How to Write Novels That Feel Real (Andrew Sean Greer Interview)

Andrew Sean Greer won the Pulitzer Prize for 2018 novel called Less. So I had to ask him, what is it like to win a Pulitzer Prize? And his story about that

Pulitzer Prize? And his story about that is my favorite part of the interview.

But also, we talked about his writing process. How do you tell great stories,

process. How do you tell great stories, develop great characters, write good sentences. And also mantras like when

sentences. And also mantras like when you're thinking about editing whatever you're working on, the editor, they're the patient, but you, the writer, you're the doctor. And why if you want to write

the doctor. And why if you want to write great comedy, it's better [music] to be honest than witty.

Where I want to start is this idea in editing of looking for things that echo.

Tell me about that.

My first drafts are absolutely terrible.

Like in this new book Villa Coco, I really wrote a lot of vignettes out of order. I kind of put them together and

order. I kind of put them together and so looking it over just myself, there's no editor yet, the first time I try to think what images repeat is like the easiest

thing to see. And if it's like, oh, I seem to tell a bird story here and there's a bird metaphor here and then at the end there's a lot of birds in the sky. I'm like, okay, then let's take out

sky. I'm like, okay, then let's take out all of the like porcupine stories cuz it seems to be birds and add more birds just because readers like a pattern but

one they can't discern. So it should feel like it's it like you know what you're doing. I don't know what the

you're doing. I don't know what the theme is yet. Usually the second draft I That's also the thing I figure out what I'm really talking about and what

is totally off the mark has to go. Like

stories that aren't You know, I think in Villa Coco I had this really wonderful story about um a fraud that took place

in Venice in the 17th century and it was hilarious but it was just not That's not what the book is about, you know, it's really about um what to do with your

life. It is a little bit about fraud

life. It is a little bit about fraud and crime but it was off the mark so it had to go. So, that's also it. Looking

at even like uh a lovely piece, if it doesn't rhyme with something else, because for a novel it all has to rhyme. It has to feel like

it's all part of the same thing.

Hm.

Why?

Because otherwise, I think for a 800-page novel it doesn't, but I think for a 250-page novel, there should be the feeling the reader has at the at the end

that it was all for a reason.

You know, like if you're sitting with your friend and they're like, "I got to tell you the thing that happened today."

And if it's a dream they had, it is not interesting, because there's no point to it. But, if if they're good

it. But, if if they're good storytellers, you're like, "I started off and the milkman was late." Or

something. And you're like, "This guy the milkman has got to be important."

The milkman doesn't end up being important, you're kind of annoyed.

What I'm hearing from you is that early on there's this certain intuitive, almost ethereal from the subconscious draft that gets written. And then the conscious mind only comes in later on.

And I don't want to infer too much, but almost this sense of surprise that there are themes that were there. And you're

like, "Where did they come from?" But,

they almost appeared without your conscious will to make them appear.

I mean, I don't want to sound too David Lynch about it, because that's the kind of way that he thinks. I think he's more magical than I am. But, I definitely the first draft is full of I put in

everything that I could possibly use.

You know, I just spill it all on the table. Any story or character, I'm like,

table. Any story or character, I'm like, "I don't know. Is this going to be useful?"

useful?" You know, and that I mean, they say that you should write on whiskey and um and edit on soda water. So, then the second

time you go through and you realize it's true what the subconscious was trying to get out. And all the rest that is just sort of junk that the conscious mind can make into a theme and a story

and something that will move a reader. I

so describe it as writing like a like a crossword puzzle.

That was Nabokov. Oh, really? And I

thought he was lying cuz I thought you can't write like a crossword puzzle.

That's nonsense. [clears throat]

But I've gotten older and I realized that that is a really useful way to write. So I will write a scene. Villa Coco, I wrote a scene

scene. Villa Coco, I wrote a scene that's 2/3 of the way that's about finding a work of art.

And I'm like, I don't know where this goes.

And then you write another scene that just has occurred you. You know the answer to like in a crossword puzzle.

You fill in the things you know, and they give you clues to the other parts that go across and slowly they all add up because they connect to one another.

And that's how I end up writing these books, which sounds like madness and is madness. But it works better for me than

madness. But it works better for me than than planning it all out.

Either I have a nervous breakdown in the middle because the novel has gone a different direction than I hoped. Or um

or it feels too calculated.

And it doesn't have that organic storytelling feel to it. So when you're writing scene by scene, how does that look like on a day-by-day basis? Like

are you I don't know, maybe you're going for a swim and you're like, "Hey, I have this idea of a scene. Okay, I'm going to go back to the computer. I'm going to write out the scene." And then what I'm imagining is almost like these different

splotches on a piece of paper that don't like a lot of dots that haven't been connected and kind of arranged in order.

But you're just trying to get stuff out.

Trying to get stuff out. You're just

imagining different scenes. Is that a fair way to put it?

Sure. I mean, more that way is my friend Daniel who I swim with who writes on index cards that he puts on his dining room table.

Which is how Nabokov wrote.

Right? He He just wrote index cards and he did not know what they were about.

They were fully written paragraphs.

Can you imagine? It's hard to imagine that that's true. But I've seen it in action.

And it is true. Mine is more I know I have a list of scenes that I'm imagining for the book that are coming to me that seem fun to write. And when I'm swimming, I come up with how I'm going

to write the scene.

Meaning, what point of view, what um details are going to be there, what would be fun, what would be a fun way to write the scene. Well, like you could tell a scene of

um like backwards. You could say, "Years later, he would look back on that moment and remember only the goat that was tied in the middle of the field. But

when he first arrived that morning, he didn't see the goat at all." And so, you're like, "Okay, I'll foreshadow something and I'll tell it from long in the far in the future to give it this

perspective and like freak the reader out a little bit." Or you can just say he walked into the room and there was no goat there.

I mean, I read a lot of old books to see how they used to do things because I think a lot of these techniques are lost in in uh the desire to write a book. If

we're only watching TV shows, we tend to write dialogue of people entering a room, every single thing that happens in that room, and then they leave the room.

Whereas actually in a book, you don't have to do that. In fact, you don't even have to You can say, "Like tell me the truth." "I told her exactly what she

truth." "I told her exactly what she needed to hear." You don't have to put the dialogue at all. You can just report it. And so, those choices, which I think

it. And so, those choices, which I think I only know from reading a lot of books, are the ones that I think, "What would be fun? Oh, if I don't tell the reader

be fun? Oh, if I don't tell the reader what he says." Like I just read was reading a book now by Beryl Bainbridge and at the end of the chapter, she says, "I called up my mother and told her what had happened. My mother said what she

had happened. My mother said what she always says."

always says." End of scene. You're like, "Oh, I wonder what it was." And that's kind of cool.

Give me other examples of older books that you've read, things that you've seen that are different from how we write now that you're trying to kind of bring into your work,

incorporate, you're getting inspired by.

Well, like one This is feels like a foolish example, but it's it's it's I think the first moment I realized that you can do anything you want was reading an old novel by Colette, a French

writer, and in fact that it's a novella called Gigi, which people will know if they've watched the musical movie from the '50s called Gigi.

