HK: Your stories are often very disturbing, unearthly, and nightmarish. Yet, they are magical and even resemble the tales we were told as children, parsed down to the essential, little-girl-who-wore-a-red-cloak details. They're horrifying yet comforting, sparse yet addictive. In fact, I read over half of Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day while sitting at the mechanic, waiting for an oil change. But I wasn't really there. I was with an octopus who moved to the city, with a monster at the bottom of a public pool, with a Martian at a dinner party. I was simultaneously a child and an adult. Can you speak about how you achieve this liminality in your writing? And, if it is intentional, how you merge the simplicities of childhood and the anxieties of adulthood?



BL: Thank you, that's a very flattering description of my writing! But I can't really say it's intentional. Early on, I just decided to write whatever naturally came out, to write the stories that came bubbling up, regardless of what I thought of them, and to write them in my natural voice, the voice I'd use to tell anyone a story, like about what happened to me at the DMV this morning or whatever. So what I got out of that were a bunch of stories about my inner self, my inner worries and conflicts, this sort of unprocessed raw material, just rising up to my working consciousness in dreamlike imagery. So the stories turned out to be these very naturally narrated descriptions of inward psychic journeys, inner battles, inner fears, all turned outward into characters and events—but moving fast, like cartoons or encapsulated fairy tales. So I can see how that matches up with what you're describing, but it comes by way of process, not intent. The only intention I ever have when I'm writing is to somehow get to the end of the story.

I love the stories I write—they never cease to amaze me (when they're not driving me totally fucking crazy)—but I would never have expected that they're what I would write. I always assumed that someday I'd write a book like Ulysses or Gravity's Rainbow or Hopscotch or something—something big and long-winded and impressively pretentious that the folks over at the New York Times Book Review would love. But no, instead, I write these weird little stories. Which I love! But I never saw them coming.



2.

HK: What were you like as a kid?


BL: I really liked playing with my Star Wars dolls a lot.



2½.    

HK: Fiction is supposed to be...


BL: I have no idea. I guess for me, mostly, it's supposed to be different. It's supposed to be something surprising and new, but not something that just feels like a bunch of wacky shit. Somehow it's supposed to be startlingly original but also immediately recognizable and true. And I guess, above all, I mostly need it to affect me. Mostly I just want to be heartbroken.




- - -

Read Ben's story.

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