Condition of Mr. Segundo: Trying to locate his voice.

Author: Claire Messud

Subjects Discussed: Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road, references to revolution in The Emperor’s Children, Russian literature, Chauncey Gardner in Being There, Dostoevsky, the influences that spawned Bootie, on Messud writing novels outside her generational milieu, responding to Meghan O’Rourke’s review, why Messud didn’t present contrasting ideologies in The Emperor’s Children, hermetic atmosphere, Deborah Solomon and New York media types, Tingle Alley and Infinite Jest, Fort Greene and getting New York neighborhoods right, the influence of decor on character action, preposterous book titles, the cat in Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters vs. the cat in The Emperor’s Children, Anglicized dialogue, fantastic vs. realist environment, cognitive development, The Great Escape, and Anthony Powell.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Messud: I always think of Annabelle as somebody who’s actually out there accomplishing things when nobody’s paying attention. But “revolutionary” is probably too strong a word for [Bootie]. He’s someone who’s going to unsettle things and try to change things. And he comes from a different place: mentally as well as physically. I think that, for me, there’s a tension in the novel, I suppose, between Murray Thwaite, Bootie’s uncle, who is an old-fashioned liberal, and Ludovic Seeley, who is the person to whom the word “revolution” is most often attached. And he is a sort of — a slippery fish. He’s somebody — truth is a changeable thing. Meaning is a changeable thing. What’s good is a changeable thing. And Bootie is somewhere in between these two. And he’s somebody who would like to emulate his uncle and admire his uncle, and finds that when he sees him up close, that he can’t fully do that.

Author: Kate Atkinson

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Investigating turns of an altogether different sort.

Subjects Discussed: Narrative flow, the difficulty of writing the first 100 pages, perspective, good sentences, discovering the internal monologue, writing about inept men, narrative sadism, similarities between T.C. Boyle and Kate Atkinson, technological references in One Good Turn, “guys” to call on for research, Google vs. libraries, dialogue, the influence of reading while working on a novel, “romps,” British prejudices against genre, the word “jolly,” Case Histories vs. One Good Turn, empathy through the omniscient voice, being pigeonholed because of the Jackson Brodie books, Kate Atkinson’s other voices, the exuberant voice, maintaining a sense of fun, a sense of order, theme vs. plot, morality within One Good Turn, and the Honda Man.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Atkinson: You’re working all day on words. Do you really want to then do words the rest of the time? What I would like to do when I’m not, when I’m really engaged with a book, is to just look at a tree really. But it tends to take the form of looking at television. I just want to look at something that’s not words. Because that’s what you’re doing all day. I mean, I’m really glad I read most of world literature before the age of twenty-one. I would never have time for it now or have the inclination for it, I think. I did my reading when I had the space. And now I don’t have that kind of space.

Author: Francine Prose

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Introspective about Xmas realities.

Subjects Discussed: Reading like a writer vs. reading as an escapist, Car Talk, reading People as preparation for reading Chekhov, The Illustrated Elements of Style, diagramming sentences, making grammar fun, academia and the poststructuralist vogue, how theory influences writing, concise writing vs. prodigious writing, Infinite Jest, one-line paragraphs and David Markson, Raymond Carver, Ben Marcus and “experimental” writing, Only Revolutions, literary absolutes, Jackson Pollock, the “show don’t tell” rule, Sherlock Holmes and Nero Wolfe, the Nabokov estate, working on a book too long, the “death” of book culture, puzzle novels, Pynchon, the 2006 National Book Award nominees, not finishing books, William Gaddis, James M. Cain’s Past All Dishonor, James Wood, naturalist dialogue reflecting a historical time, transcribing speech, chapters and blocks of text, pointless detail, and Nicholson Baker.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Prose: People keep telling me that all those vogues for structuralism and poststructuralism and deconstructionism are passing, which couldn’t make me happier. And you know I think that those things have had a very bad effect not only on reading, but on writing. I mean, that is because they encourage people to use jargon. They encourage students to use jargon. I mean, when I teach, one of the assignments that I give is to ask my students to find a passage of jargon — academic jargon, literary jargon, art history jargon — and then translate it back into English, and bring both passages into class. And often the jargon they come up with is theory jargon. Literary theory jargon. So nothing can make me happer than to hear that that’s on its way out.

Authors: Joe Meno, Todd Taylor, Todd Dills and Bucky Sinister

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Responding to MySpace lies.

