Author Interview: An interview with Rick Moody...
An interview with Rick Moody, who talks about teaching, writing, and his novel, Purple America.
What do you do in your free time?
Rick Moody (RM): I play music as a hobby.
Which instruments?
RM: I play a lot of things badly: guitar, keyboard.
Your novels The Ice Storm and Purple America both take place over the course of one day. Why?
RM: This is intended to adhere to Aristotialian unity, where place and time exist without deviating from the dramatic unity so the reader has nowhere to escape.
Is there competition between your friends and fellow writers such as Donald Antrim and Jeffrey Eugenides?
RM: I went to Brown, where there are extraordinary and established writers like Angela Carter. It was a fertile ground for creativity. There, I also pursued music and acting. I've been friends with [Donald] Antrim and other writers for a while now, some since we were undergraduates at Brown. It's never been an issue between us...I feel incredibly lucky to be their friends; I knew them before they became the stars that they are. Of course, there is good natured jostling, but overall, our friendship supervenes everything.
Any advice for aspiring writers?
RM: My advice to aspiring writers is to have tenacity, stick-to-it-ness. Finding your own voice is a pre-eminent problem. There's a tendency in workshops for teachers to tinker with the delivery of their students. I think that instead they should concentrate on finding inclinations and idiosyncracies.
What did you think about living in San Francisco versus living in New York?
RM: I loved San Francisco, getting out of the media agglomeration for a while. San Francisco is untempered by New York's tendency to make snap judgements. It is these regional impulses, like the music scene in Seattle and Minnesota, that help America retain its creative impulses.
What compels you to keep writing about the suburbs?
RM: American civilization comes from the middle class. To be able to penetrate in the communicate. Explicate, that impulse to get under the skin and see what's there.
Can you talk about how you feel about Purple America?
RM: In Purple America, my presumption is that my readers want to see me stretch and tackle broader issues than what I've produced in my previous work. Ice Storm proved to be a domestic narrative, and I know that I can do that. I wanted to try something bigger. To challenge a novel and find a big enough canvas -- to find a broad narrative and setting and tackle big, big things. I am most supportive of ambition. Perhaps I will return to the one thing really well (Ice Storm ), but I wanted to try something more.