Eric
Chinksi:
In The Fun Parts you're returning to short stories after publishing a
novel, The Ask. Do you approach writing stories and novels differently?
 Sam Lipsyte: Once I know what I'm writing I start to approach
them differently, but in the beginning I'm just trying to get something
down on the page. As I go I can start to sense whether it's opening up
and might be something longer or if a closing is already in view.
Sometimes I know it's a short story from the start but often it takes a
little while. Nathanael West, who wrote rather short novels, said,
"You only have time to explode." I think of that when I write
the short pieces. You are creating a new world and new language to
navigate it and there will be some nice effects along the way, but you
are usually after a single moment for the piece to turn on. You are
putting something -- characters in the case of some stories, the very
mode of utterance in others -- under increasing pressure. It's the same
with the novel, in some sense, but you vary the pressure, digress in a
controlled way, gather in more stories to feed into a larger narrative.
Eric Chinski: I don't think it quite hit me until I heard
you read from The Ask a few years ago, but there's clearly a Sam
Lipsyte sentence. I heard music at that reading [....]
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