Subjects Discussed: Shirley Wins, pumpkin launching, Halloween, grandmothers, writing women convincingly, Sons of the Rapture, Strom Thurmond, the differences between North Carolina and South Carolina, moving to Chicago vs. moving to New York, Whiskey and Robots, populist poetry, the Icarus myth vs. Wayne Gretzky, independent book touring, BookScan, growing up books, novels that use fiction as an escape mechanism, Encyclopedia Brown, cryptograms, textual buildings, creating a sense of mystery, telemarketing, Mark Haddon, Alessandro Baricco’s Silk, Faulkner, Donald Barthelme, short chapters, savvy audiences and storytelling, inventiveness, how the success of Hairstyles affected Meno, sartorial colors, Dick Tracy, the Boy Detective play, and indie presses vs. corporate presses.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Meno: For me, the book is about how as an adult you negotiate a world of mystery, a world where you don’t have the answers. And so I wanted the audience, or the reader as they were reading, to feel that sense of surprise. That when you’re a kid and you get a detective kit, you look at the world a little bit differently because of that object. And so I wanted the actual text to be surprising. As you were reading through it, you weren’t exactly sure technically what was going to happen. If you’d have a couple pages that were blank. Or if you’d have some of the text that was broken up into these small little buildings that go throughout the book or if there’d be a piece of text that was shaped like a cloud. And so that, you know, using the text itself to give that sense of mystery or surprise to the audience as they were going through.

Author: Kelly Link

Condition of Mr. Segundo: At odds with his boyhood dreams.

Subjects Discussed: Coffee, the Turkish language, planting little clues within stories, real-life inspirations for fantasy, writing short stories vs. novels, the value of a gestation period, on being easily distracted, being thrown off guard, Link’s pattern-making impulse, Douglas Adams, board games, Cadbury Creme Eggs, breakfast cereals, childhood sense memory, depicting characters without backstory, zombies, having psychologists as parents, William Gibson, bookstores, Edward Gorey, self-publishing, Ben Fountain’s Brief Encounters with Che Guevara, review coverage, “literary” credibility, Scott Smith’s The Ruins, the “literary fiction” label vs. the “science fiction” label, Laura Miller and H.P. Lovecraft, taxonomies, Shelley Jackson’s illustrations, fonts and EC Comics, reacting to older work, “massaging” work, Clarion, George Saunders and New Yorker “fantasy” vs. genre fantasy, and “fictiony literature.”

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Link: I think that being easily distracted mirrors, or is the same thing in some ways, as noticing connections too easily. And that does mean that once you have, once you’re solidly at work on a story, everything you see around you, you can sort of pull in and use. Everything in the story you can sort of tie down to other parts of the story.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Feeling triumphant over hepatitis.

Author: Mary Gaitskill

Subjects Discussed: Emotional mood and writing, Marin County, horticultural details, decomposition and decay, dichotomous characters and the gray areas of life, unusual character relationships, the conscious design of Veronica‘s environments, office environments, the modeling world, maintaining a consistent vision over ten years, rumination vs. urgency in the writing process, Gaitskill’s placid demeanor, distractions, word processors, Francine Prose’s review, ordinary vs. extraordinary narrative, sympathy and didacticism, the text as sympathetic medium between writer and reader, responding to Benjamin Strong’s assertion that Gaitskill isn’t interested in the novel as social or political commentary, ideology, ambiguity, Ayn Rand, favoritism towards optimistic novels, shock value in literature vs. shock value in television, misfits, Irini Spanidou’s championing of truth, and auctorial perception.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Gaitskill: When I’m reading another writer, even if I feel they’re technically accomplished, if I feel they have an ordinary mind, I am often — I wouldn’t say I totally lose interest. But it’s something that I don’t like to see in a writer. It’s almost like you can write about anything in an extraordinary way, not in a showy way. But to write about something extraordinary, I think, is usually to see it clearly.

Author: Edward P. Jones

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Feeling oppressed by MySpace.

Subjects Discussed: Jones’s instinct for precision, specifics, city streets, details within minor characters, family lineage within fiction, Squirrel Nuts, penny candy, handicapped characters, gifted students, avoiding recurrent motifs and repeating stories, characters who appear in Lost in the City and All Aunt Hagar’s Children, selecting historical settings, Washington D.C. as magnetic nexus point, throwing the reader off guard, flash-forwards, mathematical metaphors, how Jones became an English major, double metaphors, having a writing philosophy, violence in fiction, crossword puzzles, making stories read like novels, miracles, and neighborhoods.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

JONES: If you have a portrait painted of your family and they’re at the center of the portrait, there’s no use having cartoonish figures in the background. What’s in the background, what’s set aside should be as rich in detail as the family in the foreground right there in the center of the portrait. And I suppose that’s part of it. It’s all a matter of trying to make the reader believe that what he or she is reading is real, actually happened — even though, of course, it all came out of my imagination.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Horrified by “misprinted” books.