Uh And at the end of it, it's about a courtesan, she's trying to be a courtesan, and there's a man who wants to be her um whatever it's called, the guy who has

the courtesan, and instead she says, "No, I don't want to be that." And he's very angry, and then he comes back to the house, and he says to her mother, "Madam Alvarez, I would love the great

honor of asking for Gigi's hand {dot} {dot} {dot}." And Colette knew not to

{dot} {dot}." And Colette knew not to say any more than that, that we knew he was asking to marry her. And if if she did a single word more, it would be too sentimental. And I was like, "You can

sentimental. And I was like, "You can just go {dot} {dot} {dot}, and that's the end? You can just leave us hanging?"

the end? You can just leave us hanging?"

And I was stunned. I thought you had to I thought you had to.

And then I it made me realize that the real liberties of of of a novel and that kind of storytelling, which is that the narrator and the writer

were in control, like theater. You can

there's a lot in the imagination in theater, always, no matter how elaborate the set is. It's still a black box.

And it's more fun in theater if it's actually just a black box, and the chair turns into a train, turns into you know, a a hotel room.

And and the novel is more like that, that there's a lot that the reader um invents themselves, and the more they invent themselves, the more tied to the book they are, and the more

they enjoy the experience. But it is the more difficult it is the reading experience. So, you have to decide as a

experience. So, you have to decide as a writer how difficult you want it because a lot of readers will reject it if they have to make up too much. Like the Beryl

Bainbridge novel I'm reading now, she does not describe how the characters look, which is hard for me, cuz I love describing how the characters look.

Um, nor does she describe a lot of the rooms they're in. It takes place in a theater

they're in. It takes place in a theater in the early 20 in 1948 in London, which is hard for me to imagine what that's going to look like.

But I understand that that's part of the fun. It's a short book. She's not going

fun. It's a short book. She's not going to fill it with extra description, and you kind of gradually imagine the characters yourself. It took me a while to get into

yourself. It took me a while to get into it, and now I'm really invested, because my version of Stella is like nobody else's. I've invented her completely.

else's. I've invented her completely.

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So, as you're thinking about the narr- the narrator, the quality of the narrator, is that something that you kind of write down? You got this big board, kind of like Bradley Cooper in 21, like looking over everywhere, it's like, "Okay, this what it is." Or is it

just this really intuitive sense of connection that you have with your narrator and a deep intuition about they would say this, they wouldn't say that. They would say this, they

say that. They would say this, they wouldn't say that.

Certainly, it's a pile of books that I have chosen from my library that I think my book sounds like something that is a combination of these books.

Oh, wow. And I don't know why.

And and so I have them there and I pick them up and read them and and tell like the combination creates And I often get a lot of false starts. I

had a book called The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, and I must have written the first 100 pages at of that book three or four times.

It's like, let's change the gender of the person. Let's tell it from a

the person. Let's tell it from a different narrative point of view. Let's

try it first person from years later.

Let's try it present ten- You know, I just got it wrong over and over and I knew it.

Clearly not very quickly.

Mhm. But

Yeah, but eventually you hit it and you know you or I know I hit it because I'm able to produce lots of pages easily, even if I'm going to cut them, that they're a pleasure to write. And I

really like a first-person narrator because you can give them a lot of personality. Um

personality. Um Less, for instance, the narrator is why I enjoyed writing the book so much, and the narrator is not Arthur Less.

The narrator is much smarter and funnier. The narrator knows it's a

and funnier. The narrator knows it's a comedy. Arthur Less doesn't know it's a

comedy. Arthur Less doesn't know it's a comedy. He's actually pretty upset a lot

comedy. He's actually pretty upset a lot of the time. He's having a bad time. But

we're having a good time because the narrator knows how the story ends.

And that's part of a comedy is a is an understanding that things are going to turn out okay, and therefore it can be a funny story.

You're talking about voice, personality, that distinctiveness. How do you

that distinctiveness. How do you cultivate that?

Well, I read a lot of books and try to be inspired by them without imitating them.

Like in Less, the narrator has a very cultivated English language capability.

You know, he I had to look up a lot of words because he's knows more than I do, which is really fun because you sound really smart even though it took you know, I had to go to the dictionary a

lot to find the kind of words that he would use. And that is part of the humor

would use. And that is part of the humor in that book, I think, is the language is funny because he's over wrought.

But, that was not appropriate for Villa Coco, which is a different narrator.

He's um he's a much older man looking back on his time when he was 21 or 22, which is different than looking at someone else.

You can make fun of yourself a lot, but you have great empathy for that person you used to be who you barely recognize, and that's a different feeling, and it was a much simpler

choice of language, and maybe less antic storytelling.

What you were saying almost reminds me of the way a designer makes a mood board, and I've heard certain movie makers even talk about how when they're they'll find a playlist that they want for the movie, and then

they'll just listen to that playlist over and over again, so they have a keen sense of what's the vibe, the tenor of the story going to be even if they can't put it to words, they

do know the feeling intimately.

Well, I know when I'm writing a book that I'm completely attuned to what is going to help me write the book.

Meaning movies or plays or music, and I will stop watching a movie if I'm like, this is no good to me. You know, Jaws 3D is not helpful.

[laughter] Could be. I mean, I never know. It's not

Could be. I mean, I never know. It's not

like it's high or low art. It's just

what storytelling is is going to be interesting and it's not necessarily um just books. It's any kind of

just books. It's any kind of storytelling that I go for. So, I do start collecting those. And I do know writers who have playlists that are what the book is going to be. And I'm not

that kind of writer, but that makes sense to me.

So, what I'm hearing, there's almost two different ways that you would think about consumption. One would be I'm

about consumption. One would be I'm going to consume what's what what's interesting to me, but now, okay, it's time to start writing something. And now

I have this particular vector that I'm on and I'm only going to consume things that help me move down.

Yeah, it's very frustrating for my husband who would like to watch Scream 7. And I'm like, no, we have to watch

7. And I'm like, no, we have to watch another Bergman movie.

Which she refuses to do. And it means I miss out on a lot of contemporary literature because I'm I'm it's often not helpful to me. As wonderful as it is, it's not

to me. As wonderful as it is, it's not what I'm working on cuz I'm more old-fashioned, I think. So, I end up going to a second-hand bookstore and

looking through the bookstore. And

sometimes I pick up a book I've never heard of and I think this might be it.

Or like this Beryl Bainbridge novel I'm reading for my next book I'm working on. I said

I was never going to write another novel. Clearly, I am. And uh a friend

novel. Clearly, I am. And uh a friend recommended it and I'm reading it and I'm thinking, yes, there's something here.

There's something here.

What are the best bookstores?

I mean, I love Green Apple Books so much because they have used books and new books together. And that

books together. And that really makes sense to me.

Because the the obsession um with new books uh buy my new book, by the way. But there

But I think for for writers, there doesn't We don't need to focus on on everything that's just won the Booker Prize necessarily.

I think the problem would be that then you would just sound like everyone else in your in your field or in your generation. And it you What you want to

generation. And it you What you want to sound is just like yourself. That's the

only way to make any kind of art is to sound more as most like yourself as possible. And that means being open to

possible. And that means being open to whatever inspires you and not being embarrassed by it because it's your job. You know,

you have to And you don't have to read the newest translation of the Odyssey because there's a all these book clips reading it. Although, maybe you do. That sounds

it. Although, maybe you do. That sounds

actually like a good idea.

