Alan Cheuse, who reviews books on NPR, has written many books, including novels, short stories, and an introduction to literary study. He also teaches writing, and holds a Ph.D. in comparative literature.
Q: You've reviewed books for many years on NPR. How do you
select the books to review, and what do you try to convey to listeners in a
limited amount of time?
A: I select
books according to my taste, which means I read across the spectrum, from
serious, possibly even important new fiction by major writers to the newest of
writers who may be worth the public’s serious attention, and across the genres,
so I’m always looking for the superior new thriller or science-fiction novel or
story collection… The challenge for me is to make each two-minute review as
fresh and interesting as possible while focusing on the essence of the book
itself.
Q: Your most recent book, Paradise, Or, Eat Your Face: A Trio of Novellas, includes characters who are writers. Are there special
complications that come with writing fiction about writers, or are they just
like any other characters?
A: I have
avoided writing about writers in my fiction, focusing instead, when I write
novels about artists, on painters, photographers. My conventional wisdom was
that it’s better to look just to the side of the star to see the full light
rather than directly at it, so writing about these other inventive characters
might also reveal something about writers (though that certainly was not my intention). My intention
was not to write about writers. That being said, it’s true, I noticed that this
grouping of new novellas in book form gives the reader three writers, one a
young travel writer with some emotional problems, the others a successful
writer who has suffered a stroke and lives in
the limbo of aphasia (or maybe it’s hell, aphasia for a writer) and a
writer at the top of his powers who finds himself looking back at a part of his
life he never wanted to write about. But since no character is like any other
character except in the broadest way I don’t think the artistic bent of each of
these characters draws anything back, and in fact may reveal things that I
never wanted to write about before myself.
Q: Your work includes novels, novellas, short stories, and
essay collections, and you've co-edited a multi-volume introduction to literary
study. Is there one type of writing that you prefer to do?
A: Writing stories
and novels. The former, a very satisfying variety of composition because you
can complete something within a few weeks or months and receive some
satisfaction from it. But then you have to immediately plunge into another
project to keep feeling like yourself. The latter—writing novels—gives you a
year or two or three or more in which to stay undercover and write and revise
and write and revise, almost, I want to say, to live years of one’s life in a
wonderfully satisfying way. It’s like raising a child to a certain age, and
then beginning over again with another child—in comparison writing stories is
like taking your kid to the zoo or the circus. Short term pleasure.
Q: You also teach writing at George Mason University and the
Squaw Valley Community of Writers. What elements of writing do you focus on
with your students, and are there particular pieces of advice you offer them
based on your own prolific writing career?
A: I always try to
focus on training young writers to learn how to write scenes, which to my mind
stand as the building blocks of most good fiction. And to emphasize the importance
of reading the masters. And—this is our Squaw Valley rubric—to isolate their
flaws and efface them and identify their strengths and build on them.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I’m finishing a
novel.
Q: Anything else that we should know?
A: I have a book of short stories coming out
in March, 2014. The title is An Authentic
Captain Marvel Ring & Other Stories.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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