isn't funny when you're performing. It doesn't matter if I haven't showered for my column. Also, the McSweeney's font/layout makes your writing look smarter.

JJ: What's been the response to your column so far?

I really love when people tweet their results. I also get a lot of blank emails with the auto-subject line of the column title, so I'm not sure if people are about to exact revenge and then back out, or are just unsure of whether they want to talk to me. I love to get emails, though

JJ: So who do you think of as your audience? What kind of person do you think would really appreciate the stuff you're doing?

JM: Eek, I'm afraid to say myself. If only there were more me's out there. When something works out really well, it's usually just because I could hear it all playing out. If not me, then a sort of amused old man, a Jack Handey/Ted Wilson-type. They always seem to have good taste.

Writing something funny or "good" is oddly rewarding if someone actually reads it, but I guess I have a ton of dumb ideas always popping into my head so it makes sense to write some of them down, to entertain the inner idiot.

JJ: So do you think that you would still write these things if nobody else read them? I'd like to think that I would for my own stuff, but I probably (definitely) wouldn't. I get weird things popping into my head all the time too, but it's so much work to write down in a way that satisfies me that I doubt I would do it if no else could read it. And I'm not sure why this question seems important to me.

JM: Excellent question.

JJ: I thought so too, thank you.

JM: You're welcome. My stuff is rarely very popular - I suspect if I had fewer outlets, I'd just be sending more long-winded emails to friends and family.

JJ: How'd you get started writing?

JM: I think the first "published" thing of mine was a lousy article for a mountain newspaper on the dog poop problem. In spring, all these abandoned shits come back to haunt the towns when the snow melts, and can cause health issues. I wrote for small newspapers, always as a freelancer, just trying to get anyone who would publish me - which is not many people, to be honest. After that, or at the same time, I was doing an MA in creative writing, and that brought the critical aspect in, where I could maybe feel a bit better about putting my name on something if I thought it was objectively at least okay. (And then I got a ton of rejections, and now I'm trying to do packets.)

JJ: What's "objectively at least okay" to you? Like, what does your work need to have or show or do before you'd be willing to put it out there?

JM: I'm always on the lookout for plain bad writing, which will reliably make me cringe on sight. But to know something is good, I probably take a loose tally of moments where I feel the writing is okay/funny vs. moments I'm unsure. I guess that's just gut, huh? I think I read somewhere that Colbert has his writers put $signs$ around each joke so when he looks at a script he can see how funny it is. This is a bit similar.

JJ: How do you pick the different ideas for the tests you make? Wait, that's a really bad way of asking the question I really want to ask. The problem is that I have this inkling of an idea about your column that I'm trying to confirm and/or reject.

Ok, so here's the idea: a lot of the columns seem to be a really funny commentary on narcissism, like, there's a character you develop through the test questions that is super self-centered, and the whole premise of the column is about the way online tests enable our obsessions with ourselves. But then other columns actually seem more outward, politically focused, like "Which Economic Alliance Are You?" for example. So is that intentional, or are you deciding which ones to pick more on the basis of how funny you can make them?

JM: Yes, you're right about the narcissism. It's like horoscopes. I think I'm just trying to see what can be funny, and take the piss out of real internet quizzes ("Which character from 'Girls' are you?" "Which Disney princess are you?") while also having something of substance to make fun of. Economic alliances was really fun because who doesn't want to laugh at the BRICS? I think it's accidentally a bit niche (calling all Sandals fans!) but I really just want to find different ways to be ridiculous in a format that looks serious. I also want it to be fun. I hope at least someone takes each test and is like "I'm ready for death!" I'm not sure how boring it is for people to see similar formats each time. I did do undergrad psych, by the way, and I really thought personality psychology was problematic.

JJ: How boring the same format is probably depends on your reader. I find it sort of comforting. How about when you're not writing a column, what do you do?

JM: I'm an editor for a blog at SparkNotes - a sort of Gawker for teens. I do some standup, and run a monthly comedic variety show, and I do try to do other writing, although right now those are mostly all I have time for. I'm huge on the outdoors (used to live in Utah and Colorado and worked on ski hills etc.), but I'm not getting a lot of that since I moved to NYC. So I run, and occasionally get out to hike up the Hudson with husband and dog. (This is so boring, I'm sorry.) I also paint sometimes, and like to make gifs and dumb graphics. We eat a lot of cheese. I eat a lot of pomegranates, which take time to unpack.

