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PN: We’ve talked quite a bit about narrative; maybe we should think too about tone and about your exploitation of particular figures of speech. Cast in Doubt is tonally rich, of course, but that’s partly parodic. Other books, particularly Haunted Houses, seem to cultivate a certain lack of tone; sometimes the style reminded me of forms of naturalism. Whole passages of flat, short sentences which made me think of Dos Passos in the way one thing or event is simply placed against another. An emphasis on the local and contiguous rather than on some overall structure or plot, perhaps…? LT: I don’t think of the style of Haunted Houses as flat. It’s angular, sharp. The edges between sentences are tough—take no prisoners. The structure too is angular—three characters who never meet, three chapters for each of the five sections, no greased transitions. I was interested in how gaps make meanings, how juxtapositions work. I’m always involved in that, pushing one set of ideas up against another. That’s maybe what you think of as naturalistic. And all that makes strange disturbances. Haunted Houses is grimly funny sometimes. Motion Sickness is more fluid, playing off a stream of words, associations; its structure is almost circular, with the first chapter, to my mind, a trailer for the upcoming feature. Cast in Doubt is arch, even toying with being precious. The structure is filled with holes, anxious ones. Each work is supposed to have its own integrity. PN: And the style is always aware of itself, of the effects it’s aiming for. At first glance it just seems witty, but there’s another layer where you start stripping away the cottonwool of metaphor: ‘She chooses a piece of silverware as if it were a weapon. But she does not attack her food’ (A, 106). This kind of effect reminds me of Brecht’s advice to his actors, to speak their lines as if they were bracketed within quotation marks. LT: Books are made of words, characters are made of words. I like to call attention to that. To me it’s pleasurable. It’s like watching a movie. If the film-maker isn’t using the camera well, using that medium as if there weren’t a camera, or if the editing isn’t really interesting, what are you watching? You’re not actually watching something that’s taking advantage of the medium. PN: What I called ‘bracketing’ is also something that I think you’ve explored in your work with film. In an interview about Committed you say that you ‘used certain narrative codes but then veered away from them sharply and used other, more avant-garde ones— deliberately going back and forth.’ There’s certainly an emphasis
DOI link for PN: We’ve talked quite a bit about narrative; maybe we should think too about tone and about your exploitation of particular figures of speech. Cast in Doubt is tonally rich, of course, but that’s partly parodic. Other books, particularly Haunted Houses, seem to cultivate a certain lack of tone; sometimes the style reminded me of forms of naturalism. Whole passages of flat, short sentences which made me think of Dos Passos in the way one thing or event is simply placed against another. An emphasis on the local and contiguous rather than on some overall structure or plot, perhaps…? LT: I don’t think of the style of Haunted Houses as flat. It’s angular, sharp. The edges between sentences are tough—take no prisoners. The structure too is angular—three characters who never meet, three chapters for each of the five sections, no greased transitions. I was interested in how gaps make meanings, how juxtapositions work. I’m always involved in that, pushing one set of ideas up against another. That’s maybe what you think of as naturalistic. And all that makes strange disturbances. Haunted Houses is grimly funny sometimes. Motion Sickness is more fluid, playing off a stream of words, associations; its structure is almost circular, with the first chapter, to my mind, a trailer for the upcoming feature. Cast in Doubt is arch, even toying with being precious. The structure is filled with holes, anxious ones. Each work is supposed to have its own integrity. PN: And the style is always aware of itself, of the effects it’s aiming for. At first glance it just seems witty, but there’s another layer where you start stripping away the cottonwool of metaphor: ‘She chooses a piece of silverware as if it were a weapon. But she does not attack her food’ (A, 106). This kind of effect reminds me of Brecht’s advice to his actors, to speak their lines as if they were bracketed within quotation marks. LT: Books are made of words, characters are made of words. I like to call attention to that. To me it’s pleasurable. It’s like watching a movie. If the film-maker isn’t using the camera well, using that medium as if there weren’t a camera, or if the editing isn’t really interesting, what are you watching? You’re not actually watching something that’s taking advantage of the medium. PN: What I called ‘bracketing’ is also something that I think you’ve explored in your work with film. In an interview about Committed you say that you ‘used certain narrative codes but then veered away from them sharply and used other, more avant-garde ones— deliberately going back and forth.’ There’s certainly an emphasis
PN: We’ve talked quite a bit about narrative; maybe we should think too about tone and about your exploitation of particular figures of speech. Cast in Doubt is tonally rich, of course, but that’s partly parodic. Other books, particularly Haunted Houses, seem to cultivate a certain lack of tone; sometimes the style reminded me of forms of naturalism. Whole passages of flat, short sentences which made me think of Dos Passos in the way one thing or event is simply placed against another. An emphasis on the local and contiguous rather than on some overall structure or plot, perhaps…? LT: I don’t think of the style of Haunted Houses as flat. It’s angular, sharp. The edges between sentences are tough—take no prisoners. The structure too is angular—three characters who never meet, three chapters for each of the five sections, no greased transitions. I was interested in how gaps make meanings, how juxtapositions work. I’m always involved in that, pushing one set of ideas up against another. That’s maybe what you think of as naturalistic. And all that makes strange disturbances. Haunted Houses is grimly funny sometimes. Motion Sickness is more fluid, playing off a stream of words, associations; its structure is almost circular, with the first chapter, to my mind, a trailer for the upcoming feature. Cast in Doubt is arch, even toying with being precious. The structure is filled with holes, anxious ones. Each work is supposed to have its own integrity. PN: And the style is always aware of itself, of the effects it’s aiming for. At first glance it just seems witty, but there’s another layer where you start stripping away the cottonwool of metaphor: ‘She chooses a piece of silverware as if it were a weapon. But she does not attack her food’ (A, 106). This kind of effect reminds me of Brecht’s advice to his actors, to speak their lines as if they were bracketed within quotation marks. LT: Books are made of words, characters are made of words. I like to call attention to that. To me it’s pleasurable. It’s like watching a movie. If the film-maker isn’t using the camera well, using that medium as if there weren’t a camera, or if the editing isn’t really interesting, what are you watching? You’re not actually watching something that’s taking advantage of the medium. PN: What I called ‘bracketing’ is also something that I think you’ve explored in your work with film. In an interview about Committed you say that you ‘used certain narrative codes but then veered away from them sharply and used other, more avant-garde ones— deliberately going back and forth.’ There’s certainly an emphasis
ABSTRACT
PN: We’ve talked quite a bit about narrative; maybe we should think too about tone and about your exploitation of particular figures of speech. Cast in Doubt is tonally rich, of course, but that’s partly parodic. Other books, particularly Haunted Houses, seem to cultivate a certain lack of tone; sometimes the style reminded me of forms of naturalism. Whole passages of flat, short sentences which made me think of Dos Passos in the way one thing or event is simply placed against another. An emphasis on the local and contiguous rather than on some overall structure or plot, perhaps…?