Tell me more about why the old books as opposed to the new ones.

Because I think a lot varieties of storytelling, these books that no one's reading anymore, they're lost to us.

And there's all these inventions that that happen in these old novels. Old French novels would start like Madame M {under dash}

arrived at the city of V {under dash} on the 12th of May to meet the duke. And

you're like, "What are the under dashes about? I've never seen that before.

about? I've never seen that before.

What's that about?" And then I think, "Do I want like an under dash in my novel? Will anyone understand what that

novel? Will anyone understand what that is?" No, but like in Villa Coco, I use

is?" No, but like in Villa Coco, I use that kind of technique because you don't know the narrator's name until the end of the book. They

call him by a nickname, Jovidy, and he has a real name.

But it's like in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca. People know the movie, but if

Rebecca. People know the movie, but if you read the book, you realize you never hear her name. Her name is the second Mrs. de Winter. And that's really interesting

for the author to choose to do that. It

it um hides the character from you a little bit, but it also there's a little suspense.

It also makes it feel like maybe it's really happened and they're trying to cover up the information so they don't ruin someone's life, which of course is is nonsense. It's it's made up. And that

is nonsense. It's it's made up. And that

sort of mixture, which we don't read anymore, um is great to to bring back to life.

When you look at art history, 16th century, 17th century, 18th century, whatever it is, you realize that where a piece of art was created and when a piece of art was

created actually is more influential than the person who made that. Like the

difference between two artists in the 17th century is less than the difference between art in the 17th century and art in the 21st

century. And what you realize is that

century. And what you realize is that different time periods, they have a completely different spirit. And when

it's only when you look at the old art that you realize, "Oh my goodness, there is such a homogeneity to the things that we create now, not to any fault of our own, but it's because we

live in this present age." And what I hear you saying is, "Hey, that means that if you're looking for new ideas, new ways to make your work distinctive, just go to the old stuff. They have a

completely different way of seeing and thinking and speaking and talking about character, story, whatever it is."

Yeah, absolutely. Like if you want to write a novel that is a huge rant, you should read Philip Roth.

[snorts] And even if you don't like him, and I sometimes don't, but like that is how you learn to write a rant. Whereas like

John Updike is playful with language in his description in a way that's very funny to me. And I definitely was inspired by that for Less

by Updike of all people.

Yeah, these are the words you always come back to. Playfulness, joy, delight.

Well, I like those when I read. Dave

Eggers said that what he loves in a book is for there to be a surprise on every page. And he means like a surprise of

page. And he means like a surprise of description or language or dialogue or plot or character, any of those things.

But it should be a surprise on every page. And I would say like Marcel

page. And I would say like Marcel Proust, as boring as you think he is, there's a surprise on every page.

Raymond Chandler, when he would write, he had his typewriter and on something had to happen on every single page before the paper left the typewriter.

Yeah, I heard that whenever he got bored, he would send two men with guns through the doorway. And so you read his read his books and you're like, I guess he got a little bored. But he really

crafted those novels. Those are not dashed off. Those aren't Ellery Queen

dashed off. Those aren't Ellery Queen novels. Those Raymond Chandler They're

novels. Those Raymond Chandler They're each one of them is spectacular literature.

Yeah, I'm not saying you should always write like this, but there is something to demanding that something happens in a short amount of time over and over. I

was just at a wedding.

And the best man gave one of the best speeches I've ever heard. He had like 25 index cards and he just read index card, index card, index card. And every index

card had a whole cohesive story on it.

And so just the speed, the rapid fire of funny stuff, wow, that's a great story was so high and it just came down to like how he actually wrote the speech was exactly the opposite of what

everybody else did.

Well, he didn't have to deal with transitions, which can be so are the hardest thing in a way. And so

he did away with that, which is really smart because then you don't have to um do the boring connective tissue, you know? You can just get to the good

know? You can just get to the good stuff. It's why in my books

stuff. It's why in my books someone told me or I read something online that was like, "Will at Coca doesn't have any chapters." And I thought, "Sure, yes it does." And I thought, "Oh, no it it doesn't in the

way you're thinking. It's not like Frog and Toad are friends. It's

but it is sections separated by like a little flower or whatever that are sometimes really short and sometimes really long. Then I don't have to do

really long. Then I don't have to do those transitions. I can just have the

those transitions. I can just have the white space and move on to another thing. So it doesn't have to be like

thing. So it doesn't have to be like middle marched like later on in the day or Thea thought she would pay a visit to the tenant farmer. You know, I don't want to do that. Well, there's a profound point here. It's if you like to

write in a certain way, find a structure that allows you to write in that way rather than being constrained by how you think writing should or needs to be. And

I think that just again goes to reading lots of books and finding the one that works for you, not the most popular one out there or the one even that your favorite book has done in, but then the

one that works for you. And I think that maybe Kurt Vonnegut is the one who taught me how to write in short little things of all writers who I haven't read in 30 years.

What I'm hearing from that is writing as a way of expanding your horizon of things that make you say, "Oh, I can write like that. I can do that."

Yeah. And it takes reading in a different way.

Um it takes reading like a detective a little bit and if there's something that you really enjoyed stopping and thinking, "How did they do that?

How did they pull that off?" Cormac

McCarthy who does not use quotation marks in his dialogue. That's a

particular choice. It's very distancing.

It's cold.

And that works in his writing, but it would not work in my writing where I'm trying to keep it warm. I like quotation marks. Or Jose Saramago who doesn't even

marks. Or Jose Saramago who doesn't even separate the dialogue out from the rest of the paragraph or give you quotation marks. So you're doing all this work.

marks. So you're doing all this work.

it's all like all in together, which is really fun, but it it's um it's more fairy tale, I think. And so, seeing which one is going to work

mostly for you personally and then for the book you're working on. One of the biggest things I've learned from doing you know, 100 episodes of this now is

not for every writer, but for most really good writers, they just have way more to pull from than the average writer because they've consumed so much.

I have got to watch these 100 episodes cuz I it's not like I don't panic in front of the page every day. I I want to know what these other writers said,

too, because I don't know how it's made.

But, it is true and I'm it's not like I'm the fastest reader, but I have trained myself to do to do this to pay attention, to learn from all these other things.

that. Training yourself to pay attention.

That's what it is. It is

no longer do I get to read a book like Lord of the Rings even and be like, "Oh, what a fun adventures these hobbits are auto." It's It's dangerous. I don't get

auto." It's It's dangerous. I don't get that pleasure anymore. I have to read it and think like, "Why is this song here?

Is it Do I like that? Like I wonder what that's doing in the book. Is it boring me?"

me?" Which it used to when I was 12, but I think now like it's part of building the magic. You know, I would come up with

magic. You know, I would come up with some I would be I want to know how it's made because I have to I'm going to have to make something in literature later that day.

Well, implicit in that, too, is just because Tolkien did it doesn't mean that it's perfect and in every way.

Absolutely. Implicit what you're saying is, "No, this might be a great book.

Might not be a great book, but you definitely stood the test of time. But,

hey, I don't like this thing that Tolkien did here. Why don't I like it?"

Well, like Proust, who's my favorite writer, but I'm not imitating. In the

first volume, there's a long speech by a church about the by a priest about the stones of the church.