Author: Mark Z. Danielewski

Subjects Discussed: The origins of Only Revolutions, Hailey’s appearance in House of Leaves, the use of obscure uncanonized words in Only Revolutions (and their various origins), hip-hop, Gene Wolfe, Anthony Burgess, teenagers and vocabulary, how structure affects wordplay, skateboards, the influence of movies, the dots on the right-hand corner, on whether Danielewski is an experimental writer, fonts and typography, leaving room for ambiguity in a taut structure, the urgency in getting Only Revolutions finalized, the leftwrist twist, how the circular symbol came about, and immortality and maturity.

[PLEASE NOTE: The most enthusiastic answer from an author in Bat Segundo history occurs at 32:49.]

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Danielewski: I don’t think I’m an experimental writer. I don’t really know what that means, in fact, an experimental writer. For me, it’s always an exploration. I just can’t help but think, you know, when you experiment, you’re kind of tinkering. And this is such a prolonged investigation. You don’t tinker for six years. It’s a long quest to see where something goes. And the thing I really stand by is that I’ve fulfilled the qualities of Sam and Hailey’s journey. Now whether it’s a success or not, it’s clear what it is. It’s not halfly done. It’s wholly, spinningly done. You can either say, I don’t care for it. Or you can recognize, wow, if we go, if we follow this path to its — maybe not its conclusion, but as a long way, this is kind of where it ends up going. And these are the things you get out of it. And these are things you don’t get out of it. And that creates a valid type of conversation.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Attempting to set up a tequila-faith based organization.

Author: Richard Dawkins

Subjects Discussed: The audience for The God Delusion, comparing an atheistic text to Satan, evolutionary biology and religion, charitable religious-based organizations, Mother Teresa, whether imaginary constructs are a bad thing, living in the real world, the assassination of Harvey Milk, Twinkies, “In God We Trust” and the American zeitgeist, on Dawkins being “a university person” speaking to university crowds, politics and atheism, Stephen Jay Gould and non-overlapping magisteria, language and religion, Marilynne Robinson’s review, logical positivism, love and perception, sexual lust, on deists being fools, the susceptibility of children, the advertising industry vs. religion, Jesus Camp, and extremists vs. everyday religious people.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: What of love? You kind of go into this a little bit into the book. For example, speaking personally for myself, I’m madly in love with my girlfriend right now. But could I tell you — is there any sort of rational basis for this? No, not really. Would I do a lot for her? Well, absolutely. I would do all inexplicable sorts of things, that are completely irrational, for her.

Dawkins: Well, I’m delighted to hear that. I wouldn’t call them completely irrational. If you’re asking, how does either of you know that you love the other, then that is rational. I mean, that’s based upon evidence, that’s based upon little looks, smiles, catches in the voice, things you do for each other. That’s all evidence. Just because it’s subtle and complicated doesn’t make it free from evidence. It is evidence based. Of course, it could be wrong. But that’s always true of evidence-based belief.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Still missing, wondering who this Champion character is.

Guests: Sam Savage and Edward Champion

Subjects Discussed: Having a rat as a protagonist, investigating rats, on being a late starter, poetry, exploring consciousness in fiction, the destruction of Scollay Square, collaborating on the illustrations, sentimental first-person narrators, physical signs in Firmin, language, resorting to fiction for meaning, abnormal sexual desires between rats and women, phernological models, tunnels and reading, gentrification, Savage’s background in philosophy, genuine feeling vs. sentimentality, Hallmark cards, misfits, booksellers, William Gaddis, Gilbert Sorrentino, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl,” cultural attrition, and letting go of materialistic impulses.

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky’s Paperhaus, and The Bat Segundo Show)

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Savage: Since he doesn’t have language — that is, language is ultimately the longed for object even more than the Lovelies would be. Words and language. These words appear as objects, as things in themselves. FICTION. RESTROOM. He sees these and they stand out. Because this is language and this is what he doesn’t have. And he also sees himself. Not only sees signs, but he gives titles to his actions. You know, you put in these phrases, which are in fact titles of books, in which he’s thinking — in which he is the character. So he is always seeing himself as a protagonist as some story, because what Firmin wants most of all is to be in the story. And of course I gave him that in the end. But he didn’t know that.

