Monday, April 07, 2014

I'm Not Your Psychiatrist

"Click" here to read an interview I did with Megan Abbott for LENT. The online magazine, not the period of sacred deprivation! Maybe before you read it you will want to check out the following list I have helpfully compiled of people we mention by name in our interview, in order of appearance. That doesn't even include the people we mention, but NOT by name, such as our parents! Perhaps such a list will encourage you to read the interview. Or maybe you will become discouraged and lethargic! Maybe you will think this list is a good enough substitute for reading the interview. Or maybe your reaction will be one of blankness and disregard. I'm not your psychiatrist! 1. Jerry Lewis (Ha ha, I know! I can't help it. I literally cannot have a conversation without mentioning Jerry Lewis - usually right at the outset, like this.) 2. Beth Ann Fennelly 3. William Faulkner 4. Sigmund Freud (Ha ha! Just as I cannot have a conversation without mentioning Jerry Lewis, Megan is sure to bring up old Sigmund Freud. It just happens! Jerry Lewis is to me as Sigmund Freud is to Megan Abbott.) 5. David Lynch 6. Dashiell Hammett 7. James M. Cain 8. Eleanor Parker (pictured) 9. Arlene Dahl 10. Rhonda Fleming 11. Douglas Sirk 12. Georges Simenon 13. Anton Chekhov 14. Bill Griffith 15. Dorothy B. Hughes 16. Tom Franklin 17. Richard Dreyfuss 18. Rosemary Clooney 19. Nathaniel Hawthorne 20. Flannery O'Connor 21. Mickey Spillane 22. Raymond Chandler 23. John Banville 24. Humprhey Bogart 25. Ross MacDonald 26. Eudora Welty 27. Spencer Tracy 28. Katharine Hepburn 29. Margaret Millar 30. Barry Hannah 31. Harold Bloom 32. Hamlin Garland 33. Ernest Hemingway 34. Sherwood Anderson 35. Dean Martin Okay, I'm tired of making "links" now and nobody "clicks" on them anyway. 36. Marilyn Monroe 37. Stan Laurel 38. Oliver Hardy 39. Bud Abbott 40. Lou Costello 41. David Niven 42. Nick Tosches 43. Betty Hutton 44. Judy Garland 45. Danny Thomas 46. McNeil (I'll mention here, uselessly, that McNeil recently had a short story up at LENT... I told about it on twitter, which many more people read than this "blog.") 47. Preston Sturges 48. Billy Wilder 49. Dr. Theresa 50. Dave Kehr 51. Bob Hope 52. Andrew Sarris 53. Wallace Shawn 54. Fred MacMurray 55. Shirley MacLaine 56. Cameron Crowe 57. Gloria Swanson 58. Nancy Olsen 59. Audrey Wilder 60. Alfred Hitchcock 61. Pat Hitchcock 62. Alma Hitchcock 63. Vincent Minnelli 64. H.P. Lovecraft 65. Raymond Carver 66. Edith Wharton 67. Michael Chabon 68. Louisa May Alcott 69. Philip Roth (Reading PORTNOY'S COMPLAINT recently, I came upon a line that might serve as an epigraph for this interview: "The disproportionate and the melodramatic, this is my daily bread!") 70. Claudia Roth Pierpont 71. Scott Phillips - Be sure to use your newest computer while reading the interview. On my old one from 2004 the italics don't show up. But on Dr. Theresa's spiffy newer model, they do! And Megan and I EMPHASIZE lots of WORDS.