And it is so boring, and it is 50 pages or something. And when I was teaching my

or something. And when I was teaching my class, I said, "Proust wants you to experience every possible human emotion, and one of them is boredom, and you're going to experience it in real time."

I would not do that myself. That is not a technique that I would use. But he has other techniques that I that I do use.

He has one way of of of creating a sentence where, and this is in translation, of course, so I don't know what the original French is, he will say like, "I

it then was awakened in me, um like a a bird awakened by a false sun who takes flight, that impossible thing, colon, the past."

the past." You know, he has this long elaborate sentence, and then there's a colon, and you land it. And I thought, "That is really powerful."

really powerful." And you can only do that once or twice in a book. He does it thousands of times in a very long book.

But I really took that away as like, "That's a That's a great way to make a powerful sentence."

powerful sentence." I was talking to Lee Child, who wrote all the Jack Reacher books, and I asked him, "Do you outline?" He said, "No."

"No." And I said, "Huh, that's surprising."

And he said, "I just write." And there was a really interesting back and forth in the YouTube comments, of all places, basically saying, "Okay, you guys are missing the point. He doesn't outline,

but his mental bank of references from reading thousands of books over the years just means that he has this intuitive sense of what to do. Of

course, he's outlining. He's not doing it consciously, but there is something going on in his brain after reading all those books, writing all those books, that is different from the novice who does an outline. These are not the same

things. Just like when you're watching

things. Just like when you're watching um I like to watch a horror movie and there's action and then there has to be a moment where they're like the monster is at bay and they're sitting in there trapped in the graveyard where they turn

to each other and be like, "So, what was your childhood like?" You know, you have to have that moment and it has to happen in probably twice in the movie to connect the characters together. Maybe

if you're really studying you say like it happens at exactly 35 minutes and and at 52 minutes. But probably when you're writing it you just think like I think it's time for a little chill out.

You just doubt. How is the way that we talk about character changed over the the centuries?

Well, I know because I went to MFA school and I see online sometimes out of the corner of my eye discussions of character that feel like

they're influenced by method acting.

Which is that you have to write out everything the character has ever done in their lives and I don't find that to be true and I wonder what they did in the 19th century. Often those

characters are they're longer books and so the characters are built from a lot of detail.

Maybe more like the way Stephen King writes that he will give you a giant pages and pages about what this sheriff did in Texas 20 years ago.

But we don't do that that much anymore.

King does it. Anne Rice did it. Um

we're now expected I think to capture a character instantly in a few in in literary fiction um in a few sentences.

Which means you do have to go in incredibly prepared.

Or you stumble your way through the first draft, discover the character and then go back and remake them.

Or what I find is the character either leaps instantly on the page and there's no work needed or they never do.

And you're and I have to use my skills to make them come alive for the reader, even though they're not alive for me.

And it's fine because that's what the job is.

And I know how to do it.

Um distinctive ways of talking thinking about things more than the way they they move. It's not giving them a complicated past. I think we

think it always has to be like adding and adding to their past. It's making

them a real person that you're meeting in front of you, I think. Often, I I don't mind being alone at a bar with a pad of paper.

Ah, the best. I love sitting at the bar.

Last night, sat at the bar, had a burger, met some characters. It's my

favorite. I mean, I really like people.

I think I life is really made up of other people, so you might as well get used to them.

And they're so useful for writing.

As long as you have like a pad of paper, otherwise I'll forget. But you I can write down not just the stories they tell you, but like the way they Yeah. move and talk and

whatever they're wearing and it's really great.

And also, when you meet a character, there's just these very vivid little details about them that just encompass who they are.

Yeah, and it takes nothing at all on the page. If that person is vibrant for you,

page. If that person is vibrant for you, you can put them in your book and they don't have to be the bartender. They could be a maid

in a 19th century book, but that person with whatever her bug eyes and um mole here will be alive to you and that'll make it really easy to write them.

People who are really welcoming, people who are not at all welcoming. I kind of like those. I kind of like the people

like those. I kind of like the people who are a little off-putting.

Hm. Tell me more.

Well, I think when a bartender doesn't want to serve you or is gruff to you, it means that in the scene you could turn them around a little bit and that gives them more action than someone's like, "Well,

hello, darling. How are you doing?

hello, darling. How are you doing?

What's your name?" You're already there.

But if you have to sort of persuade them and in real life, I often never persuade them.

[laughter] They're never never into me. Of course

you want something to happen in the dialogue, but you don't have to. You can

have something happen in the background.

You can have a cat in the bar that's trying to make its way across behind the bottles to the other side. And if it makes it to the other side, you feel like something happened in the scene

even if it's undetermined. It something

has to happen in every portion, but it doesn't have to be what you think it is.

Why do you keep coming back to surprises like the thing in every scene?

You want them to turn the pages.

And you want them even in a literary fiction, I think, because people they won't read it if they don't turn the pages.

And yet what they're coming for isn't plot. What they're coming for actually

plot. What they're coming for actually paragraphs of beauty and wisdom and poetry, but they're not going to read just huge blocks of those. Or

I think. So, you have to do use these other techniques to get them to turn the pages so they get to those blocks of poetry. And then when they finish the

poetry. And then when they finish the book, they're like, "You have got to read this book and it has this beautiful paragraph." Something they would never

paragraph." Something they would never have gotten to if you hadn't put it in a diamond heist.

Is creating drama and suspense something that you go for?

Yeah, for sure. I don't think of myself as a uh a Hitchcock genius of suspense, right?

But I think there's a lot of ways to create suspense um narratively that aren't necessarily about like a

bomb about to go off in 5 minutes. You

know, you can even start the novel saying like the I died on the 24th of December. I cannot

explain to you how I'm able to communicate this to you from the other world, but I will start at the beginning and you're like, oh my god, he's going to die? How does this go? And then

to die? How does this go? And then

you're fine. In fact, there's a novel called The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, which is like a Brazilian masterpiece.

Bras Cubas. Bras Cubas. Bras Cubas.

And it starts that way and you're like, what? And this is a novel from

what? And this is a novel from the early 20th century and it does this thing at the beginning. He's speaking

from the afterworld. He's like, it's too complicated to explain how, but I have to tell you about my life.

And it's the posthumous memoirs.

Right.

And it's in Portuguese and we've never heard of it and it's so crazy.

And I like those. That's surprising to me.

What's this uh throw with your left-hand device that you Yeah. This was great. I was in graduate

Yeah. This was great. I was in graduate school and I was very pretentious and show-offy. I was like young writer. I wanted to show off what I

writer. I wanted to show off what I could do and I would write these obscure stories with aliens or, you know,

17th century aristocrats and robots and just to try to be postmodern or I don't know what I was doing.

And I everyone hated them and I thought they asked me to write a realistic story and I said, all right, I'll show them.

And I wrote a story about a gay man and a lesbian who get married in the 1960s as beards for each other and their marriage over the next 30 years and how they really become each other's true

love in a way. I brought it in, everyone loved it and I was like, I showed them.

Like they don't know that I was just kidding. And my professor, William

kidding. And my professor, William Kittredge, a Western writer, like cowboy Western writer, took me into his and he told me some baseball story I don't recall.

Who's a famous left-handed pitcher?

Whitey Ford.

Whitey Ford. And all he said was Whitey Ford always throwed with through with his left hand.

And it took me a while to understand like if you're good at this Yeah.