Author: Scott Smith

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Still missing, replaced temporarily by a windbag.

Subjects Discussed: The addictive nature of The Ruins, insecurity, writing without an outline, making a seemingly preposterous premise believable, Rupert Thomson, on taking things too far, how deadlines help, aborted 1,000 page novels, Michael Moorcock, inserting objects into a narrative, how genre assists in the writing process, archetypal characters, 80s sex comedies, unintentional themes, the international perspective, Stephen King, relying upon the Internet for research, Michiko Kakutani, writing a book without chapter breaks, gore in fiction, the Ruins film adaptation, and working with Sam Raimi.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Smith: There’s a lot to A Simple Plan where people thought there were larger themes attached to it. I don’t write that way. I wouldn’t even know how to go about writing that way. I think that probably there are sentiments that probably are just culturally out there, that get sucked into the writing. Someone said [The Ruins] is a metaphor for the Iraq war, you know, Americans going hubristically out and not knowing the language or the culture and getting into this hellish place. Which sounds great! I wish I thought of that.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Avoidant of infestations.

Guests: Matt Cheney and George Ilsley

Subjects Discussed: The “arc” of the LBC, small presses, Kinsey, entomological inspiration, language play, relationships, Dan Savage, Queer as Folk, Brokeback Mountain, unexpected audiences, unreliable narrators, insect collections, gall wasps, bed bugs, unique interpretations of Manbug, synesthesia, basing the book’s structure on an evolution of consciousness, Buddhism, sex scenes, footnotes, the correct pronunciation of smriti, and learning through bugs.

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky’s Paperhaus, and The Bat Segundo Show)

Guests: Jeff Bryant and Sidney Thompson

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Locked away by a Pittsburgh podcaster.

Subjects Discussed: Faulkner vs. R.E.M., Southern fiction, how music influences fiction, observing unusual behavior, Thompson’s musical background, family as a starting point, taboos, the happy medium between shock value and playing it safe, stereotypes, believability, escaping into fiction, misfits and loners, connecting with despicable characters, morality in fiction, racial assumptions at the Atlantic Monthly, presenting racial conflict in fiction, and thoughts on the Southern fiction/blue-state fiction divide.

(A co-production of the LBC, Pinky’s Paperhaus, and The Bat Segundo Show.)

Author: Nora Ephron

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Terse, but combative towards golden boys.

Subjects Discussed: The side effects of eating cake, book tour provisos, Marie Antoinette, superthin models, anatomical parts as literary inspiration, ageism, hair dye, Botox, responding to the Cleveland Plain Dealer, declarative sentences, David Markson, the relationship between exposing truth and drawing an audience, New Journalism, the newspaper environment in the 1970s, Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, exclamation points, Jonathan Yardley’s reconsideration of Crazy Salad, the real Ephron vs. the written Ephron, the orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally…, dessert spoons, on not sleeping with JFK, Ephron as blogger, and using popular songs in movies.

Author: Annalee Newitz

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Looking for an unwholesome bargain.

Subjects Discussed: Capitalist monsters, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, brain movies, Birth of a Nation, the fear of white power being lost, class warfare, Sawny Beane, the individual impulses of serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer, the labor tools of killing, the Unabomber, serial killer and terrorist nomenclature, freeway snipers, Fight Club, avuncular hackers, V for Vendetta, narratives involving women who gorge, The Man With Two Brains, Darren Aronofsky, Pi, the labor principles of freelancing, a lengthy argument on H.P. Lovecraft, and the inevitability of decay.

Author: Tommy Chong

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Recovering from a medical mishap.

Subjects Discussed: Examining Title 21, Section 863, whether Clinton was in power in the 1980s, salsa dancing, the requirements for being an FBI special agent, plea bargaining, prison life, bodyguards, the Bush family, the advantages of celebrity status vs. a common offender being incarcerated, Michael Milken, humility, trying to remember prisoner numbers, respect for victims of disaster, looking at objects differently after prison, Cheech Marin, Up in Smoke, Chong as director, the benefits of pot, Chong as lyricist, Pipe Dreams: The Musical, Eric Idle, conflict between Cheech and Chong, Cheech’s art collection, Terence Malick, Lou Adler, Born in East L.A., Radiohead, and groups vs. individual artists.

