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A L S O+.T O D A Y

The Salon Interview: Andrea Barrett
By Peter Kurth
A conversation with Andrea Barrett, author of the National Book Award-winning "Ship Fever and Other Stories"

The Salon Interview:
Ken Follett
By David Bowman
The thriller-master talks about Bob Dylan, working with Ross Perot and why he prefers the creature comforts of a luxury hotel to the perilous terrain of his heroes
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Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host: The Autobiography of Larry Sanders
Reviewed by Joyce Millman
This pseudomemoir, like the long-running HBO show it derives from, delivers a fun house-mirror reflection of the late-night talk show wars

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(10/26/98)
Stephen King
By Andrew O'Hehir
(09/24/98)
Richard Powers
By Laura Miller
(07/23/98)
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THE SALON INTERVIEW: JIM HARRISON | PAGE 1, 2, 3
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What sort of distinctions do you make between your mediums -- novels, poems, screenplays?
I don't make any separation between poetry and fiction. You're called upon to do one or the other depending upon happenstance. With screenplays, you know up front that it's going to be a collaborative effort. One hundred and twenty people at least are going to get involved.
So a screenplay isn't going to break your heart?
You get pretty carried away with anything you write, but it's not going to wrench the living shit out of you and strangle you. After I wrote "Dalva" I went to a doctor who said, "Didn't you realize that both of your eardrums are broken?" It's that kind of thing -- in the Faulknerian sense, what we call the demon. It's something that won't let you go.
On that level, how difficult was "The Road Home" to write?
It was the hardest yet and it took me nearly two years. It was all the different voices. I had a hellish time getting out of the old man's voice -- it took me nearly four months to get out of it. I had to talk to [Jack] Nicholson a couple times on how you get out of a part, because I've known him so long and I've seen him trying to emerge from a part.
So in a way you had to confront Walker Percy's "reentry problem" five separate times.
That's it exactly. Nelse was the hardest because he was the youngest. I couldn't quite recapture that free-floating anger you have at 30 -- that rage at everything. I talked to guys that age off and on -- they didn't know why I was asking. But what I finally did was reread "Wolf," my first novel, which I wrote at about that age. I said, My god, is this guy pissed off. Nelse has a more restrained voice than ["Wolf's"] Swanson but it's bubbling underneath. I've done a lot of wandering like he had, so that part wasn't so hard, in terms of the flora and fauna. I've even been to the strip club in Lincoln, Neb., where he went -- where the girls are all from the college dance classes. Refreshing, to say the least.
The character of John Northridge, the old man, seems to typify the sort of macho character you've been accused of sympathizing with in the past.
Of course, he was written from some distance. What I really had to have there was this delusion that you think you're a nice, even-tempered, pleasant person and then you realize that other people don't look at you quite that way. But it's a misuse of the word "macho," which is always pejorative. It denotes the kind of a guy, as I said once, that would throw a rattlesnake in a baby carriage. [The misuse of the term] is one of the unfortunate things about feminism but I certainly understand it. A lot of men are just assholes. You think, where did they get it? You always wonder if they're feeling a little ambivalent to insist on the preeminence of their weenie in the world. Something's gone haywire in there. But what I liked about creating [John Northridge] was that this was the first time since Tristan that I've created a full-fledged man without irony.
In one of the monologues, his son Paul remarks that John Northridge was perhaps just born in the wrong century. Has masculinity undergone a major transformation in recent history?
It's just our dislocation. I grew up hunting and fishing and nobody in my family ever said anything about masculine, or male, or any of that. That would've been really bad form. It would be to vulgarize what you were doing. I think certain males began prating about masculinity when they thought they were losing it. I keep thinking of this interesting point I read in the Utne Reader: What sex are you when you wake up suddenly at 3 o'clock in the morning? Who knows anything? That whole idea of gender is illusory. But then you can't blame feminists. They're like the revisionist historians. The old white historians that I grew up on left out women, Indians, Mexicans, blacks -- what were you going to do with this kind of stuff? It was just a bunch of suits, big-timing it.
They were trying to rectify that when I was in grade school but instead of integrating it all into one history they gave us separate parallel histories -- first the white men, then women, then blacks. It doesn't seem that they've found the right remedy yet.
No. I don't like to go to colleges to lecture. I won't anymore. There's a Robert Duncan poem in which he writes about Theodore Roethke falling down -- falling to pieces -- "within the deceitful coils of institutions." This whole idea of political correctness that began in the Northern colleges has the exact cellular structure of Cuban communism. Nobody even flirts anymore. You have to pretend you don't have a winkie. Last year it was tobacco, this year it's blow jobs. What's it going to be next year?
SALON | Dec. 2, 1998
Jonathan Miles lives in Oxford, Miss. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Men's Journal and other publications.