Andy you're showing off with all this other stuff, but this is what you're good at.

You're good at emotion.

And it's not shameful to do what you're good at. In fact, it's the only thing there is to do.

And maybe I I wanted to be the cleverest writer in America and I just was not going to be.

I was going to be the the a vulnerable writer. And that's

the last thing you want to be at 23.

But I really understood what he was saying to me. And that is the first short story I ever published.

But I think about it a lot. Um

about less.

You know, that that book was a comic novel and it turned out I was good at that, which I did not know.

And my last two books, Villa Koko is a comic novel.

And I think, boy, am I allowed to write these still? There's not a lot of

these still? There's not a lot of literary comic novels out there and I think Whitey Ford pitch with his left hand. You get to pitch with your left hand. If you're

if this is what you're good at, the pages are coming, if you're enjoying it, if readers are enjoying it there that is what the whole point is.

Yeah, what came to mind for me is there there's four ways of thinking about competence. Unconsciously incompetent,

competence. Unconsciously incompetent, consciously incompetent then you can be consciously competent at something and then you can be unconsciously competent at something. And I think a lot of the

at something. And I think a lot of the times the things that we're consciously competent at, we've had to work for.

We're like, I've worked really hard to get good at that. But I think often the things that were unconsciously competent at, they've come so natural to us that we actually just don't even admire those

things in others. We don't admire them in ourselves. So then we don't actually

in ourselves. So then we don't actually do those things and a lot of the way that people in any craft can do better is just to be

conscious of the things that they're so naturally competent at and do those things and actually learn to appreciate what those things are.

I That's exactly it. That it feels like, well, it's easy. Anybody can do that.

And it is not true anybody can do that. That

is just what you can do. And when it feels easy, it doesn't feel like it's art.

But it is.

It is. It doesn't have to be white-knuckling it through.

It can be a a a pleasure. You know, I it is writing is really hard. I said that before. It's not.

before. It's not.

But writing Villa Coca was a pleasure.

And I learn I'm old enough now to say like, I'm just going to have um a great time doing what I think I'm good at.

It feels easy, but I'm aware that like I have peers who don't write this way. I

don't know if they can write this way.

So I'm going to This is my little niche, you know? This

is perfect for me.

From reading about this, it seems like one of the things that you picked up on is that a lot of comedy comes from tragedy and rather than talk about it as, oh, this is so sad, that the tragedy can then become funny.

Yes. I I would say you have to think about the hardest things for you.

And see if you are capable of making it into a funny story. And if you are, I mean, Paul Beatty wrote a book um The

Sellout, which is about slavery coming back.

And that is not a funny subject, but he makes it really funny. It's the hardest thing for him and he was able to make it any one the Booker Prize and things.

And and I think I learned that lesson in less because I was writing a very serious book about a middle-aged gay man in San Francisco and it was such a

tedious self-pitying book. I thought I can't write this.

And then I've told this story before that I went swimming, the miracle thing, but really in a desperation about what to do with this book.

And I just thought, well, what the hell, I'll just make fun of him instead.

And opened every door because I was writing about stuff that was really hard for me.

You know, there is one point at the beginning of the book where it says, "Arthur Less was the first homosexual ever to grow old."

Which I think is a funny sentence because the word homosexual is like hilarious.

And rather than say he felt like the oldest homosexual, it just says he was the oldest as a homosexual.

And what that is really about is that everyone else in the generation above him, almost all the men died of AIDS.

And so he had never had any um any example of how to turn 40, 50, 60,

which I don't. And it's a track It's one of the greatest tragedies I've witnessed in my life just to see all those men die and I escaped it because I'm just young

enough. But it's a funny sentence. But I

enough. But it's a funny sentence. But I

have learned that you have to You can only You have to be really quick by touching on those really hard things in a comedy.

Or at least for me.

That you touch on them and you want to make the reader realize we're having fun, but we're really talking about something serious. And what I'm doing is

something serious. And what I'm doing is I'm leading you through the fire and I'm distracting you while we go through this hard thing and then we'll realize we're on the other side of it.

But once in a while you have to look around and see what we're going through.

And this was Joan Rivers who said this.

She's telling a Helen Keller story, like a ridiculous Helen Keller story, and someone yells, "That's not funny."

And she says, "My mother was deaf."

What do you think comedy is about?

Comedy is about taking us to the hardest things of our lives all together and looking at it together. You're stupid.

[laughter] The other thing about comedy is just the old cliche, it's about timing, which means there's a lot of revision just in the the timing of small things. How does

that work on the page? It's very clear to me how that works when you're seeing stand-up or something. How does it work on the page

something. How does it work on the page with timing? You have to work with the

with timing? You have to work with the words to delay something.

You play it out or you have to make it go faster. You add less. There's right

go faster. You add less. There's right

at the end. I was with my friend Daniel, who's very funny writer. And

I think he'd told me like, "Your last 20 pages need to be like eight."

Hm.

And I just cut and cut and cut. I was

like, "I can't make it any shorter because he's in Japan and he needs to take a plane to San Francisco to go back for the final scene." And he said, "Andy, you don't have to write him

getting on a plane. You can write {dot}{dot}{dot} next paragraph {dot}{dot}{dot} he stood at his house. I needed it faster. It

wasn't funny or moving unless I kept picked up the pace and that is done grammatically.

[laughter] In comedy, how much of great comedy writing for you comes from it being your first pass and you just had it in your heart and you just

plopped it out on the page versus the revision, the revision, trying to get that right?

The funny stuff is all in the first pass.

I got to say.

Why is it true for comedy that it's in the first pass, but then you talk so much about the importance of editing and other parts for a novel.

I'm not a witty person. I'm not a quick wit. I'm very much someone who thinks of

wit. I'm very much someone who thinks of the right thing to say, you know, l'esprit de l'escalier, on the way out of the party.

Oh, I wish I'd said that.

But that's only like 2 minutes later.

So, at the writer's speed, 2 minutes is not very long. So, I'm able to get it in the page and I can have fun.

However, in revision, I'm there I'm able to see where I'm like, "Oh, I set up a joke without knowing it, and now I see where

I can make it land."

In Less Is Lost, there's a whole scene he's out in the desert with these hippies and they built a universe appreciation platform that looks really rickety. And then later, he takes

rickety. And then later, he takes blueberries he didn't know have mushrooms in them and he goes on a trip.

And And in the original version, he woke up in a teepee naked. And

on the final version, I was like, "No, he has to wake up on the universe appreciation platform. Why did I put it

appreciation platform. Why did I put it there if not?" It's much funnier if he's naked on a universe appreciation platform and he cannot get down.

Like that's better than just a teepee.

And I I wrote it for myself. It is all there. I just had to

there. I just had to later see it. And that happens all the time, that I have set up a joke for myself, but I have not finished it.

You were talking earlier about learning from other writers throughout history?

What comedy writers have you learned from that you've then incorporated into your writing?

These are maybe not going to sound like comedy writers to people, but in the '50s and '60s, literary writers who we think of as great important

people, they also wrote comedies. That

was just part of the thing. Updike was a comedic writer. And Philip Roth, definitely a

writer. And Philip Roth, definitely a comedic writer, and Saul Bellow, and playwright Thornton Wilder wrote farces, and all of that felt like normal part of

being a also a serious writer. So, I actually enjoy reading them.

