Interview with Chuck Klosterman
In a piece, which rests in a great collection, in Booth‘s current issue, Chuck Klosterman discusses the difference between writing nonfiction and fiction. In the interview with him by Chris Speckman, Klosterman talks about how he started his writing career by writing for the college newspaper, and he only writes pieces that gets published–“If I’m not going to write about something, I’ll just think about it. I don’t need to share it with other people. However, I think sharing it with people is a great way to live. The process of writing is always pleasant . . The process of publishing is often not . . . But you have to publish in order to keep writing. That’s just the way it works.”
And through his experience of writing, he says that writing novels is much more difficult than writing essays and nonfiction:
“So you’re doing this interview with me right now, and what would be the best thing that could happen from your perspective? It would be if I sad something that made no fucking sense whatsoever, if I said something that was jut crazy and a total non sequitur. Or if I was talking to you and said, ‘Oh, I’m looking out my window right now, and I’m seeing a murder happen.’ THat would be great for your story, because in nonfiction, what you’re looking for are things that make no sense. Those are the moments of tension in a nonfiction piece . . . But in fiction, people hate that. People are always looking for the reality of a fake world that accurately reflects their world. So you’re constantly looking at these problems and saying, What is the most reasonable thing that could happen here? What could happen here that would make somebody say, ‘I could totally see that happening.'”
Get the latest issue to read more of this compelling interview, as well as to access an interview with Charles Simic; lots of new comics, fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and “greeting cards”; and an attractive and compactly designed magazine.
