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Chartreuse Darkholme: ðóññêóþ âåðñèþ ÷èòàéòå â áëèæàéøåå âðåìÿ íà ñàéòå
Îòâåòîâ - 5
Chartreuse Darkholme: Interview with Poppy Z. Brite August 2002 By Rain Graves Millions of people have read LOST SOULS in paperback, Poppy Z. Brite’s successful first novel. The 10th Anniversary edition of LOST SOULS is due from Gauntlet Press in October/November of 2002, already selling fast in advance with a generous buzz of interest regarding all the extras given to the reader. It features a new introduction by Poppy Z. Brite, two pages of a first draft, the short story «Stay Awake,» correspondence with Douglas E. Winter and Dell/Abyss editor Jean Cavelos, hand picked Miran Kim endpapers, and a signature by Mizz PZB herself. In discussing the release of the new edition, we found it hard to say new and interesting things about the novel that have not already been discussed. Everything that’s wonderful about LOST SOULS as a story, has already been said and to rehash things her fans have heard a million times seemed mediocre at best. We hope to answer some old questions and new questions for you in this interview, and give you a little of what you can expect from this gorgeous new edition Gauntlet is publishing, celebrating a wonderful novel that brought us the words and visions of a very gifted author. The only thing I can tell you about Poppy Z. Brite that you might not get from her books or this interview is how incredibly nice and normal she is, despite her bizarre collection of real-life animals… (According to Poppy, the rough numbers are around 21 cats, 2 dogs, and a snake. Don’t ask her if they all have names.) Enjoy her work both old and new and learn something about the author you’ve come to adore. Rain Graves: The original LOST SOULS publishing seems so far away in time. Ten whole years have passed. What made you resurrect it in this new anniversary edition (aside from the anniversary of course)? Poppy Z. Brite: It was Barry Hoffman’s idea -- don’t blame me! But I was aware that many fans of the book had first encountered it in paperback and wanted a nice hardcover edition, so it seemed that the market was there. RG: How do you view yourself as a writer now, compared to the writer that you were then? PZB: I still just view myself as a writer. I hope I’ve gotten better, but I’m not prepared to quantify how. RG: Any avid Poppy Z. Brite fan knows there will never be a sequel to LOST SOULS. How did you avoid the pigeon holing of the New York Publishing companies who sought to pinpoint the success of LOST SOULS as a vampire novel, and commission more vampire novels out of you? PZB: I just told them I had no interest in doing that. RG: Yet, even though you have said many times over how much you hate vampires--you wrote a vampire novel. Why do you hate them? Why did you write about them to begin with, if you hate them? PZB: Well, I didn’t hate them when I wrote LOST SOULS, though I never liked them as much as some people seem to. There are a handful of vampire novels I’ve really enjoyed: DRACULA; George R.R. Martin’s FEVRE DREAM; King’s ’SALEM’S LOT; Caitlin Kiernan’s «lost novel» THE FIVE OF CUPS ... That’s about it, really. Skipp & Spector’s THE LIGHT AT THE END had a certain youthful energy. But none of the series writers; I never could stand that stuff. When I wrote LOST SOULS, I suppose I approached the subject matter from a Goth perspective; I didn’t realize how corny and overdone vampires had become in the horror genre. The only way I still find the vampires in LOST SOULS effective is as a parody of this -- rather than glamorous/decadent Creatures of the Night, Molochai, Twig, and Zillah are stupid, spoiled teenagers trying to be glamorous/decadent Creatures of the Night. Christian no longer works for me because he’s not a parody, or at least he wasn’t intended as such. But that’s just me. Most readers aren’t going to come to the book with this perspective, and I don’t suppose I’d want them to. What I hate more than the glut of vampire novels itself is the way one novel will peg you as a Vampire Author ad infinitum. A couple of weeks ago I was talking to someone -- not a fan, just an acquaintance -- telling him about LIQUOR. He said, «Oh, that sounds cool -- no offense, but I’m not into the vampire thing.» And I said, «Neither am I. I haven’t written anything about vampires for ten years.» And he was really surprised, because apparently he’d always heard that I was a Vampire Author. I can’t think of another subject matter that’s quite so hard to scrape off your shoe.