And there's a lot of British writers I enjoy that are not as laugh-out-loud funny, but are have a certain charm from the early 20th century.

American readers don't read these books.

Here's a good example of reading things that other people don't read. Nancy

Mitford novels.

No one's heard of her. Gerald Durrell.

Famous in England for a book called My Family and Other Animals. And never

heard of him. For Villa Coco, these are the books I looked at for books that were a very gentle kind of comedy.

Harmless, but like just constantly again, delighted by them.

Talk to me about the transition into lesson into being a comedy writer and losing your British publisher.

Oh, yeah.

[laughter] Um I don't know why I laughed.

I Cuz tragedy leads to comedy.

Yeah. Well, I wrote last I got to tell you the book before that, The Impossible Lives of Greta Wells, barely reviewed, certainly not purchased by readers, and

I felt like I it felt like it was beneath notice to me. I'm I'm too sensitive to these things. And I thought it's all over I'm as a writer like I've That was your fourth fifth book at that time?

Fifth book. Fourth novel. And I thought, well, that's it, you know, I'm an old man 46 or something, and I've written a book that is beneath notice, and I guess I'm just out of the

club.

Which liberated me to write anything I wanted, you know? And so, I wrote this comedy. I

you know? And so, I wrote this comedy. I

just assumed no one was ever going to read it. I put in things that are way

read it. I put in things that are way too personal that people should not know about my life that are there and I'm glad I did because it turns out people don't care

about my life. They enjoy the a novel, you know, per se. Usually when a a novel is published in America, then you get a British publisher and it's just they publish it there as well and I did for

all of my books with the same publisher, Faber. And they de clined to publish

Faber. And they de clined to publish Less based on book sales of my last of the book before. Not on the idea of like we're

before. Not on the idea of like we're investing in you for a a lifetime. No,

they were kicking me free. But so did 11 other British publishers. I never found a British publisher for Less. It came

out in the United States. No British

publisher until the day after I won the Pulitzer Prize.

Which was like 10 months later. You

know, it was like significantly a long time had passed. And then they all wanted to publish it.

Can you imagine a more satisfying [laughter] So what is it like winning the Pulitzer?

It was Like what is the day like when you find out, okay, oh my goodness, I just won and then what happens in the aftermath of that?

I was working in Tuscany as director of an artist residency.

Yeah, I saw that place. Look cool.

It was pretty cool. There were um some dogs that were roaming free. Margaret

Atwood was coming, so that was a big deal and I was like, I think these pugs shouldn't be pooping all over the dining room table when Margaret Atwood is here.

So I'm in the floor, not the table.

And so I bought diapers from China that have suspenders cuz pugs have no waist and you can't they won't stay on a diaper, I discovered. So I was training the pugs to wear diapers that evening.

And I um put them to bed, and it was like 10:00.

I'm There's a time difference. That's an

important part of the story. And also,

we had no cell reception. So, I wasn't looking at my cell phone the way we do now, cuz there was no no point in looking. So, that was my evening was

looking. So, that was my evening was taken up by the pugs and the diapers. And then, my boyfriend was there, and he showed me his phone, and it was the San Francisco Chronicle.

Someone had sent it to him that says, "Local author wins Pulitzer Prize."

Andrew Sean Greer.

But, I didn't know when the Pulitzer happened. I didn't It's April 18th, by

happened. I didn't It's April 18th, by the way. But, I didn't know that. It was

the way. But, I didn't know that. It was

just another day in in, you know, And so, I just said, "That is not true."

[laughter] It was very clearly not true to me. And,

um, but I did look at my phone. I was back in cell phone range, and I had a million text messages, and they're all like

fireworks, dancing Spanish lady, you know, like clown fish, like not very helpful texts. High heel. And, but I did

helpful texts. High heel. And, but I did have a lot of calls from Michael Chabon.

Good friend. He had won the Pulitzer Prize in I think 2001. And I thought, "Okay, if there's some sort of fraud or weird a fake rumor, yeah, he will tell me the truth."

Cuz I'm like, "Don't get me worked up about something that's clearly not true."

true." And I've been fooled in the past.

So, I called him, and he said, "Andy, do you not know?"

And I said, "I don't know what you're talking about, Michael." He said, "Am I the first person to tell you?" And he he told me I had won the Pulitzer Prize.

And he said, "Let me tell you two things. There is no downside, and now you can write any book you want to."

to." Let's go.

That liberated me to completely enjoy myself.

It's like tenure for writers.

Yeah.

And then, um, Michael Cunningham called me, who had won the Pulitzer Prize for The Hours, and he said, "All All the writers who had won the Pulitzer Prize all contacted me who are still living."

That's what happens.

They all contact you. So, it's Donna Tartt and Jhumpa Lahiri, and like writers I didn't know, and you suddenly feel like you're accepted. It was an incredible experience over those days to

feel part of something.

And Michael Cunningham said, "Do not waste any time worrying about whether you deserve it."

Which I had not occurred to me yet.

But, I thought, "Okay, that's not my job. I was not on that committee. I got

job. I was not on that committee. I got

it, and I'm not going to worry about whether a comic novel deserves to win a Pulitzer Prize. That's not my, you know,

Prize. That's not my, you know, position."

position." The thing that really stands out about that story is that you wrote less in

a state of some combination of hopelessness despair "Oh my goodness, I just don't have it anymore."

anymore." Again, that's where comedy comes from.

I'm sure Seinfeld would tell you that.

He's He's the one who said, "Comedy is when you decide it's a funny story."

Life is not funny.

You just decide.

What happened today to you is is awful and miserable, but you decide it's a funny story when you tell it to your friends at the bar, and they laugh, and you feel, "Okay, I'm over it."

over it." You know?

And that was a low point in my life when I wrote Less. And to be to win that prize for it? I can't tell you. That was That was supposed to be a

you. That was That was supposed to be a book no one would even read. And then, it was a best seller for a year.

What is your self-conception as an artist, as a writer? What How do you think about what

writer? What How do you think about what that means, and what it is that you're trying to do?

That's a good question. It's funny to to to like say I'm an artist. I do think of myself that way. I think it's from going to artist residencies and they're being with like real artists, painters, and

like sculptors and things, and they definitely see writers as their peers.

And so I'm I'll take it.

I wouldn't have called myself that before, but I certainly with my other writer friends, we you know, our lives are in a way devoted

to art. We're we're making things that

to art. We're we're making things that just may not be popular.

They're popular by accident, honestly.

Like Less, that wasn't accidentally popular.

But I was happy with that book before it was published because I thought I have made the thing in my head as closely as I possibly can, and I am

That's all I wanted to do. And that is the artistic sensation. Is it there's a compulsion, and if you're able through great effort to to make it, and it

sounds like madness. It sounds like um Richard Dreyfuss in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where he's had a vision and he builds the mountain out of mashed potatoes at the kitchen table. That kind

of feels like what it is. Like it's

madness to live with someone like that, and Terry Carr leaves him, but that is it. There's something in your head and

it. There's something in your head and you have to make it, and what are the right materials, and what I'm going to do, and no one understands me.

