The work of personal historians like Pattie Whitehouse, Dan Curtis and others reinforces what I
strongly believe. Everyone has a story to tell and it is beneficial to do so on so many levels.
BG: Generally I like playing with a series of shorter narratives that
(hopefully) add up to something huge and strange. The most traditional
novel I wrote, Please Step Back, was a struggle, in some ways, but
it was carried along by the plot, which was essentially the life story
of a legendary (fictional) funk-rock musician. There were quick
reversals and chicanes and everything else, but the plot in general
was carried forward by time — by time in the story, I mean. In this
case, with Chekhov’s stories and the celebritized versions, stories
were the only way to go, because each short work has to live within
the force field both of its plot and also of its central character.
CM: What are you working on now?
BG: There are a number of books that I’ve either started or sketched or am
dreaming about: a novel about a politician, a novel about a safety
inspector, a novel about a detective, a novel about a plagiarist, a
novel about a con man, and a novel about a conned woman. So basically
a novel. But there are always stories, too. For example, there’s a
strange one, strange in the sense that it’s kind of normal, coming out
soon in the next edition of Electric Literature. And lots of little
humor and conceptual pieces along the way.
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