AD: I think movement is a kind of narrative I’m preoccupied with. I like stories that establish two places and string a character out between them: Huck Finn, Madame Bovary, Disgrace. Pynchon’s new novel seems to be about movement more than anything else; places and times serve as poles, and characters serve as vehicles shuttling between them. (By “places,” I suppose this can be as figurative as it can be literal.) All of my favorite stories, I think, involve some kind of duality — that’s where tension comes from, and conflict. A character is in one place but wants to be elsewhere. A character is trapped somehow, and works to free him or herself. So these are the kinds of stories I try to write.
Even in my new book, which is non-fiction, I tried to build the narrative around the central idea of displacement: being an American in Rome, being a parent of brand new twins, living in an ancient city that is struggling to modernize. Storytelling itself is, maybe, the act of moving from one place to another, or leaving one place and returning to it once more, but changed somehow.
But, again, unfortunately, it’s hard to know exactly why I make certain decisions in my work. I’m sure the same must be true for your own work? Often structural decisions, in particular, are instinctual: you just try and try different ideas out until something feels interesting, and then you try pursuing it for a while.
Maybe the simple answer to your question is that I love to travel; I get stir crazy if I’m in one place for very long.
LA: Yes, I think that structural decisions are often instinctual, or maybe subconscious as well. My first manuscript, Nobody’s Brat, came out as a series of short stories with separate characters, and for years I fought the unification because I wanted to capture the fragmentary nature of military childhood. However, unifying the storylines was the easiest revision I’ve ever done. The threads were there, waiting to be threaded. By the way, I’m sure it is the nomadic quality of your stories that appeals to me as well. I have never lived in any one house longer than two years, so I have never become stir crazy. What are you writing now that you are ‘settled’ in Idaho?
AD: Now that my Rome book is at the printer, I’m working on a couple of short stories and am trying to resuscitate a novel about radio resistance in World War II that I have hundreds of pages of notes for, but still haven’t quite figured out.
LA: So, you’ve exhausted setting and are now going to play around with different time periods?
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