JJ: Care to share your favorite gifs (the ones you make I mean)? There's a real lack of mildly humorous images on my site.

JM: Here's two, one very relevant to your last column. There are more at Put Out to Pasture.

JJ: How'd you end up in America? (Assuming you are from Australia, which I think is a correct assumption, since that's what you said in that video on your Google+ page. Also, here's your opportunity to compliment America to make me feel good about myself.)

JM: Ah! Good research! Short story: Ski instructor/patroller for six U.S. winters and four Australian winters, met husband on the hill in Colorado, got married after we both went back to school in our respective countries and moved to Denver. Married six years now. We had to live in the U.S. because my husband was finishing his law degree, but it also would (we figured) have more opportunities for writing for me, which is somewhat true. NYC has certainly been a shot of adrenaline re: the creative people it has hiding in its dirty streets. The west really is beautiful, too. I've seen a lot of the west and it issssssssss awesome.

JJ: What's the last book you read that you loved, and why did you love it?

JM: Cripes, loved? Middlesex and The Funny Man. I got really into Born to Run, which I just-just read - like found it (I apologize) sort of inspiring. Otherwise, I'm afraid to say I've been on a YA-heavy kick due to work recently, and have lost sight of any adult novels I read prior to that (excluding Game of Thrones and that kind of jabber).

JJ: You don't need to apologize to me for feeling inspired. I was once moved to tears by a montage of Little League baseball, and I mean that literally. What about the book did you find inspiring?

JM: The author of Born to Run goes through all his various physical setbacks (ultras are bananas) and the perseverance he learns, and the way he describes the sheer joy of these maniac runners made me want to leap out the door with my sneakers on.

JJ: Let's say that somebody you knew was going to enter the McSweeney's column contest next year. What advice would you give them?

JM: I'm probably not the person to ask, but don't try and second-guess what anyone will enjoy reading, or what the judges are "looking for." I think I submitted some real dogshit last year because I was desperate to figure out What I Had To Say, and it ended up being absolute drivel.

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You can follow Janet Manley on Twitter (@janetmanley) and find more of her work at janetmanley.com.

Book review in one tweet

A vengeful AI in a human body stalks the ruler of the galaxy and gets sort of confused about gender, life, and self. Also, she sings a lot.

Favorite quote

Thoughts are ephemeral, they evaporate in the moment they occur, unless they are given action and material form. Wishes and intentions, the same. Meaningless, unless they impel you to one choice or another, some deed or course of action, however insignificant. Thoughts that lead to action can be dangerous. Thoughts that do not, mean less than nothing.

Review

I'm having trouble deciding what to talk about here, and I suspect this is mostly because the book itself has a hard time deciding what it's trying to say. (And possibly because I'm devoting approximately 90% of my brain power to getting ready for baseball season. And by "getting ready" I mean "buying beer"). It's not so much that the book is unclear, but rather that it says so many different things, it's difficult to know which thread to follow. There are at least three major themes:

Theme 1 - The social construction of gender

Breq, the main character, is an artificial intelligence stuck in a human body, and "she" has a difficult time understanding gender, mostly because the social indicators of gender--clothing, hair length, patterns of movement, demeanor, etc--change so frequently from planet to planet and culture to culture. As a result, Breq refers to everyone as "she" in her internal dialogue, even when you as a reader know that the character is male. It's a choice that will probably seem like a gimmick to some people, but eventually it ceases to matter. I stopped trying to figure out who was who fairly quickly, mostly because I was too lazy to actually reread sections hunting for clues. But also because it ended up not really making much of a difference.

Theme 2 - The multiplicity of self

As the story progresses, you find out that Breq was once a massive warship named Justice of Toren, used by an empire known as the Radch to conquer most of humanity. Her main weapon is actually not really a weapon at all, but an army of walking human corpses or "ancillaries" that are essentially extensions of Justice of Toren's consciousness. She controls all of their actions, sees everything they see, and generally kills a lot of people with them. She is them, in other words, and they are her. They make up her sense of self. This is probably the most creative thing about the book, since it allows for multiple points of view while still using the first person.

It also allows Leckie to think through the different ways that we often feel at war with ourselves, the conflicting feelings and motivations that drive our actions. This point is laid on a little thick at times, but it was still the most interesting part of the book for me.

