No, I don't think ordinariness and mediocrity are inevitably the same thing, nor do I think Lamar embraces his ordinariness. I do think he realizes, though, that
ordinariness is the quickest, easiest way to happiness for him. Lamar hasn't so much embraced ordinariness as settled for it. The thing about settling, though, is that it rarely works out for very long, and if I were to project beyond the end of the novel, I'm not at all confident that it'll work out for Lamar, either.

What are the challenges of being a full time professor and trying to write a novel? Are there advantages?

There are big advantages: you talk about literature, about writing, with people who care passionately about the matter; you work with young writers struggling with same problems with which you, a not so young writer, also continually
struggle. This doesn't make the struggle less difficult, but it can make you feel a little less lonely.

The disadvantages are those that would exist were you a lumberjack, oncologist, etc.: you don't always have as much time as you'd like. But I'm a prolific time waster anyway.

Your most recent work was a collection of short stories. What is different about writing a novel? What do you find easier/harder about the two forms?

I'm more comfortable with the short story as a form than with the novel. Because for me, fiction is a matter of introducing a problem and an answer to it, and then calling into question that answer. My short stories tend to be--in premise, in voice, in plot--a little more surreal than my longer fiction, and this is so to combat what otherwise might be didacticism on my part. And the thing is, in the short story you can get in and out without overstaying your welcome--that is, before your strengths become your weaknesses. That's not always so in the novel, and for me, novel writing can be a real struggle. But then again, it's supposed to be difficult, is it not?

You teach writing for a living. What is your gauge of the writing skills of incoming high school students these days? How do you get students interested in writing?

My students are better writers than I was coming out of high school. That said, I was a horrible writer, although at the time I believed very strongly that I was not.

And as for getting my students interested in writing, I don't. I'm not out to convert people to fiction writing (there are plenty of things for people to do in this world, and I'm of the belief that fiction writing is no better than most of them). What I am out there to do is to help show people who are interested in the matter how fiction does what it can do--entertain, edify, frighten, warn--so that the students can take their own informed crack at writing their
own stories, their own novels.