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	Click here for books by Jim Harrison A L S O+.T O D A Y The Salon Interview: Andrea Barrett By Peter Kurth A conversation with Andrea Barrett, author of the National Book Award-winning "Ship Fever and Other Stories" The Salon Interview: Ken Follett By David Bowman The thriller-master talks about Bob Dylan, working with Ross Perot and why he prefers the creature comforts of a luxury hotel to the perilous terrain of his heroes - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Confessions of a Late Night Talk Show Host: The Autobiography of Larry Sanders Reviewed by Joyce Millman This pseudomemoir, like the long-running HBO show it derives from, delivers a fun house-mirror reflection of the late-night talk show wars T A B L E+T A L K What books will you be giving as gifts this year? Discuss your list in the Books area of Table Talk B O O K C A S E A new service for book lovers R E C E N T L Y Andrew Sullivan By Carol Lloyd (11/30/98) Lorrie Moore By Dwight Garner (10/27/98) Grace Paley By A.M. Homes (10/26/98) Stephen King By Andrew O'Hehir (09/24/98) Richard Powers By Laura Miller (07/23/98) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - INTERVIEW ARCHIVE - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - S A L O N E M P O R I U M FREE! 12-ounce bag of Salon Blend with a purchase of $30 or more. While supplies last.		THE SALON INTERVIEW: JIM HARRISON \| PAGE 1, 2, 3 - - - - - - - - - - What sort of distinctions do you make between your mediums -- novels, poems, screenplays? I don't make any separation between poetry and fiction. You're called upon to do one or the other depending upon happenstance. With screenplays, you know up front that it's going to be a collaborative effort. One hundred and twenty people at least are going to get involved. So a screenplay isn't going to break your heart? You get pretty carried away with anything you write, but it's not going to wrench the living shit out of you and strangle you. After I wrote "Dalva" I went to a doctor who said, "Didn't you realize that both of your eardrums are broken?" It's that kind of thing -- in the Faulknerian sense, what we call the demon. It's something that won't let you go. On that level, how difficult was "The Road Home" to write? It was the hardest yet and it took me nearly two years. It was all the different voices. I had a hellish time getting out of the old man's voice -- it took me nearly four months to get out of it. I had to talk to [Jack] Nicholson a couple times on how you get out of a part, because I've known him so long and I've seen him trying to emerge from a part. So in a way you had to confront Walker Percy's "reentry problem" five separate times. That's it exactly. Nelse was the hardest because he was the youngest. I couldn't quite recapture that free-floating anger you have at 30 -- that rage at everything. I talked to guys that age off and on -- they didn't know why I was asking. But what I finally did was reread "Wolf," my first novel, which I wrote at about that age. I said, My god, is this guy pissed off. Nelse has a more restrained voice than ["Wolf's"] Swanson but it's bubbling underneath. I've done a lot of wandering like he had, so that part wasn't so hard, in terms of the flora and fauna. I've even been to the strip club in Lincoln, Neb., where he went -- where the girls are all from the college dance classes. Refreshing, to say the least. The character of John Northridge, the old man, seems to typify the sort of macho character you've been accused of sympathizing with in the past. Of course, he was written from some distance. What I really had to have there was this delusion that you think you're a nice, even-tempered, pleasant person and then you realize that other people don't look at you quite that way. But it's a misuse of the word "macho," which is always pejorative. It denotes the kind of a guy, as I said once, that would throw a rattlesnake in a baby carriage. [The misuse of the term] is one of the unfortunate things about feminism but I certainly understand it. A lot of men are just assholes. You think, where did they get it? You always wonder if they're feeling a little ambivalent to insist on the preeminence of their weenie in the world. Something's gone haywire in there. But what I liked about creating [John Northridge] was that this was the first time since Tristan that I've created a full-fledged man without irony. In one of the monologues, his son Paul remarks that John Northridge was perhaps just born in the wrong century. Has masculinity undergone a major transformation in recent history? It's just our dislocation. I grew up hunting and fishing and nobody in my family ever said anything about masculine, or male, or any of that. That would've been really bad form. It would be to vulgarize what you were doing. I think certain males began prating about masculinity when they thought they were losing it. I keep thinking of this interesting point I read in the Utne Reader: What sex are you when you wake up suddenly at 3 o'clock in the morning? Who knows anything? That whole idea of gender is illusory. But then you can't blame feminists. They're like the revisionist historians. The old white historians that I grew up on left out women, Indians, Mexicans, blacks -- what were you going to do with this kind of stuff? It was just a bunch of suits, big-timing it. They were trying to rectify that when I was in grade school but instead of integrating it all into one history they gave us separate parallel histories -- first the white men, then women, then blacks. It doesn't seem that they've found the right remedy yet. No. I don't like to go to colleges to lecture. I won't anymore. There's a Robert Duncan poem in which he writes about Theodore Roethke falling down -- falling to pieces -- "within the deceitful coils of institutions." This whole idea of political correctness that began in the Northern colleges has the exact cellular structure of Cuban communism. Nobody even flirts anymore. You have to pretend you don't have a winkie. Last year it was tobacco, this year it's blow jobs. What's it going to be next year? SALON \| Dec. 2, 1998 Jonathan Miles lives in Oxford, Miss. His writing has appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Men's Journal and other publications. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.