fwriction

I love Aimee Bender’s writing, and I love Guernica, so this interview, by Sarah Layden, scratches me right where I itch:

Guernica: Your book really gripped me. For some reason, the ending and the character of Joseph left me thinking of David Foster Wallace, a writer I never got to meet, but whose writing and interviews have impacted me greatly. Perhaps I am projecting my own experience with those who have made similar choices.

Aimee Bender: Thanks for saying that, about the book. I’m glad to hear it. DFW wasn’t in mind in particular when I wrote the book but I have thought about him often in the last couple of years. His comment about how reading is a way to be less alone. The loss of his presence and his writing is major; I never met him either but alongside the incredible smarts and humor and invention in his writing, there’s a kind of intense vulnerability in his work and in stories about him, so I think a lot of people felt and still feel a certain closeness and helplessness about his death. Even my mother, who wouldn’t really be one to like his work, felt upset by his death, felt like she wished she could’ve done something. I was struck by that—if even she felt she could’ve done something, then maybe there was something in the air that made a lot of us feel the loss in that way, with some kind of yearning, matched with powerlessness.