Before I started getting published regularly, I spent a lot of time obsessing about being a writer — what it meant, if it was who I was…insufferable, I’d guess, though I mercifully can’t remember much about that time. One good thing was that I somehow ended up getting picked to research and put together this book of interviews with writers, which all originally appeared in Writer’s Digest magazine, where I was working. The owner’s daughter, Jennie, was helping out with the research and selections, and I remember we had one boozy night of heart-to-heart when, instead of working on the book, she scared the hell out of me by saying, “I keep thinking that with my body I could create a life, and with my car I could take a life away.” We left her car at the bar, Arlin’s in Cincinnati, and I walked her home, then I walked to my apartment and sat and stared at my computer for long time, wondering why I couldn’t write anything as good as what she’d said while drunk. • I’m embarrassed by the title, and the faux handmade-paper texture of the cover. But it’s a damn good collection, going all the way from William Faulkner to Rod McKuen, Ray Bradbury to Ray Carver. I got to talk a little bit with Norman Mailer and Kurt Vonnegut, and I spent about five hours with Tom Robbins at his house in the Pacific Northwest for the interview with him I wrote and included in the book. • It’s out of print, but before it died it made it into paperback, too. I like the softcover version better for some reason. You can still find both editions easily in the used markets, pretty cheap. • As William Saroyan says, when asked at the end of his interview what else there is to say: “Just everything, most likely, but let’s agree on no more for a moment.”