Theme 3 - The illusion of free will

There's a constant tension in the book about whether individual actions have any meaning and, indeed, whether in a universe of such complexity and size, we are even in control of our own actions. Perhaps everything we have ever done was already determined from the moment the universe was created, our brains are no different than machines, free will is simply an illusion, etc -- all of that fun Intro to Philosophy stuff that annoys some people (like my wife) and fascinates others (like me). Breq, of course, is an artificial intelligence, programmed to obey, and thus seemingly without free will. And yet, she often seems to have more free will than of any of the humans, or at least as much as them.

There are some smaller ideas floating around the book as well, but these are the main ones. I was hoping that all of this stuff would come together by the end, but most of the threads were left hanging loose. Raising important questions is always a good idea, and Leckie does that in spades (or in hearts or clovers or diamonds, whichever suit you prefer). But all of the questions have been asked by science fiction novels before, (See also: The Left Hand of Darkness, or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and I tend to prefer books that offer answers to the questions they raise, even if I end up disagreeing with that answer.

Instead, we get a sort of science fiction equivalent of a Chili's appetizer platter. Not something you're going to rave to your friends about when you leave, but still pretty freaking delicious.

Nerd rating

7 wizard staffs (out of 10)

I feel like I've said a lot of negative things, here, but the book is engaging and suspenseful, and there are plenty of fun creatures and fantastic landscapes. If you're looking for something solidly sci-fi, this is an excellent choice, and a pretty fast read once you're through the first couple chapters.

Non-nerd rating

3 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

The world Leckie creates is complicated, and there is a lot of information thrown at you that doesn't always get explained until fifty pages later, or sometimes not at all. There's a decent amount of fighting and a hint of a love story, but the gender terminology make that love story difficult to follow or understand. I'd recommend staying away from this one if you are new to the genre.

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All book reviews are posted first on my Goodreads page, for those of you who are a part of that particular electronic social club. They all trickle over to this blog eventually.

Book review in one tweet

A short introduction into monks, their lives, and most importantly, their love of God.

Favorite quote

Law is love which binds and obliges…These words embrace not only the letter but also the spirit, and indicate that St. Stephen realized the rule was not merely an external standard to which one's actions had to conform, but a life which, if it was lived, would transform the monk from within.

Review

About a year and a half ago, a friend of mine asked me if I wanted to go with him on a monastic retreat to the Abbey of Gethsemani, the long time home of Thomas Merton. The retreat was fairly unstructured: a couple of talks by the guestmaster, three simple meals, prayer services seven times a day (starting at 3:00 AM), all of which were entirely optional. The monks charged nothing, and simply allowed us to pay whatever it was we felt like we should. There was really only one thing required, one rule that you had to follow.

And that was silence.

The silence was what made the Abbey so different, the experience so unique. For three days, the only time you opened your mouth was in prayer. It was one of the best experiences of my spiritual life, and it was that memory of silence that attracted me to The Silent Life, a book about monastic ideals and practices from the man who once lived and wrote at Gethsemani.

And I was largely pleased with what I read. Merton is often not the best stylist. His prose tends to be more practical than poetic, and he is more concerned with explaining than convincing. This is not a work of apologetics, not a book that will attempt to convince you to join a holy order, or even become a Christian if you are not one already. Rather, it is a fairly succinct and basic primer on what the monastic life is, how that life is lived within different orders, and the philosophy that informs all of them.

Bored yet?

Some readers likely will be. Actually, who am I kidding, most readers likely will be. But if you stick with the book long enough, you'll find that every once in a while Merton will write something that will blow you away with its depth of thought. There were a number of pages that I read over and over again, not because they were unclear, but because there was so much of importance that was being said, so many implications for my own life that sprang from his thinking, that I wanted to make sure I noticed and understood all of them.

The life of a monk is and always has been antithetical to the rest of the world. Which is a fancy way of saying that monks are weird. They sing weird music, they wear weird clothes, they live in weird places. They live alone, and yet their guest house is always full. And most of all, they are silent. They say what needs to be said, and as little else as possible.

The Silent Life embodies those values as well as explaining them. It says what it needs to say, it says it plainly, and then it shuts up, and gets out of the way between you and God.

