Fictionaut Five: Rick Moody

Rick Moody is the author of five novels, three collections of stories, and a memoir, The Black Veil. His most recent novel is The Four Fingers of Death (2010). His next project is a collection of essays, On Celestial Music, forthcoming in 2012. He also plays music in The Wingdale Community Singers.

You can read his story “Fragment from an Untelevised Revolution” on Fictionaut.

Q (Meg Pokrass): Have you had mentors?

Two: Angela Carter and John Hawkes, both when I was an undergraduate at Brown University. I have said a great deal about this, and I don’t want to digest things I have already said. I believe my essay on the subject of mentoring vs. the writing workshop is available online via The Atlantic Monthly website. The short version is: I think mentors are essential. I wouldn’t be here, conducting this interview, if not for hard work of Carter and Hawkes.

Do you have tricks to move things through when not feeling as inspired?

No tricks, just will power. Work makes me a better person. I live to work. Not vice versa. So I work even when I don’t feel like working. It improves me to do so.

What is exciting about this time as a writer w/ the internet and what it offers. What is (conversely) not so good about it?

I don’t find it more exciting than others times. The task is the same: make beautiful sentences that say something important about the world. I think all the debate about technology is sort of wasted air. The dust will settle, eventually, and writers will be doing pretty much what they were doing before. And, I hope, getting paid for it.

What are you favorite literary sites? What sites do you find yourself going to to read? Or just, your favorite web sites?

I don’t much read literary web sites, excepting The Rumpus, where I am a contributor. And Fictionaut on occasion. In general what I like to read are: books. The physical objects.

Any favorite writing exercises would be hugely appreciated.

Interview your character before you write the scene.

A reading list, if you can give us one?

Read a lot of dead writers.

What writers, artists, muscians (dead or alive) do you turn to again and again for inspiration?

Mark Rothko, John Cage, Brian Eno, Frank Zappa, La Monte Young, Morton Feldman, Terry Riley, John Coltrane, Roland Barthes.

What is happening now for you? What is in the works?

Essays on music! And then a new novel.

The Fictionaut Five is our ongoing series of interviews with Fictionaut authors. Every Wednesday, Meg Pokrass asks a writer five (or more) questions. Meg is the editor-at-large for BLIP Magazine, and her stories and poems have been published widely. She blogs at http://megpokrass.com.