This evening Mark Danielewski was in Portland at Powells books to give a reading and do a Q & A for
Only Revolutions.
It was an enjoyable and entertaining evening, as far as performance art for author's go.
If you've ever gone to see a writer at a reading it can be either incredibly disappointing or incredibly enjoyable or mildly amusing. The level of enjoyment can be contigent on the level of intelligence of the audience and the audacity of audience members questions they ask said author.
Whenever I attend readings now, I usually take my notebook with me to scribble down notes. If anyone is interested I can scan them and throw them up on some webspace.
Some of the highlights from the evening included:
-He spent about six years or so working on the novel.
-Spent lots of time researching the slang for each time period the story moves through.
-Lots of work with slang and
OED in creating words and following words use and word roots.
-Took some convincing of the publisher to get the bar code on the side.
-Part of the time he spent on the book was the design and layout in addition to the writing. He did most of/all of it himself.
-AN inane question was asked regarding font/typeface and the use of colors throught the text of his novels and if it was done intentionally, and what it 'meant.' To answer this Danielewski kind of smirked, unsure if the person was serious adding that, "Yes, of course it is. I take it all very seriously, than I play around with it."
-Are these characters part of yourself?
"I'm aware I'm involved. But the way I approach things is like a film director would. I'm the author of the work and I'm involved in shaping the story and characters, but I also let them do what they want to do, kind of like letting the actor's inhabit the characters. I don't want to make my prescence that obvious and apparent to the reader/viewer."