COLUMNS
Talk Show 11: with Jon Clinch, Don Lee, Robert Anthony Siegel, Alix Strauss, & Sean Wilsey
/ Jaime Clarke
04.13.08
TALK SHOW 11: First Car
Jon Clinch is the author of Finn: A Novel, published by Random House. Visit Jon online at www.JonClinch.com and www.ReadFinn.com.
Don Lee is the author of the novel Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award, the recent novel Wrack and Ruin, and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Recently he received the Fred R. Brown Literary Award from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul.
Robert Anthony Siegel is the author of two novels, All Will Be Revealed and All the Money in the World. He was born in New York City and educated at Harvard, the University of Tokyo, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he lives in a yellow house with his wife, the writer Karen E. Bender, and their two children, Jonah and Maia.
Alix Strauss is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, among other newspapers and magazines, and is the author of the novel, The Joy of Funerals. Her anthology, Have I Got a Guy for You, is just out.
Sean Wilsey is the author of the memoir, Oh the Glory of It All. His writing has appeared in The London Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney's Quarterly, where he is the editor at large. Before going to McSweeney's he worked as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, a fact checker at Ladies' Home Journal, a letters correspondent at Newsweek, and an apprentice gondolier in Venice, Italy. He was born in San Francisco in 1970 and now lives with his wife, Daphne Beal, and his son, Owen.
––What was the make and model if your first car?
Clinch: My first car was one of the worst ever made in this country or any other, a 1974 Chevrolet Vega. The Kammback version. "Kammback" was Chevrolet's oddball way of avoiding saying "station wagon"—a bit of euphemistic marketing-speak that I have continued to endorse by owning, by and by, such cars as the Audi A4 and A6 Avant. Station wagons the both of them. Obviously, station wagon lovers like me are in the minority and can be addressed only by indirection.
Lee: It was a 1975 puke-green Mercury Capri.
Siegel: It was a Cadillac convertible from the mid-sixties, though I can’t remember the exact year. It must have been twenty years old when I got behind the wheel in—when was that, exactly? 1985?—but it had been lovingly restored by its true owner, a client of my father’s named Howie Shapiro. (My father was a criminal defense attorney; Howie was a former drug addict working his way through culinary school.) But back to the car: it was white, with huge, really extraordinary fins in back, and a big chromium grill in front. It was nearly a block long, or felt as if it were, and I could barely see over the dashboard, but the engine was perfectly silent, and the steering wheel moved with the touch of a finger. The mere thought of tapping the gas pedal sent the machine gliding forward like a great white shark. Oh, and did I mention that the interior was red leather? And the radio was incredibly loud? The thing was brash, devoid of self-doubt—all the things I wanted to be.
Strauss: A blue-ish gray 1986 Volvo 240DO.
Wilsey: It was a Saab 900 Turbo, one of the last ones they made before discontinuing the series in the early 90s. Color: "beryl green."
Jon Clinch is the author of Finn: A Novel, published by Random House. Visit Jon online at www.JonClinch.com and www.ReadFinn.com.
Don Lee is the author of the novel Country of Origin, which won an American Book Award, the recent novel Wrack and Ruin, and the story collection Yellow, which won the Sue Kaufman Prize for First Fiction. Recently he received the Fred R. Brown Literary Award from the University of Pittsburgh. He teaches creative writing at Macalester College in St. Paul.
Robert Anthony Siegel is the author of two novels, All Will Be Revealed and All the Money in the World. He was born in New York City and educated at Harvard, the University of Tokyo, and the Iowa Writers' Workshop. He teaches creative writing at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he lives in a yellow house with his wife, the writer Karen E. Bender, and their two children, Jonah and Maia.
Alix Strauss is a frequent contributor to the New York Times, among other newspapers and magazines, and is the author of the novel, The Joy of Funerals. Her anthology, Have I Got a Guy for You, is just out.
Sean Wilsey is the author of the memoir, Oh the Glory of It All. His writing has appeared in The London Review of Books, The Los Angeles Times, and McSweeney's Quarterly, where he is the editor at large. Before going to McSweeney's he worked as an editorial assistant at The New Yorker, a fact checker at Ladies' Home Journal, a letters correspondent at Newsweek, and an apprentice gondolier in Venice, Italy. He was born in San Francisco in 1970 and now lives with his wife, Daphne Beal, and his son, Owen.
––What was the make and model if your first car?
Clinch: My first car was one of the worst ever made in this country or any other, a 1974 Chevrolet Vega. The Kammback version. "Kammback" was Chevrolet's oddball way of avoiding saying "station wagon"—a bit of euphemistic marketing-speak that I have continued to endorse by owning, by and by, such cars as the Audi A4 and A6 Avant. Station wagons the both of them. Obviously, station wagon lovers like me are in the minority and can be addressed only by indirection.
Lee: It was a 1975 puke-green Mercury Capri.
Siegel: It was a Cadillac convertible from the mid-sixties, though I can’t remember the exact year. It must have been twenty years old when I got behind the wheel in—when was that, exactly? 1985?—but it had been lovingly restored by its true owner, a client of my father’s named Howie Shapiro. (My father was a criminal defense attorney; Howie was a former drug addict working his way through culinary school.) But back to the car: it was white, with huge, really extraordinary fins in back, and a big chromium grill in front. It was nearly a block long, or felt as if it were, and I could barely see over the dashboard, but the engine was perfectly silent, and the steering wheel moved with the touch of a finger. The mere thought of tapping the gas pedal sent the machine gliding forward like a great white shark. Oh, and did I mention that the interior was red leather? And the radio was incredibly loud? The thing was brash, devoid of self-doubt—all the things I wanted to be.
Strauss: A blue-ish gray 1986 Volvo 240DO.
Wilsey: It was a Saab 900 Turbo, one of the last ones they made before discontinuing the series in the early 90s. Color: "beryl green."