They won't understand me until I've made it, and then you make it, and often they still don't understand you. But

sometimes but the but the pleasure comes from having having done it as closely as possible. That's I remember that in

possible. That's I remember that in Less. I was so happy

Less. I was so happy before publication came out. I thought,

you know, it'll be great to get good reviews or or whatever happens, but because I thought it would never be a success anyway, I just wanted that

artistic sensation.

What you learn from the painters?

I learned do you have to let the lacquer dry.

[laughter] Their process is so similar to writing a novel that it's wonderful to talk to them.

That they will say things like I spent all day painting tiny little flowers in the upper right-hand corner.

And I'll be like, I know exactly what you mean.

Because I spent all day replacing the word dog with the word cat.

You know, it's something that doesn't feel like art.

Wait, I want to stop you there. I think

that that's so profound that a lot of the work of writing

of being an artist, what people imagine is you're like Jackson Pollock, you know, you got your bucket of paint splashing the paint on the page, you know, like whatever it is. And it's this

like think of a singer just getting after it. But no, actually a lot of the

after it. But no, actually a lot of the work is super specific, maybe technical, maybe intellectual, and what comes from it is art. But actually

what you're doing on a day-by-day basis doesn't feel like the cultural understanding of what an artist is.

Yeah, that big inspiration, it just pours I mean, that's lovely when that happens.

And then there is but revision does not feel like that. Revision feels very technical to me. Revision is like this scene isn't

to me. Revision is like this scene isn't working. I have to technically figure

working. I have to technically figure out how to fix it. Whether I cut it, whether it goes somewhere else.

You know, again looking at the the the rhyming and mirroring in the book, this scene belongs here because um on page 30, there's a scene with the donkey. So 30 pages from the end there

donkey. So 30 pages from the end there should be a scene with the donkey and it'll match it. How do I Now I have to reconnect everything to make it make sense, which does not feel inspirational. It's very technical. Tell

inspirational. It's very technical. Tell

me more about the painters. They will

say um I lacquered I put on a whole coat of lacquer and so I just had to sit and wait for it to dry. And I thought that makes sense. It's like when I polish a

makes sense. It's like when I polish a whole scene and I can't I I I I I can't look at it again to to um adjust it or critique it. I have to let it

hang out and leave my mind for a little while. And over and over there are

while. And over and over there are things that make sense. Especially that

when you talk to painters or any visual artists, photographers care about not their subjects, even if their subjects are like naked people in front of them.

They care about light.

And painters they don't care about their subject.

They care about paint. That absolutely

makes sense to me. It sounds insane. But

painters will talk about the texture of the paint and the color and how it's applied and how it dries and whether you use linseed oil and they're you know, all these technical things. And I think about words.

Well, there's a Picasso quote that I really like. When art critics get

really like. When art critics get together, they talk about form and structure and meaning. When artists get together, they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.

Exactly.

It's the deep specifics. I mean, also just hanging out with artists here, they're always talking about money.

Well, yes.

People like they talk about money more than the finance people talk about money. It's like there's this extreme

money. It's like there's this extreme pragmatism of what they're doing, which has really surprised me.

Right. You would think they're like, "Who care I for money or fame or riches?

I'm just going to be wearing this smock."

smock." need money so that I can make my art.

Where do I find money? You know what I mean?"

mean?" Yeah, if they're a good professional, they find grants or they have gallerists and there's practical things to do for all of that. And for writers, it's true, too. You know, you wonder how Less came

too. You know, you wonder how Less came about? I was a travel writer for years

about? I was a travel writer for years and years and I would come to New York.

I remember I was like, "I have to make some money somehow." And I had a friend who was an intern at Travel and Leisure, a former student. And I said, "I want you to introduce me to your editor." She

said, "He won't take a meeting with just some writer." And I said, "Doesn't matter. I

writer." And I said, "Doesn't matter. I

just want you I want to go to lunch with you and have you introduce me as I'm passing by." And I dressed in the

passing by." And I dressed in the loudest colors I possibly could so that "Behold, this is my friend Andy.

Hi, he's on the phone. That's it." I

thought I was like, "One day they'll be be meeting. They'll be like, 'You know,

be meeting. They'll be like, 'You know, so-and-so can't write this piece.'" And

my friend will say, "Well, what about my friend Andy? Who's he? You know, he was

friend Andy? Who's he? You know, he was the guy in the bright clothes." Sure.

And that's exactly what happened.

But I had to be really cunning.

[laughter] You other You have to eat.

Which leads me to ask, what career advice do you have for writers?

I highly recommend life experiences.

I highly recommend them. They're um

And it either means like a a different interesting career as your day job. Um

one that might provide you some stories.

Interactions with lots of people.

You don't have to be a big drinker go to bars, but that's an example of like paying attention. I would say replace

paying attention. I would say replace your iPhone with an pad of paper exactly the same size. And when you were bored waiting for the bus, pay attention to what is around you.

But the career advice is you're going to have to make money. You'll probably

never make money from your writing. So,

find something or someone to support you at a minimum level. If you have fancy tastes then um good luck to you.

But the other thing to know is that there is no champagne room that you're finally invited into where all the VIPs are sitting around and say, "Well done, my good and faithful servant." And there

there's no heaven. There's just writers.

You know, there's I can tell you that like maybe the champagne room was Donna Tart emailing me with pictures of her own pug.

But like there's no room. There's no separate existence. You're still the hard work.

existence. You're still the hard work.

And um and and no private club. Every writer is interesting to me no matter what they are in their career unless as long as they're honest about talking about their

work. It's all interesting.

work. It's all interesting.

Take me back to when you were a travel writer and you would go to different places and only write about I think it was places you've been and experiences that you actually had.

Yeah, I had notebooks. And less and less is lost those were my rules is that I couldn't make up anything. Certainly for

travel writing I didn't want to make up anything. Plenty of people do.

anything. Plenty of people do.

But I didn't want it to be for instance the white guy making up stuff about Vietnam.

Because it'll probably tap into some orientalist fantasy of mine. Where am I getting this made up stuff? And it'll be

you know, nonsense and offensive. So I

I also I was alone in Vietnam in a restaurant that took two hours to bring me my food. So I took a lot of notes.

And what do you look at? Like if you're in a restaurant in Vietnam what sorts of things are you writing down on the page?

I mean everything. I am writing down the brand of the air conditioning unit in the corner.

I'm writing down I remember one restaurant where there was a dog. They

the the food was made up front. And um

the chef was out there boiling bones and he would shoo the dog into the back and the dog would go down and sit down and look at me. Then the waitress would come and she would shoo the dog up to the front and he would sit there until he got shooed back. It just felt like a

metaphor for something. Maybe something

Buddhist. Like when would he be released from this? You know, I remember a parrot

from this? You know, I remember a parrot in a cage, you know, talking and talking and talking and one restaurant and those are all details that made it into my novel cuz they feel like they're about

something.

They feel poignant and funny.

If you were describing this room, you had a notepad, what were the first three things that you would Well, my favorite thing is that window, which is at such an angle, but they have remade the window to make it look

normal, but they can't hide the fact that something's happened over time. It

looks like one of the houses in Snow White, doesn't it?

Yeah.

They're kind of droopy.

Looks like my apartment in Venice, which is so wobbly that I put my rolling chair down and it rolls like Poltergeist across the floor.

Yeah.

[laughter] But those it makes it human. I'm like

humans made this. That's what evidence I'm I'm looking for evidence that it's human.