Nerd rating

6 wizard staffs (out of 10)

This is a book for religious nerds, people who are fascinated with deep spiritual thinking of all types, and people who have ever wondered what being a monk is actually about. It's not Merton's best work, but it's fairly short, and worth grabbing if you're lucky enough to have a copy at your library.

Non-nerd rating

5 cold, frosty beers (out of 10)

Normally I'd probably rate this as three or four beers, but I think there's enough here that applies to everyone to keep non-nerds interested. The spiritual thinking of the monks is pretty insightful, and easy enough for anyone to understand. Just don't worry about which particular church father said what, or which order of what monks was known for praise and which for writing, and you'll enjoy it just fine.

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All book reviews are posted first on my Goodreads page, for those of you who are a part of that particular electronic social club. They all trickle over to this blog eventually.

New Short Story Collection

My newest ebook, The Life and Times of Butterfly the Lower Back Tattoo, is now live and available in the Amazon Kindle store and on Smashwords.com for $0.99. It's basically a "best-of" collection from the last year of web stories, along with two additional stories you'll only be able to get in the ebook.

The collection includes:

• The Life and Times of Butterfly the Lower Back Tattoo
• The Knights of the Four Seasons Fitness Club
• The Way of the Sub
• PIXAR's Seven Step Plan for World Domination
• A Brief History of the Axe Body Spray Crisis
• The Unicorns in Sneakers (new story)
• Stormtrooper Worker's Compensation Claim (new story)

And fifteen other stories. The ebook will eventually be available in the Nook store and on Apple iBooks, if you'd prefer getting it from there.

Newsletter

With the help of an army of robot slaves, you can now sign up to receive my newsletter, which I'll probably send out two to three times a year (basically whenever I release a book, or whenever I'm feeling lonely). If you sign up within the next week (2/28 - 3/7) I'll send you a Smashwords coupon for a free version of The Life and Times of Butterfly the Lower Back Tattoo saving you a whopping $0.99.

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If you reading this, you should stop and go to my Butterfly page to read The Life and Times of Butterfly the Lower Back Tattoo. And let me know what you think of it. I like hearing from people.

As some of you know, I write an occasional column for McSweeney's Internet Tendency, "Speaking for all Christians Exactly Like Me." The column came about as a result of McSweeney's annual contest, which awards ten or so people with an opportunity to write for the site for a year. Today, I'm continuing an ongoing series of interviews with the other nine winners (or as many of them as I can track down and get to return my emails).

Today’s guest is KA Semenova, author of the McSweeney's column "Classic Russian Writers: For teh Internets." You'll probably figure this out on your own, but my questions and responses are in italics.

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JJ: So, I want to start with asking you a little bit about your column and the theory that lurks behind it. You say in your bio that you want to test the “theory that human nature is neither analog or digital,” so you “update classics of Russian literature with modern technologies to see if the insights of those writers hold up today.” Can you expand on what you mean when you say you "update" a story for teh internets? Beyond the different technology, is there a sense in which you're trying to "update" the themes of the story too? Or is that one the points you're trying to make, that there are certain meanings that endure in spite of technological change?

KA: Yes, to your last sentence. I’m not trying to update the theme of the story at all. My entire point is that updating the technology does not change the meaning of the story, in any fundamental way. Why would it?

My sort of ongoing thesis—or my hobby horse, if you know me—is that human beings are more alike than they are different. I think that is true across cultures as well as across time. Which means, in this context, that human beings are human beings, whether they are using a teletype machine or texting. And that’s what this little experiment is all about.

If I can trace the origin of the McSweeney’s column to one thing, I’d say it’s this: I belong to some writers’ groups on Facebook, and once this guy, let’s call him Bob, asked for recommendations for novels that dealt with infidelity, to see how other writers had handled it. And I suggested that Bob read Anna Karenina, because Tolstoy had covered that particular ground, and had done it brilliantly.

And Bob said back to me, “Why would I read something that old? The world is so different now, how could I possibly find that useful?”

And I think that is just about the dumbest thing anyone has ever said. And I find it particularly distressing that it comes from someone who calls himself a writer. He epitomizes for me a kind of narcissism, a solipsism out there—that you see often on the Internet—that “our world” is fundamentally different than the world that came before.

I just don’t think that’s true, and my McSweeney’s project is about playing with that idea, doing case studies, as it were. What happens when you put a Chekhov character on Twitter? Is he still the same person? My revision of “Lady with a Dog” suggests that Gurov and @Gurov are exactly the same guy.