Chartreuse Darkholme: RG: Your readers seem to have a greater attachment to Steve and Ghost, more than the other characters. What is your attachment to them as characters? Why do you think they identify more with Steve and Ghost, as opposed to Nothing, Zillah, Twig, etc…? PZB: Obviously Steve and Ghost are a good bit more accessible than the other characters in the book. To some readers, I think Ghost is how they’d like to see themselves -- loyal, innocent, in possession of strange powers -- and Steve is how they really do see themselves -- deeply flawed, but not bad at heart. RG: Regarding the correspondence between you and Jeanne Cavelos from Dell Abyss, as part of the package Gauntlet gives the reader in this edition---Why did you want to include it? PZB: I included it because I thought it might give readers an interesting look at how the book developed from the draft Dell purchased to the one they ultimately published -- what I did, what I declined to do, and so forth. RG: I often look at LOST SOULS and vampires as subject matter in general as being a «death is easy,» summation (stolen phrase from you, of course). You talk about this phrase at length in the introduction to LOST SOULS, pertaining to PLASTIC JESUS and how PLASTIC JESUS was exactly the opposite in meaning - as if to say, with the later book, «Death is not easy.» Do you see a connection between the growth process of your thoughts and writing, and the obsessions that fueled the subjects of each novel? PZB: I grew up some. I saw some people die, and saw that it absolutely *wasn’t* easy. Beyond what’s in the introduction, I don’t know what else to say about this. RG: What made you write a novel like LIQUOR? Of all the eclectic topics you have chosen before, LIQUOR seems the most left field, and likely to boost your career as a novelist who can conquer any subject matter that calls to her. This is of course a two-parter: how much did you enjoy the restaurant business research (namely the food)? PZB: Except for some technical stuff about licensing, I didn’t have to do a great deal of restaurant research -- I’ve been immersed in that world for thirteen-plus years, which also tells you how I came to write such a book. The restaurant world is so interesting, there’s really no way I wasn’t going to write about it eventually. People assume I got interested in it through my husband, who’s a chef, but it’s probably more accurate to say that I met him because I’d always been so interested in restaurants. These days, most of my New Orleans friends are cooks or some other sort of restaurant people, and I guess I’m about as close to the scene as you can be without actually working in a kitchen. RG: Are chefs as catty as Ballroom dancers? PZB: At least. It wouldn’t behoove me to tell real-life tales, but you will find some in LIQUOR (and also in THE VALUE OF X). RG: What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? PZB: The most disgusting thing I ever ate was natto, a Japanese fermented soybean product that tasted like, as my husband described it, «thousand-year-old lentils found under the toes of Sven the Ice Man.» The weirdest thing I ever loved was probably lobster wrapped in a pig’s ear, a creation of my friend Pete, the chef at my favorite restaurant, Marisol.
Chartreuse Darkholme: RG: Tell me about THE VALUE OF X. How did you come to call it that? PZB: Literally, it’s a reference to algebra. Figuratively, it becomes a metaphor for figuring out what your values are and how you want to live your life: «For the first time in years - maybe the first time ever - Gary thought he could understand his mother’s religious faith. If you believed in that stuff, really believed it without question, then you always knew your loved ones would return to you. No matter how long they stayed away, even if they died, you would see them again eventually. That must be so comforting - if you could believe. He just couldn’t any more. Where he had once had a little faith, there was now nothing but a big, black X like the one in an algebra problem. But he’d run into very few algebra problems he couldn’t solve. He had no idea what the value of this X might be, or whether it had any value at all.» THE VALUE OF X is about the characters from LIQUOR, but takes place about ten years earlier. RG: THE DEVIL YOU KNOW is a short story collection scheduled for release next year from the same publisher (Subterranean Press). Will this incorporate newer short fiction similar to the growth you’ve established with newer novels like LIQUOR? I know I can’t speak for all your fans, but I’m looking forward to the directions you’ve gone in your novels as much as in your short fiction. It’s rare that a writer is to be so versatile, while staying true to her visions of story and plot. PZB: It’s hard for me to understand why any writer wouldn’t want to work in all sorts of genres, voices, etc. When I was younger, I used to think the horror genre was without boundaries and could encompass anything I might ever want to write, but obviously that turned out not to be the case -- in large part, I think, because of the way I’ve come to see my hometown. I’m tired of New Orleans horror stories. I’m tired of every story that’s set here having to be full of danger and death and pain. That’s certainly part of our culture, but not the sum total of it, and I want to move on to other aspects. That said, there will be some dark/horrific stories in THE DEVIL YOU KNOW. It consists of most of the short fiction I wrote between 1998 and 2002, and I didn’t really start moving away from horror in a big way until 2000 or so -- and even then, I still wrote (and still intend to write) an occasional nasty little story. RG: Are you nervous about how LIQUOR will be received? PZB: No more so than I have been with any other book. I’d like people to love it, certainly, but you develop a fairly thick skin after ten years in the business -- you learn that you’re doing well to satisfy yourself occasionally, let alone worrying about how anyone else receives your work. RG: What do you see in the future of PZB? Aside from the sequel to LIQUOR that is, and knowing that there will be a sequel to LIQUOR -- do you find that challenging to top, with the reputation of sequels being second best to originals? Could this become a series of books based on the same characters? PZB: It could. I don’t really give a damn about the perception of sequels being inferior, since I’m writing this for myself, not for anyone else -- which is what I always do. If it doesn’t please me first, I figure no one else is likely to enjoy it ... and anyway, it’s really (God help me) a trilogy, with THE VALUE OF X being the first book.
Naliya: â áèáëèîòåêå íàøëà åêçåìðïëÿð÷èê êèäàþ ññûëü: http://lib.rus.ec/b/151675
Chartreuse Darkholme: Ýòî ïðîñòî ñòàðàÿ çàïèñü - "Ðèñóíêè" íà ñàéòå óæå äàâíî âèñÿò è â ðóññêîì, è â àíãëèéñêîì âàðèàíòå:-)
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