WEBVTT

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I don't know if any of
you have noticed yet,

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but Rick Moody is in the room.

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Rick Moody used to write
fiction about aimless teens,

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neurotic families, and
deviant sexual practices.

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Now, he has added to his
repertoire doomed missions

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to Mars and murderous,
infected four-fingered hands.

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In the first part of
his career, Rick Moody

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was one of the best
writers of literary fiction

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with novels like The Ice Storm.

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But his short fiction, in which
the oddest things can happen,

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in which, for instance, James
Dean can survive his car crash

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and start a rock
band, always tended

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toward the stranger, always
tended toward the wackier.

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He studied fiction with
postmodern giants John Hawkes

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and Angela Carter, and his
new novel, The Four Fingers

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of Death, is a grand
experimental work

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in the best possible way,
a genre-blurring book that

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takes the form of a
novelization of a 2025

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remake of an actual film,
The Crawling Hand, from 1963.

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This novelization comes
complete with an introduction

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and an afterwards from its
author, Montese Crandall,

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who has pursued
literary minimalism

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to the point at which he
can no longer write stories

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longer than a sentence.

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Moody, by the way, does
not have this problem.

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Obviously, Moody is playing
in the territory of Barthes

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and Pynchon with this
novel, and the set pieces,

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like a sex scene between
two male astronauts that

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takes place in zero gravity,
are marvelously absurd.

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But Moody also
displays a tenderness

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missing from a lot of
experimental comic fiction.

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It is one thing to have
a scientist attempting

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to implant the DNA of his
dead wife into an orangutan,

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but it is another matter
to devote so much attention

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to the very sad fact
that the scientists still

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writes regular letters
to that dead wife.

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It is one thing to have the
minimalist author taking

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on the job of a novelization
act as a literary in-joke,

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but it's another
thing to have him

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doing it all to raise the
money to keep his wife alive.

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This book is full of
wit, energy, and sadness,

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like all the best
fiction I've read.

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And it might interest
everyone here

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to know that the novel's
second half takes place

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in Rio Blanco, a dystopic
town in the Sonoran desert.

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And when it is mentioned
that one character purchased

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jump boots and torn jeans
and a monochromatic sweater

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from the thrift shops
down on Fourth Avenue,

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it's a little hard not to
think of a Tucson years

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in the future, a desolate
landscape full of scientists,

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hormone-ridden teenagers
who use the word "fuck" like

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it's an extension of
breathing, and murderous hands.

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And there is one more
thing about Rick Moody

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that I like immensely and I
would like to share with you.

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It's that he is
the only writer I

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can think of who has settled
a literary feud by throwing

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a pie into the face
of an insolent critic.

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In this way, maybe Rick
moody is like some kind

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of bizarro version of writers
of yore, an absurdist Ernest

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Hemingway, an eccentric
Norman Mailer.

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In his own way, Rick Moody
carries on all the best

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traditions in fiction, the
rambunctious, the waggishness,

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the restlessness,
and the ability

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to attack each novel like a new
puzzle, his voice and approach

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changing, but the result
always unmistakably his.

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Please join me in welcoming the
rowdy, the raucous, the rocking

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Rick Moody.

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[CHEERING]

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[APPLAUSE]

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