What is the difference between great travel writing and crappy travel writing?

Well, you can see crappy travel writing if you ask AI to write anything. Because

it's um it's so full of cliches.

When I am a travel writer and also when I was writing Less Than Zero Than Zero, I looked for the thing you would not expect in that place. A way to make you rethink. Like in Morocco

rethink. Like in Morocco there's a point where Les goes to a ski resort.

Which I was taken to.

Right.

And I just thought that is Mountains?

In the Atlas Mountains. I was like, I was not expecting a ski resort in Morocco. Of course there's a ski resort.

Morocco. Of course there's a ski resort.

They have mountains.

But you know, we have I you want to get away from the cliche. I

had to write about camels. I had to write about Bedouins, but I needed something to widen the view of that country.

So cliche is what I'm hearing is the first thing. There's a lot of cliche in

first thing. There's a lot of cliche in travel writing. What you don't want to

travel writing. What you don't want to do is lean into those cliches. But

the superficial way to read your advice is write about the opposite way of the cliche, which is also probably the be crazy cuz it's not representative of the place.

Exactly.

I think of one place we stopped and there was um a little boy who had a a a little chick that had been dyed bright pink.

All the chicks had been dyed different colors and he was selling them because they were brightly colored. And

of course, you don't I won't want that.

It's going to turn into a chicken.

But there was something amazing about it. I thought, "Whose idea was this?

it. I thought, "Whose idea was this?

This is someone's idea. It must work."

Someone's buying these dyed chickens.

Tourists maybe. You know, like it's something that's neither a cliche nor the opposite. It is something utterly itself.

And and therefore interesting and and again I think in travel writing, you for me, I'm writing about the human beings.

Um I'm not a nature writer particularly.

I'm a I write about people. So, I'm so interested in how the people vary.

And how they're very much like us.

Actually, that's what of course you find when you travel. That's a cliche in and of itself. So, you try to hide that. But

of itself. So, you try to hide that. But

you do find that people are poor and kind everywhere. And in in very specific

kind everywhere. And in in very specific ways.

With AI, are you like, "I will not touch it." or you incorporate it a little bit?

it." or you incorporate it a little bit?

What is your relationship with it?

It's very simple. I am suing a number I'm a representative plaintiff in a number of suits against these companies.

So, I'm not allowed to use AI.

Or talk about it.

Or talk [laughter] about it. All right.

Or else you're going to be deposed and you don't want to be deposed.

No, that's so boring. I'll I'll I'll stay out of court.

Um poetry, why do you keep it by by you when you're writing?

Because I think that they are the ones who go down in the mines and get the jewels and bring them up. It's it's like Indiana Jones. They do all the hard

Indiana Jones. They do all the hard work, And bring out the golden idol, and I'm like the French bad guy who's like, "Once again, Mr. Jones, what you have fought for is now mine." I take their

discoveries, which are narrative discoveries, language discoveries. I

learn every time I read poems, just like reading old books. They have

because they're shortening everything down and condensing and mixing things and using end breaks. They're um

end breaks. They're um line breaks. Um

line breaks. Um It It's just constant invention for a prose writer.

Not always, but often. Both

elevating your sense of what's possible and expanding your sense of what you can do as well. Yeah, and it's not to sound poetic. It is

poetic. It is um I'm trying to I'm in a I'm in a poetry Zoom club that's been going for years every Friday, and we meet for an hour,

and it takes us months to get through a poem. M- I I left

poem. M- I I left the club. Um we'd started a poem by

the club. Um we'd started a poem by Wallace Stevens, and I was gone for a month, and I came back and they were on stanza four.

Because we're really most of it's poets, but there's also novelists and that I look there are prose answers to prose

problems I have in poetry. How do you read a poem? Like if we were sitting down to read a poem at lunch, and I said, "Hey, can Can we spend 30 minutes on this?" What would we do?

on this?" What would we do?

You read it all loud, and then you go and then you then you think, "What's standing out to me?" Like and let me examine that more

me?" Like and let me examine that more closely.

Why is that interesting to me? What's

going on there? What am I resistant to?

What am I enjoying?

Usually now I can tell in terms of prose answers, I can tell right away. Um

There's a book called The Others by Matthew Rohrer. It's a long series of

Matthew Rohrer. It's a long series of poems, but it's a prose piece. It's

stories within stories. And but not just in the Scheherazade way because it's a poem, it teaches me something else about how within a story you can have someone telling a story, which in Villa Coco

happens a lot. There's this old woman, a baronessa, who's telling these crazy stories, and I had to figure out how to work those in. I found them really fun, but I realized people might find them distracting cuz it's not the plot

anymore.

And don't you hate it when they're suddenly telling you a 40-page story and you're like, "But what what happened to the cowboys, you know?" So, I learned from that book about that. Let's finish

here with this advice from Daniel Handler.

The editor is the patient and you are the doctor.

That is one of the wisest things he ever said to me, and he has a lot of wisdom.

What does it mean? We think

that um the book is the patient, the editor is the doctor, and they know they're going to say, "Nurse, here's what I need you to do." and that you do it, but that is not true.

The editor is the patient.

They're the reader. They know they're feeling things, and they can come It's like a patient who comes in and says, "Doctor, my arm hurts. I'm sure it's arm cancer."

cancer." You, the writer, say, "It's There's no such thing as arm cancer, but the arm hurts. That's

important. I will figure it out." The

editor will not know the answer because it's in your head.

The thing you want to make, they have no access to it. And a good editor will not tell you specifically what to do. They

will just tell you where it hurts.

And you could have a lot of people read your book, and if they consistently say where it hurts, ignore Please ignore the advice they give you. It'll really throw

you off, especially in a in a workshop.

But they're right about what's not working. I've said this in my classes,

working. I've said this in my classes, you know, there will be a story that is about a middle-aged couple having marriage problems and then there's a mermaid that appears at the end. And

everyone will say, "Cut out the mermaid.

It doesn't fit." And I will say, "Or, more mermaid." Right? The problem

is it doesn't fit.

But the solution is not necessarily cut out the mermaid.

Uh how about we prepare for the mermaid by more mermaid, commit to the mermaid, and less married couple in a vague mer- you know, like that's not as interesting.

The first instinct will be to to make the work mediocre.

And you as a writer have to think, "Should I actually commit to the thing that's strange and putting the reader off?" And the first instinct will end up

off?" And the first instinct will end up making the work more mediocre a lot of the time. Why? Because it is getting rid

the time. Why? Because it is getting rid of the thing that doesn't fit.

Like for Less, my editor is the best in the world, Lee Boudreaux, God bless her, but she did suggest to me that I should cut the ending, which has a kind of revelation in it.

She said, "We don't We've had such a good time. We don't want to risk

good time. We don't want to risk spoiling it for readers who will be put off."

off." And I said, "I understand. It doesn't work yet.

"I understand. It doesn't work yet.

I will make it work."

And I spent most of my time changing the rest of the novel so that the ending would land properly, which was a lot of work, but luckily I was

developed enough to know to to that her solution was definitely the easiest one, but it was not the right one.

Thank you. That's so fun to talk about that stuff.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.

No one talks about that in interviews.

[laughter] They want to know where I grew up. Yeah.

I'm glad you enjoyed it.