An Interview with Jason Lundberg

January 27th 2006 at 5:08 am

An Interview with Jason Lundber

Jason is a self identified slipstream writer, a blogger, podcaster and editor. His Two Cranes Press (http://www.twocranespress.com/) published the SF cookbook Scattered, Covered, Smothered to a lot of buzz. You can find him whipping up a recipe for trouble at http://www.jasonlundberg.net/

-Who *is* Jason Erik Lundberg, really?

Jason Erik Lundberg is a writer, publisher, husband, Buddhist, North Carolinian, blogger, podcaster, Clarion graduate, Master of Arts, teacher, and student. Jason Erik Lundberg is a Barthesian construct, a persona, a subjective literary manifestation. Jason Erik Lundberg is atoms, molecules, chemical reactions, electrical synapses. Jason Erik Lundberg is an egomaniac and a narcissist. Jason Erik Lundberg is far too clever for his own good.

-Why write? Videogames and TV are much more fun, aren’t they?

Sure, and I enjoy both. But good fiction does something neither of them can do: it’s the only medium in which you can get inside a character’s head, seeing and feeling the world as they do, experiencing their life but while still remaining fully yourself. The magic of imagination. Plus, it’s one of the things I’m fairly good at.

-Why genre?

Why not genre? As Ben Rosenbaum is so fond of saying, everything is genre (here comes the cleverness again); mainstream literary fiction is itself a genre. However, I write in a fabulist vein because it allows me to explore the absurdities and mysteries of life in both metaphorical and literal ways. I can’t get that from writing realist prose, and so I turn to the fantastic.

-If you had to do it all over again, what would you do?

I probably would have tried working on my craft more, instead of rushing into publication. Some of my first stories really should not have been published; they are too shallow, too slight. They are the sketches of an anxious journeyman, impatient for feedback on his work from the world at large. Had I to do it again, I would have slowed down, thought more carefully about motivation and style and pacing, revisiting my stories more to add new layers of meaning, as, hopefully, I do now.

-What warps your writing the most?

My strange brain. I’ve honestly tried to write thoughtful mimetic fiction, but then that happy puppy in my sensuous manifold hops up and down, pisses on the carpet, and barks, “But, but, but, wouldn’t it be cool if–?”

-Do you have a favorite place to write?

When I’m writing by hand in a Moleskine notebook or a Bombay brown leather journal, I like either the kitchen table or a seat at Cup A Joe, my favorite local coffeehouse. If I’m typing, I’m either at my computer desk, or using my iBook in the coffeehouse.

-What’s the most challenging aspect of writing?

The physical act of writing itself. Anyone can have a brilliant idea for a book, but the true test comes when you put words to paper. There are days when the words come easily, but the majority of the time, it’s as if I’m wrestling with a lumbering and pissed-off bear, the words clumsy and unwilling to flow.

-What’s the most whacked-out thing said in a review of your work?

If “work” can mean fiction I’ve edited/published as well as written, then the most whacked out review would be of *Scattered, Covered, Smothered*, an anthology of food-related fiction that I edited and published with my wife, Janet Chui. Rick Kleffel from *The Agony Column* said it was “what could easily be one of the smartest, coolest and best anthologies to show up in 2004… This is one of those rockin’ really weird Rick-books that you simply must run out and buy. Wave it in the face of your roommate/partner/significant other/co-workers. Buy two and wear one like a hat. It’s that’s good.” Which was extraordinarily nice of him to say.

-Okay, you’re going to get marooned on an island by a bunch of angry editors, what one book do you take and why?

I would bring the three-volume hardcover *Complete Calvin and Hobbes* because it is so versatile. The books are heavy, so I could fend off the editors if I needed to; the immensity of cartoons inside would keep boredom at bay; and I could placate the editors by loaning them a volume or two. Who doesn’t love Calvin and Hobbes?

-Is there a book or story you wish you could go back in time and kill the author of so you could submit their manuscript as your own?

When I was younger, I wished I could have written the *Foundation* series by Issac Asimov, because it had such a big impact on my reading life, though I’m not sure I would have been willing to kill the man. Right now, I realize how personal writing is, and that even if I had stolen those books and pawned them off as my own, I never would have felt as if I had earned the publication. So much of writing is learning what you’re trying to say as you say it, then going back and refining those statements until they gleam. It’s the hard work, the journey, rather than the end result.

-When I interview you again in 10 years, what will you hope to be talking to us about?

By that point, I hope to have a few novels under my belt, and maybe a story collection. Of course, I could just as easily still be toiling away in obscurity, broken, bitter, feasting on my own spleen. Either way, it’ll be interesting.

-What are your current plans for literary world domination?

I’ve just started a literary podcast called *Lies and Little Deaths: A Virtual Anthology* (virtualantho.blogspot.com), wherein I read my published fiction aloud, along with book reviews and assorted other burblings (I’ll also soon be reading Kelly Link’s Creative-Commons-available story “The Specialist’s Hat,” in order to celebrate her collection *Magic for Beginners* making Time Magazine’s Best Books of 2005). I’ve also just begun work on a novel that will be so powerful that every person in the world will read it. Or at least enough people to keep me out of starvation.

-Last, but not least, if zombies were spreading throughout the land by infectious bite what would be your 5 point response?

1. Find a cure for zombiism.
2. Dispense cure.
3. Revel in the praise for my pacifist solution.
4. Retire.
5. Travel the zombie-free world.

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