JJ: So, breaking in here, with this in mind, what do you think about science fiction? Because some science fiction writers would say that the advancing technology portrayed in their stories does alter their characters in fundamental ways. Actually, this is a pretty common definition of science fiction, a story in which the science is so important that it cannot be removed or changed without fundamentally altering the story. It's really hard to take something like Neuromancer, replace the technology, and still understand who Case is as a character. Though it's really easy with something like Star Wars, which is a fantasy story pretending to be science fiction.

I guess I'm wondering if we could reverse the process you do, like take a science fiction story, replace the technology with something more primitive, and see if the story still made sense. Maybe it depends on the technology; perhaps the Internet doesn't fundamentally change things in the way that, say, true artificial intelligence would.

KA: Interesting question. But I’m not sure I have a great response because I don’t read science fiction. It just doesn't interest me because, in my mind, I already know the answer to the question, and the answer is that the technology is largely irrelevant. Science fiction, however you slice it up, is about human relationships. Those books are genre—they’re quests, or romance novels, or war novels, or what-have-you—dressed up in a different world.

And I can sort of understand, theoretically, that it would be interesting to play with the laws of physics, etc., but personally, it doesn't draw me in. So I can’t respond here with any good examples because I haven’t read anything resembling sci-fi since I read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater in like 8th grade.

But I will give you this to think about: Historically, UFOs anticipate the next development in technology. Meaning, if you go back to 18th century Europe, the UFO reports are big steel ships in the sky. In the 19th century, reports are about plane-shaped objects. In the last century, they became flying saucers. So it seems to be a fundamental part of human nature to see UFOs, but their descriptions change over time; so clearly there is a relationship to technology as it evolves. Humans apparently always anticipate (and fear) what technology will bring next.

And I think that might bring us to Jonathan Franzen, yes? I mentioned him in my McSweeney’s bio as one of the catalysts for my project.

About a month before I wrote the first column, Franzen published a screed about the Internet and technology and culture more generally. The article really amounted to a big fat nothing. He constructed a straw man (he clearly doesn't understand Internet culture at all), then utterly failed to destroy it anyway. And I think that’s too bad. There was a moment that I really liked Franzen, in the 90s, when I read The Corrections, and when he refused the Oprah’s book club imprimatur, which I thought was interesting. I sort of got him about that, and thought he had something useful to say there.

And ever since (I realized when I saw his last piece), I've been waiting for him to say something interesting, do something usefully provocative, but he’s not delivering. Somebody said, about this last piece, that he’d become an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn. Exactly.

So I referred to him in my bio because, like him, there are certain things about the Internet that bug me. I have questions about the way technology might be changing us. But I’m more interested in nuanced discussion, in asking questions, which Franzen isn't doing. He’s rather offering up opinion in the form of verbs, like saying Rushdie “succumbed” to Twitter, as if it were a disease. That doesn't get us anywhere.

To me, Franzen is doing what Bob did, just in the opposite direction. Franzen likewise is positing fundamentally different pre- and post-Internet worlds, though in his case, he idealized the before, whereas Bob idealizes the now.

JJ: Do you think some familiarity with the original Russian stories (in translation or otherwise) you update is necessary to really appreciate what you're doing?

KA: Maybe. At least in the form they’re offered on McSweeney’s. John Warner and I have discussed this issue. In my original submission, the editing I did to the story was shown. The reader could see the red-lines and the replacements, so he or she could see very clearly that I only had to change a few words to bring Chekhov up to date in terms of technology and setting. But McSweeney’s had some technical problems displaying that, and John was also concerned that it interfered with the enjoyment of just reading the piece, which was also a concern of mine.

So we agreed to post them with all changes accepted, as it were. And that I would post the red-lined versions on my own website, so that anyone who is really interested can go look at the editing, to see what exactly I did.

But to respond to what I think is a kind of implicit question in your question—eg, does anybody besides you get what the hell you’re doing?—I don’t know. I know John does, obviously. Because we’ve talked about it. I do hear where I think you’re coming from, though, that there is inherently a somewhat limited audience for these pieces. But that’s really okay with me, because that is the great thing about the Internet, that you can find limited audiences, fellow Russian literature geeks like yourself. And there are a lot more of them out there than you’d think.

