This July marks your chance to see Joshua Mohr at not one but two Litquake events. First up, he’ll appear at our July 12 Epicenter with Akashic Books authors Joe Meno and Nathan Larson. Next up, he’ll channel Sinclair Lewis July 19 at PASSWORD: Litquake’s Literary Speakeasy.
Josh is the author of the novels Some Things That Meant the World to Me, Termite Parade, and Damascus. His next book, Fight Song, will be released by Counterpoint/Soft Skull in winter 2013. Learn more at joshuamohr.net.
- 1. What is your favorite book?
- My favorite novel is The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. It’s just a ferocious style of storytelling and it has all the goods: love, family, danger, self-destruction, self-loathing, mystery, hope, optimism, pessimism, heroism, a strong and honest political stance, a sense that you’re reading a book that transcends fiction and is a naked remix of the world going on around us.
- 2. Who is your favorite writer?
- I’d answer this question differently every day of my life. Today, it’s Lynda Barry. I love not only her creative work, but I’ve heard she’s a generous teacher. I think it’s important to be giving with your gifts.
- 3. If the answers to 1 & 2 are different, why?
- No writer works in a vacuum and our relationship to our forebears and our contemporaries constantly morphs, mutates. Today, it’s Doctorow and Barry, but who knows what I will read next that will knock my literary socks off?
- 4. How old were you when you were first published?
- I started cutting my teeth, publishing stories in lit mags that nobody’s ever heard of, in my early 20s. My first novel came out when I was 33.
- 5. What writing style do you most abhor?
- Any book that refers to genitalia or sex in appalling euphemisms: cocks are known as members, vaginas are entered, etc. I don’t dig gussying up the human body so that it sounds smeared in sanitizer.
- 6. What is your favorite writing cliché?
- I’m not sure if this qualifies, but it comes courtesy of Pablo Picasso: “The chief enemy of creativity is good taste.” Those words are so wise I tattooed them on my arm.
- 7. What is your favorite word?
- I seem to gravitate toward the word “slurp” a lot. Maybe I was weaned too young.
- 8. When and how do you write?
- I’m an insomniac so my sweet spot runs from about midnight until 5 am. I write in my apartment with all the lights turned out and the rock and roll revved up.
- 9. What is your greatest fear when you first turn in a manuscript?
- Oh, that’s always changing for me. I just turned in a new novel, Fight Song, that comes out early next year. It’s a satire, which is very different from my previous books. Whenever you get out of your comfort zone there’s the suffocating fear that you might be setting yourself up for disaster. I guess in the end it’s probably all the same fear: that the book isn’t good.
- 10. In what era do you wish you’d been born?
- I have a closet sweet-spot for glam rock. I’d have done well in Hollywood in the late ’70s/early ’80s, wearing leather pants and doing cocaine with David Lee Roth.
- 11. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
- I read all my books out loud compulsively, so hopefully I catch all this stuff in revision, making sure to vary the diction and sentence constructions. But in nascent drafts, it’s a traffic jam of platitudes and too-purple-prose.
- 12. Which talent would you most like to have?
- I have a terrible sense of balance. My center of gravity might be located next to my Adam’s apple. So I’m jealous of wirewalkers, trapeze artists, anyone who can go 20 feet without veering into the person on their left
- What do you consider your greatest achievement?
- My brain doesn’t work that way. I’m always thinking about future works. It’s like the poet Jay-Z says, “Onto the next one….” Once I’ve turned in a manuscript, my mind is racing toward new romps.
- 13. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?
- This is a tough one. I like writers who constantly challenge themselves on a project to project basis to evolve, never get stuck in a rut. Denis Johnson comes to mind, as does Sam Shepard. Kathy Acker. Angela Carter.
- 14. How would you like to die?
- As was chronicled in the Bruce Willis’ action franchise, I’d like to die hard.
