John Wray Has a Crush
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For our readers who may not be familiar with your work, what's the most accurate thing someone else has said about it?
"Wray has written three books, and each one is wholly different in location and genre, as well as in tone. But there is a distinctive undercurrent that runs through all his work, an attention to stylistic detail unheard of among young novelists today. Wray's books are each beautifully dark and evocative--not just because he knows how to write a plot that will make your eyes and heart freeze in place, but because he manages to appropriate the mode of a genre or time and then twist it and make it glow until the end product is something entirely new." (Tyler Cabot, Esquire)
What have you read/watched/listened to/looked at/ate recently that will permanently change our readers' lives for the better?
I've just seen the animated film Waltz with Bashir, which really devastated me with its honesy and beauty. I'm not sure 'devastation' is a positive life change, but in this case I have no regrets.
Whose ghostwritten celebrity tell-all (or novel) would you sprint to the store to buy (along with a copy of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius so that the checkout clerk doesn't look at you screwy)?
Charles Bock, a writer I have a lot of respect for, actually ghost-wrote Shaquille O'Neal's memoir, Shaq Speaks. I've been meaning to pick that up for a while, if only to appreciate the sentence structure.
Have you ever been a Starving Artist, and did it make you brilliant, or just hungry?
I've never been a starving artist, but I have been a light- and human contact-starved one. I spent a year and a half, while writing my first novel, living in a tent in the basement of a warehouse in Dumbo. There were no windows in the space, no phone, no shower or private bathroom, and the temperature in the winter hovered at a character-building fifty degrees. More than anything, the experience made me celibate.
What would you characterize as an ideal interaction with a reader?
"Hello, John, I just wanted to say I really enjoyed Lowboy."
"Thanks, Zooey Deschanel! I really enjoy your acting."
"That's great to hear, John. Would you like to come to my house right now, this very minute, for some slow-dancing and dirty Martinis?"
"I'd consider it a great honor, Ms. Deschanel. Let my just grab my toothbrush."
Have you ever written anything that you'd like to take back?
All of my answers to the questions on this questionnaire. I'm a big second-guesser. Except for the one about Zooey Deschanel.
