Because of That Book: An Interview with Brian Evenson on Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love / Robert Lopez

Brian Evenson is the author of some 200 works of fiction and translation, or so it seems. His prolific output is matched only by the extraordinary quality and variety of his work and his well-known generosity as a teacher and literary champion. He is a great writer and indispensable. When I learned that Brian had written a book about Raymond Carver’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, I knew I had to read it at once and then talk to him about it. As such, I interviewed Brian via email over the course of this past holiday season, one question at a time. – RL


 
Robert Lopez: How did this book come about exactly? I very much enjoy the commingling of the personal narrative with the Carver material, which of course, is what the book and the series is about. Did all of this come together for you when you started putting this work together, the personal narrative/memoir elements with the examination of Carver’s fiction?
Brian Evenson: I’d done a lot of work on Carver and the way he was edited by Gordon Lish in the 1990s, but that was pretty strictly academic, and for various reasons I never finished it and published it. But I always thought I’d go back to that material. I knew about the Bookmarked series because I’d heard Aaron Burch read from his forthcoming book on Stephen King’s The Body when we were at a festival together. I was pretty intrigued by the way his project was such a personal approach to a novella that had meant a lot to him. A few months after that, Robert Lasner wrote to me out of the blue and asked me if I’d be interested in writing a book for the Bookmarked series. ... [mehr] http://thefanzine.com/interview-with-brian-evenson-on-raymond-carvers-what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-love/