COLUMNS
Talk Show 25 with Brian Evenson, Lev Grossman, Elizabeth McCracken, Karen Shepard, & Gary Shteyngart
/ Jaime Clarke
05.20.09
TALK SHOW 25: Irrational Fear
Brian Evenson is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain (Coffee House) which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award and was among Time Out New York's top books of 2006. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection) and The Brotherhood of Mutilation. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Fremon and Jacques Jouet. He has received an O. Henry Prize as well as an NEA fellowship. A novel, Last Days, and a new collection of stories, Fugue State, are forthcoming in 2009. Visit Brian at www.brianevenson.com
Lev Grossman is the author of The Magicians, a novel, which will be published this coming August. His other novels are Codex and Warp. Grossman is the book critic at Time magazine, and he lives in Brooklyn, NY. Visit Lev at www.levgrossman.com.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of the story collection Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry?, the novels The Giant’s House and Niagara Falls All Over Again, and a memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. Visit Elizabeth at www.elizabethmccracken.com.
Karen Shepard is a Chinese-American born and raised in New York City. She is the author of three novels, An Empire of Women, The Bad Boy’s Wife, and, most recently, Don’t I Know You? Her short fiction has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Bomb, Ploughshares, Failbetter, Glimmer Train, Mississippi Review, and Southwest Review, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in More, Self, USA Today, and The Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story, as well as other anthologies. She teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where she lives with her husband, novelist Jim Shepard, their three children and their one very strange dog. Visit Karen at www.karen-shepard.com.
Gary Shteyngart is the author of the novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, which was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times Book Review and Time magazine. He has been translated into over 20 languages.
––Name an irrational fear you suffer.
Evenson: When I was young I was basically afraid of everything: I used to be intensely afraid of the dark and would wake up screaming; I refused to get out the car when we would drive through the mountains because I was afraid I might accidentally fall off a cliff. All those fears seem fairly rational to me, which is probably why they’ve mostly faded into the background. But I still find myself dealing from time to time with a certain fear of raw or rare chicken on the bone. I don’t have the same fear of pork or lamb (which I often eat very rare) or beef (which I’m not adverse to eating completely raw). I don’t mind very rare duck. I eat all kinds of sushi. I’ve eaten odd things like pig’s ears and tripe without batting an eye. But chicken, either raw or rare, and on the bone, is almost more than I can stand. It’s particularly bad when someone is separating a raw chicken into parts; the sound a chicken leg’s joint makes popping out of its socket is a terrible thing.
Grossman: I have a morbid, irrational fear of the sight and sound of other people eating and drinking. I wish I were joking, but it’s true. It’s a phobia. I don’t even think it has a cool name. When I see another person eating or drinking, I want to run away.
McCracken: I have a few, including dead mice, cannibalism, and amusement park haunted houses. I also have an ethnic hatred of elves. (I hate elves. But I do not fear them.) But I am most famous among my friends for my fear of skunks. It seems a perfectly reasonable fear to me, but I have been assured otherwise.
Brian Evenson is the author of seven books of fiction, most recently The Open Curtain (Coffee House) which was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award and was among Time Out New York's top books of 2006. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University’s Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection) and The Brotherhood of Mutilation. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Fremon and Jacques Jouet. He has received an O. Henry Prize as well as an NEA fellowship. A novel, Last Days, and a new collection of stories, Fugue State, are forthcoming in 2009. Visit Brian at www.brianevenson.com
Lev Grossman is the author of The Magicians, a novel, which will be published this coming August. His other novels are Codex and Warp. Grossman is the book critic at Time magazine, and he lives in Brooklyn, NY. Visit Lev at www.levgrossman.com.
Elizabeth McCracken is the author of the story collection Here’s Your Hat What’s Your Hurry?, the novels The Giant’s House and Niagara Falls All Over Again, and a memoir, An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination. Visit Elizabeth at www.elizabethmccracken.com.
Karen Shepard is a Chinese-American born and raised in New York City. She is the author of three novels, An Empire of Women, The Bad Boy’s Wife, and, most recently, Don’t I Know You? Her short fiction has been published in The Atlantic Monthly, Bomb, Ploughshares, Failbetter, Glimmer Train, Mississippi Review, and Southwest Review, among others. Her nonfiction has appeared in More, Self, USA Today, and The Columbia Companion to the 20th Century American Short Story, as well as other anthologies. She teaches writing and literature at Williams College in Williamstown, MA, where she lives with her husband, novelist Jim Shepard, their three children and their one very strange dog. Visit Karen at www.karen-shepard.com.
Gary Shteyngart is the author of the novels The Russian Debutante's Handbook and Absurdistan, which was named one of the ten best books of 2006 by the New York Times Book Review and Time magazine. He has been translated into over 20 languages.
––Name an irrational fear you suffer.
Evenson: When I was young I was basically afraid of everything: I used to be intensely afraid of the dark and would wake up screaming; I refused to get out the car when we would drive through the mountains because I was afraid I might accidentally fall off a cliff. All those fears seem fairly rational to me, which is probably why they’ve mostly faded into the background. But I still find myself dealing from time to time with a certain fear of raw or rare chicken on the bone. I don’t have the same fear of pork or lamb (which I often eat very rare) or beef (which I’m not adverse to eating completely raw). I don’t mind very rare duck. I eat all kinds of sushi. I’ve eaten odd things like pig’s ears and tripe without batting an eye. But chicken, either raw or rare, and on the bone, is almost more than I can stand. It’s particularly bad when someone is separating a raw chicken into parts; the sound a chicken leg’s joint makes popping out of its socket is a terrible thing.
Grossman: I have a morbid, irrational fear of the sight and sound of other people eating and drinking. I wish I were joking, but it’s true. It’s a phobia. I don’t even think it has a cool name. When I see another person eating or drinking, I want to run away.
McCracken: I have a few, including dead mice, cannibalism, and amusement park haunted houses. I also have an ethnic hatred of elves. (I hate elves. But I do not fear them.) But I am most famous among my friends for my fear of skunks. It seems a perfectly reasonable fear to me, but I have been assured otherwise.
