So, do we take Q&A?
Do we do question and answer?
I'm totally interested in questions if people have them,
or thoughts, or secrets.
Yeah?
Is this a comment on the Bush era.
Yeah, that and bigger.
That and ongoing, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's me having fun with some of that stuff.
Our little relationship with other countries, yeah.
Yes?
Is it hard to write about intimate like that?
I find it fun, but that's just me.
Yeah.
Is it OK to read stuff like that?
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it's good to write about stuff like that.
Do you want more of an answer to that question?
You know, Elizabeth mentioned that I
had studied with Tom Spanbauer.
And I think part of what makes Tom have such an impression
on some of his students is that he really
encourages people to write about whatever they want to write
about that matters to them.
And that was a place where people would--
I don't know how to put it exactly.
They welcomed my stuff.
And Chuck Palahniuk joined the group too, shortly after I did.
And he and I really clicked.
He really laughed at a lot of my jokes, and I laughed at his.
So that kind of fostered that willingness
to write about things, maybe that other people wouldn't
write about.
When I met Tom Spanbauer, one of the first things he said--
I paid $35 to take a class from him that pretty much has never
ended, right?
I can keep going back at any time.
That was in '91.
And the first day, he told us that he was HIV positive
and he didn't know how long he would live,
and he wanted to write what mattered to him.
And when someone says that, it was really strong stuff.
And now, all these years later, he's still
he's still doing fine.
So it was a little lesson in always writing what you really
want to write about, regardless of how other people might feel
about it, if that makes sense.
Maybe I didn't put that right.
It's not that I don't want to overlook other people's
feelings, but--
Do you shock a lot of people?
I don't know.
Are there other questions?
Yes.
Do you find it it's hard to get stories
that have that absurdity level in it published?
Or is that something that people are
kind of gravitating towards these days?
I think publishing is kind of hard all around.
I don't know.
Other people might have found it easier than I did.
I haven't had an easy route.
I'm always glad when people receive my stuff well.
Which it has been received, but there's always
an element of struggle to it, for whatever reason.
Do you think that that's the sort of absurd--
like, the absurdity in it is something--
I mean, I know I'm attracted.
Like, that's the thing I really loved about your writing.
Yeah, thank you.
Other people love it too.
And I wonder if it's harder to pitch.
What I've gathered along the way is
that, particularly in Clown Girl,
it's that my female roles aren't always the ones that we're
used to seeing.
And so people sometimes have a hard time
finding a spot for it, if that makes sense.
Yeah.
And that's part of what Kristen Wiig really
liked about it, too, just the female characters
that are in it.
So I think more than the absurdity,
it's some gender stuff maybe.
I don't know.
Yeah?
Well, in Clown Girl, the main character is a clown
and she views her work as art.
And things aren't so good for being a clown.
And so she gets into this position where
it's kind of like she and her clown friends
are sort of veering toward having
to be almost like prostitutes.
Is that a larger commentary?
I'm not sure if I'm answering this exactly right,
but in the real world of clowns, there really
is a big continuum of clowning.
And there really are a lot of evangelical and Christian
clowns and clown ministries who are very intent on spreading
the word of God as clowns.
And at the other end, there is a whole realm
of clown prostitution.
There are clown porn websites.
There's, like, the whole kind of dark sexual side of clowning.
And in between, you have everything else.
I put him on that continuum because it's
sort of from the hell to God, or however you want to look at it.
But, in between, you have people who view clowning as an art
or as personal expression, or even just as a daily--
there are people who just dress in clown
wear sometimes who aren't professional clowns.
And there are people who you think
are in clown wear who don't know that they're wearing that.
But, for me, at the time I was writing that--
I think maybe this is what you're asking.
I had a very hard time selling that book
or any other book, the books I had written before that.
And to kind of keep it fun for myself, in some ways
I'm kind of making fun of my own position
on the writing continuum.
That I wanted to write what I wanted to write,
the way Anita wants to do her clown show.
She wants to interpret Kafka into clowning.
And that's what she wants to do.
And she could move a little bit in different directions
and make more money at what she's doing,
but that's not where she's at.
So I'm sort of making a comment on how
I felt about my own writing a little bit.