In any case, this is what I've always liked about McSweeney’s, that it is often like hanging out with a bunch of grad students, at a bar, after class. It can be a kind of para-academic, funny place. And I think—and I hope I don’t offend anyone, but—for much of McSweeney’s stuff, it’s not really about reading every word of every column. It’s about seeing the title, and reading a piece, and getting what the writer is doing, and considering that idea. And usually laughing. Part of the fun is whether you get the joke of it at all.

I’m totally a person who believes in tribes, and I know mine. So when John said to me, when I submitted a piece, “Amazing. I’d never heard of Karamzin. This is fascinating,” I knew that a tribe member had gotten what I was doing. And I felt like I’d just won the Internet, so it’s all good to me.

JJ: Grad students at a bar—that sounds about right. I remember when the column contest was in its judging phase, John tweeted something about how around 25% of the entries had PhDs and about 50% had advanced degrees of one kind or another.

KA: That sounded exactly right to me too. I was in a history PhD program at Georgetown (left early), and one night a group of us sat around after class at the Tombs, a bar, constructing the funny hat theory of history. We almost killed ourselves laughing as we developed an outline. Even assigned chapters to each other. I was supposed to write on the pickelhaube. (picture right) Which of course I never did. Maybe I should reanimate the theory, and submit it to McSweeney’s next year.

Anyway, it’s kind of enough for me if someone notices that I put Gurov on Twitter, and then they think about that notion for a second, making of it what they will. My goal really is to raise questions, not answer them. Because, to return to Franzen, deciding the Internet is “bad,” just gets you nowhere: it gives you no answers, it gives you no questions. And to decide, like Bob, that writers before 2000 have nothing interesting to say is even worse. Both are intellectual dead ends.

JJ: How'd you get started writing? For a general audience, that is.

KA: I’m not sure I have yet, exactly. I’ve worked around publishing for about thirty years now, which is working with writing, but behind the scenes. Most of my writing for a long time was academic (I have an MA in Russian history) or things I did for myself, like journaling. I only started writing seriously, aiming for publication, about five years ago. (I have two novels in progress and two memoir-type things, too. I like to skip around!) And I didn’t really expect McSweeney’s to take my column, which meant I wasn’t quite prepared to go public yet. (Which is why I had to delay publishing this Q&A, because my web site wasn’t ready yet!) I always thought I’d go “public” later, with one of the long-form pieces.

JJ: Can you give us a little teaser on what these books are about?

The memoirs are about my Russian family, who lived the 20th century the way most Russians did—war, famine, emigration, etc. I’ve been engaged on a genealogical/historical research project involving them for twenty-some years now, so those books are about that. What I’m working on right now, though, is crime fiction, set in northern Ohio. Sophie, a PhD candidate in history who has been away for a decade, comes home to hole up in her grandmother’s cottage on Lake Erie to write her dissertation. When a priest at a nearby Russian Orthodox Church is murdered, Marty, her old high school boyfriend, who is now a sheriff’s deputy, asks for her help. Then another priest is murdered…

JJ: Is that the kind of thing you like to read too? What do you think is the best thing you’ve read recently?

KA: Hmmm. Without a doubt, Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. I spent the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve with it—it’s an 800 page novel—and had the most fun I’ve had in years with a book. Couldn’t put it down. And just before that, I read Death of a Nightingale, Lene Kaaberbol & Agnete Friis’s third novel. More generally, for the last few years, that’s the kind of thing I’ve been reading: Scandinavian fiction, mostly the crime fiction, though not exclusively. (And this started for me long before Dragon Tattoo went big. I’d read all of Henning Mankell by the time Larsson broke out.)

There is something deeply interesting about what is going on with crime fiction in northern Europe, not only in the Scandinavian countries, but also people like Tana French in the UK. Right now, I’m reading a book by a Swede, Johann Theorin. I had to order two of his books from the UK—they’re not available in the States yet—because I just love his sense of place.

JJ: So you are a Scandinavian crime fiction hipster?

KA: Yes! I’m not ashamed to say it! I have a whole big theory about it, to tell you the truth. I think the Scandinavians are up to something very interesting. They are perhaps alone in genuinely taking on the way neoliberalism (and the fall of the Berlin Wall) has shaped our world over the last couple of decades. They are the people who are really grappling with this, in fiction, in my opinion.