Author: Pamela Ribon

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Ruminating upon a misinterpreted act of politeness.

Subjects Discussed: The Weird books as a franchise, chick lit, unusual stabbings, Oryx & Crake, Downtown Press, Zane, heady and passionate men, managing narrative threads, remembering a time without blogs, the origin of pamie.com, selling Why Moms Are Weird, writing fiction vs. writing television, Harold Pinter, compartmentalized needs in relationships, polyamory, on being galvanized by the deadly mochas at Caffe Strada, technology, online dating vs. face-to-face contact, nervousness, shyness, inner introverts, women and clothing sizes, how blogging helps writing, Hell’s Angels in Berkeley, and how blogging provides aid to the paucity of playfulness in American culture.

Author: Julia Glass

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Concerned with economic developments at the Segundo Studio.

Subjects Discussed: Hinging a narrative on a piece of cake, conversations in moving vehicles, the unintended continuation of the Bank Street universe, an urban Yoknapatawpha, family and pregnancies in narrative, whether The Whole World Over is female-centric, Jane Austen, omniscient narrators, Al Green, the virtues of the color green, generational commentary, midlife essay collections, multiples in imagery, on not doing everything in life, how to talk with a politics-obsessed blowhard, 9/11 in literature, Tom Perrotta’s Little Children, the intrusion of history on the reading experience, the meaning of historical fiction, New Mexico, the tax advantages of research, Bill Richardson, water resources, character names, writing on instinct, the importance of character, memory, the patriarchal assignation of names, and whether the book contains too many cakes.

Author: Alison Bechdel

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Revealing his political idiosyncracies.

Subjects Discussed: The meaning of “tragicomic,” Nabokov, Charles Addams, on how the funeral home component of Fun Home has been overlooked, on hitting a wall with words, the advantages of “visual writing,” Michael Lesy’s Time Frames: The Meaning of Family Pictures, Fun Home as a mystery, using maps and annotations in panels to create structure and ambiguity, the presentation of Bechdel’s father, Dykes to Watch Out For, on selling Fun Home to Houghton Mifflin, the influence of graphic novels, Maus, Harvey Pekar, uncouth forms of madeleine tea, ancient computer modems, rotoscoping, Ralph Bakshi, cross-hatching, analog vs. digital illustration, typesetting, Proust, Camus, the use of ten-cent words in comics, on posing in photographs for visual reference, Six Feet Under, Jill Soloway’s Los Angeles Times review, and literary respectability for comics.

Guest: Carl Sheeler

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Ejected due to the apparently “serious” nature of politics.

Subjects Discussed: Running an unorthodox senatorial campaign, Howard Dean, the similarities and differences between Whitehouse and Sheeler’s platforms, problems with Sheldon Whitehouse, on Sheeler styling himself as “the next Ned Lamont,” more problems with Sheldon Whitehouse, Rhode Island’s status as a blue state, efforts to determine Sheeler’s positions, even more problems with Sheldon Whitehouse, universal health care, negotiating the mechanisms of the Senate, on impeaching Bush and the Democratic silence, the monies available for universal health care, the baby boomer generation, generic drugs, the economics of expired patents, placing ceilings on oil and gas, speculation on whether Our Young, Roving Correspondent is a Republican, U.S. energy policy, the Manhattan Project, the U.S. energy infrastructure, hybrid cars, James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency, alternative energy in China, the emerging middle class in India, the trucking industry, the expense of overhauling the energy infrastructure and the possible burden on the working class, Los Angeles, and the transportation grid.

[LISTENER’S NOTE: Due to a technical snafu, the final minute of this conversation was unexpectedly cut off. We apologize for this podcast’s abrupt ending.]

Authors: Hillary Carlip and Annabelle Gurwitch

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Recovering from an unfortunate incident involving a Motel 6 valet.

Subjects Discussed: Clarifying the provenance of “queen of the oddballs,” Chuck Barris, Rex Reed’s appearance on Dick Cavett, journals and ephemera, Liesl Schillinger’s review, on balancing the serious with the comic, cultural context and memory, the many forms of confession, on getting a blurb from Paul Reubens, the Oprah Book Club, a Voxxy postmortem, applying Hal Niedzviecki’s Hello, I’m Special to oddballs, the derivative status of current pop music, the needless prejudice against juggling and mimes, on being fired, “conquering” all “fired media,” a comical anthology as a tonic, and the similarities between getting canned in the entertainment industry and the current economy.