Like, I want to write what I want to write.
But you can see there's money in other branches of it.
Does that make sense, kind of?
Yeah, so she kind of keeps sort of banging her head
against the wall trying to get this big clown gig.
And I guess, in some ways, I was kind
of banging my head against the wall trying
to get that book out there.
Yeah?
What's next?
The next book is coming out a year from now.
And it's called The Stud Book.
It's set up at the Oregon Zoo.
And it's about different people in Portland.
It's roughly set in Portland, and kind
of the whole question of bringing
more children into the world.
It's about the compulsion to have babies.
I guess I'm a little conflicted about that.
I've got a super cool kid, and I love her more than anything
else in the world.
But when I see a lot of kids, sometimes I just
feel some concern.
So I tried to just work that into a book.
Yeah.
Will you do short stories like you read tonight?
Yeah, I always do these back and forth.
But, you know, the novels are more
what people are looking for in publishing, I think.
I could ask these guys.
Other people might have opinions on that.
I like short stories too, and essays.
I like short stories.
Thank you.
I'm glad to hear that, a short story writer and reader.
Yeah.
Do you write them too?
No.
Just, you like reading them?
Yeah.
I think because it's a snippet.
You read it and then it's done.
And where if it's a book, you end up
staying up half the night if you really get
engrossed in part of it.
Yeah.
So I like that little piece.
Yeah, short stories can be so amazing,
the way they can stay with you or kind of expand in your mind.
You just read it and then carry it around.
And individual lines can just come to the fore,
and you can just remember single lines.
They seem more intense because you're
having to condense everything into a small area.
So it's almost like prose poetry,
so that you're condensing into a small area.
Yeah.
Other questions?
Thoughts?
Oh, over here.
Yeah.
How do you feel about Almodovar?
Well, I'm not an expert on his work.
I think a lot of it's pretty funny, from what I've seen.
Some of it's pretty funny.
Are you questioning--
His darkness.
Uh-huh.
[INTERPOSING VOICES]
Uh-huh.
And I sort of sensed a kinship between you and him.
That's interesting.
I hadn't really thought about that.
I like his work.
I find a lot of it pretty funny.
I think that the actors and actresses he puts in
are usually pretty great to look at.
They always are interesting.
So I appreciate all of that element.
I know some people have some controversial questions
about his gender politics and stuff,
but I don't really enter into all that.
What's his name?
Almodovar, filmmaker.
It's funny you bring him up because he actually owns
the film rights to one of Tom Spanbauer's-- you know,
he optioned it, but he's never made it.
Which one?
I think it's The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon.
I think that's the one.
Yeah, I think that's it.
Question?
Yeah.
Could I ask you to read a page of Clown Girl?
There's a copy of it there, and I just
think people would enjoy hearing that he came in
with the balloons.
Thank you for asking.
Tell us about the cover, too.
I love the cover.
Isn't it good?
This guy lives in New York now.
I didn't make it, so I can praise it without feeling like
I'm praising myself because I didn't--
what is his name?
I'm blanking on his name right now.
He actually-- he bought a chicken
and he stuffed it with sawdust and took this photo.
And he worked on it.
It was a pretty great connection with the book.
I cannot remember his name.
He moved to New York to work for a beer company in advertising.
But I think he's still freelances
some covers once in a while.
This cover, I told a friend, I said,
oh the cover is so gorgeous.
It's just great.
I just love it.
And then she looked at it when it finally came out,
and she was like, it's not really what I'd call gorgeous.
But I think it's gorgeous.
I think it's great.
The guy who made it said he saw this as a kind of Christ
figure too.
It's kind of sexy, kind of Christ,
kind of absurd and repulsive.
I don't know.
Tell them about Plucky.
What's that?
Tell them about Plucky.
Plucky, in the book?
Yeah.
Yeah, that's a part of the book, that she's
got a rubber chicken that is very
much sort of like her child.
And yeah, that's part of it.
She loses him and has to poster the neighborhood looking
for her rubber chicken.
And then she just gets a bunch of derelicts
trying to get money from her by returning other rubber chickens
that aren't her rubber chicken.
I mean, because if you offer a reward for something
like a rubber chicken, that's pretty easy to come by, right?