Read Online Flirt: The Interviews by Lorna Jackson - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Lorna Jackson
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, Short Stories, Language Arts & Disciplines, Short Stories (Single Author), Communication Studies
Ads: Link
Doulton figurines. Thirty years ago in my Vancouver, kids were snatched from Halloween streets; hanging oneself from a tree in Maple Grove park was optional for teenage boys with meanstreak dads and a sexuality not defined by the push and grunt of a rugby scrum; bleached blonde and bosomy mothers kept mid-mornings open for Mr. Neighbour; drunken writers blew it under the viaduct; incurable diseases â cancer a dirty word that might be catching â were kept secret; gentle men like my father gave up on commerce and its ladder and ran away from home. Now what? Whatâs complexer now?
I looked to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Race Rocks and Cascadia, to the spawning of sockeye salmon in a desperate and detergent-fouled Goldstream River, not for the consolation of cheapshit metaphor, not for lack of imagination. I know the cityâs stupid secrets, printed as they are now in a too-sharp digital format. I know the city; I want what came before. Why did we abandon that? Who will read the cityâs history, trace its underground streams, and where? Treeplanters with poems shoved into their knapsacks? Mention a raven now and bingo: youâre a) too pastoral or b) a fucking racist.
Does knowing the New Yorker will publish the best of your work change the writing of that work in some way?
âIt might, to be honest with you, but Iâm not aware of it. There maybe some sort of pre-cognitive selection that goes on in the things I will and wonât write about which means that theyâre adapted to what I think the New Yorkerâ s sensibilities are, but the New Yorker has a wide sensibility, often an erratically wide sensibility and I donât think that I make any adaptations to fit in. I wonât get paid enough money if I publish elsewhere and I donât have a teaching job.
âWait now. I wouldnât call what I do âjob,â at least not in the âaccrue capital and security and retire well in Irish linenâ sense of the word.
âIâm always trying to kind of angle for the bucks here.
âOh, to have bucks for which to angle! Are you suggesting I am my own victim? That I should quit my so-called job and write cheatinâ hurtinâ stories for the huge rags? Okay, sign me up. Will I need to learn to live on less, just until the real money starts pouring in? If I buy a second house in the Gulf Islands, should I have someone â a former student or hardluck alco-poet maybe â rent it while I winter in, say, Thessalonika? Do I charge them the going rate, or discount for artists and small press losers? What purpose will landscape serve in my fiction? Why will my men all be sort of western guys? Why will I have trouble writing about women?
âThis period in my life in which Iâve been publishing stories in the New Yorker , it wonât last forever, itâll go away, other writers will come along and take those slots. Itâs just been this time for me, this period.
âThat drawl, that sonorousness and suggestion of ice clinking in a good glass, you have such a pleasing voice, I hear it always when reading your work, even though I try to dismiss it so I can get a clean reading of a character.
âBefore I lock âem up and put âem in a book, I read âem aloud myself, so I know what their essential rhythms are.
âYour writing has never relied on irony for its power.
âNope.
âSincerity seems more to the point with your work.
âYup. Iâm an essentialist.
âWe are being told that we have reached the end of irony. Does this supposed cultural shift have importance for a writer like you?
âNo. No. It has no importance for me and it isnât true. I mean, we havenât reached the end of irony, are you kidding? Thatâs such a cultural myopia that says things like that. Another day will dawn whether we want it to or not. No, I donât think irony is under any attack and all that may be
I looked to the Strait of Juan de Fuca and Race Rocks and Cascadia, to the spawning of sockeye salmon in a desperate and detergent-fouled Goldstream River, not for the consolation of cheapshit metaphor, not for lack of imagination. I know the cityâs stupid secrets, printed as they are now in a too-sharp digital format. I know the city; I want what came before. Why did we abandon that? Who will read the cityâs history, trace its underground streams, and where? Treeplanters with poems shoved into their knapsacks? Mention a raven now and bingo: youâre a) too pastoral or b) a fucking racist.
Does knowing the New Yorker will publish the best of your work change the writing of that work in some way?
âIt might, to be honest with you, but Iâm not aware of it. There maybe some sort of pre-cognitive selection that goes on in the things I will and wonât write about which means that theyâre adapted to what I think the New Yorkerâ s sensibilities are, but the New Yorker has a wide sensibility, often an erratically wide sensibility and I donât think that I make any adaptations to fit in. I wonât get paid enough money if I publish elsewhere and I donât have a teaching job.
âWait now. I wouldnât call what I do âjob,â at least not in the âaccrue capital and security and retire well in Irish linenâ sense of the word.
âIâm always trying to kind of angle for the bucks here.
âOh, to have bucks for which to angle! Are you suggesting I am my own victim? That I should quit my so-called job and write cheatinâ hurtinâ stories for the huge rags? Okay, sign me up. Will I need to learn to live on less, just until the real money starts pouring in? If I buy a second house in the Gulf Islands, should I have someone â a former student or hardluck alco-poet maybe â rent it while I winter in, say, Thessalonika? Do I charge them the going rate, or discount for artists and small press losers? What purpose will landscape serve in my fiction? Why will my men all be sort of western guys? Why will I have trouble writing about women?
âThis period in my life in which Iâve been publishing stories in the New Yorker , it wonât last forever, itâll go away, other writers will come along and take those slots. Itâs just been this time for me, this period.
âThat drawl, that sonorousness and suggestion of ice clinking in a good glass, you have such a pleasing voice, I hear it always when reading your work, even though I try to dismiss it so I can get a clean reading of a character.
âBefore I lock âem up and put âem in a book, I read âem aloud myself, so I know what their essential rhythms are.
âYour writing has never relied on irony for its power.
âNope.
âSincerity seems more to the point with your work.
âYup. Iâm an essentialist.
âWe are being told that we have reached the end of irony. Does this supposed cultural shift have importance for a writer like you?
âNo. No. It has no importance for me and it isnât true. I mean, we havenât reached the end of irony, are you kidding? Thatâs such a cultural myopia that says things like that. Another day will dawn whether we want it to or not. No, I donât think irony is under any attack and all that may be
Similar Books