Many people like to say that the crime novel originated in the UK (with Sherlock Holmes) but I think that’s just wrong. (Of course, it’s usually Brits who say this.) Some people point to Poe, in the States, working a few decades earlier, but again, I just don’t buy that. Poe wasn’t quite doing crime fiction, and I don’t think American crime fiction has ever been especially interesting, then or now, in terms of its ambitions. It tends to be genre, and while many of the Scandinavians are doing genre stuff, a lot of them are much more ambitious.

I think that crime fiction, of a certain kind, anyway, originated with Dostoevsky, and that some of the Scandinavians are up to the same thing he was doing, which is using crime fiction to comment on social reality. I’m so interested in this, in fact, that I want to do a blog on it. I’ve registered a domain, and I’ve got some posts ready, but OMG, so not enough time in the day…

JJ: That’s a type of fiction that I don’t think I will ever really appreciate, mostly because I can’t handle the creepiness of it, especially the books about serial killers. I’m much less afraid of supernatural monsters: demons, witches, vampires, whatever, which I think is mostly because I assume that those creatures all have rules that govern their behavior. Serial killers are a complete mystery to me; their motivations and actions make no sense. It’s similar in some ways to how I’m afraid of bees and wasps but not snakes or rats or birds. I know what a bird is going to do, but I can’t ever figure out what a bee is going to do.

KA: Wow. We’re so different. I don’t like reading something when I know what’s going to happen, for exactly the reasons you cite. If it’s a zombie, I know he’s going to walk around stiff-legged and try to eat brains. If it’s genre mystery, then the detective is going to get the bad guy in the end. Where’s the fun in that?

I like books in which the end cannot be predicted; or if it can be (like the Wallander books; which are conventional police procedurals in that sense), then there must be something else at stake. In that instance, it’s Wallander’s health and relationships; but also more broadly, the health and relationships of Sweden, as he’s taking on political changes in the world and how that’s affecting the country.

JJ: So if zombies or vampires or demons don't scare you, what does scare you? Anything?

KA: Bad dreams. I had one recently. I woke up at 4:25 am, with my heart pounding, and I didn’t know where I was. I looked around my room, and it took me a long time—like a minute, no joke—to be sure I was home, in my bedroom. Because I’m not usually up at that time, of course, so the light was kind of odd and things looked different, somehow.

And in my dream, someone who I have seen exactly once since 1983 had just gotten hit by a bunch of falling metal boxes. (I have no idea where they came from.) He was leading me out a door, then the boxes fell, then he was lying on the ground, with a bloody face, and I was frozen, trying to call 911. Which is the moment I woke up.

I don’t have bad dreams like this very often, like maybe once every five years or so. But when I do, they’re really awful. I don’t tend to be prophetic on this score, thank God. I have no idea what triggers them. Wish I knew. I’d stop doing whatever it is.

JJ: I have attempted to hurt my wife three times in my sleep, twice I tried to choke her, once I punched her really hard. All three times I was having a dream where I was protecting her from some kind of attacker. So I have this fear of doing really serious harm to her in my sleep, which is sort of related to a larger, general fear of hurting the people I love, which probably has something to do with my fear of my own brain, and how weird it can get sometimes in there.

KA: Wow. That’s horrible. I’m so sorry. I get how freaky that would be. Though you’ve oddly made me feel better, I must say. At least I don’t have to worry about hitting someone.

JJ: Glad I could help. Let's end on a hypothetical. Suppose that somebody you loved was going to enter the McSweeney's column contest next year. What advice would you give them?

KA: I would say to them, “If you do it, what’s the worst that can happen?” And if the only answer they can come up with is “They’ll say ‘no,” then I’d say, “As worsts go, that’s not much.”

Because that’s how I got myself to do it. In fact, I adopted “What’s the worst that can happen?” as my mantra, the question to ask myself when I’m unsure about whether I should do something, take a chance. Over the last year or so, it’s got me a McSweeney’s column, a distressed turquoise chalk-painted bookshelf, and a new kitten. And I’ll be teaching a workshop in Puerto Rico in August. So I’d have to say this mantra is really working for me, so far.

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You can read all of "Classic Russian Writers: For teh Internets" at McSweeney's Internet Tendency. I'd suggest Vsevolod M. Garshin's "The Signal." That one is a killer.