Riese’s Team Pick: Medium-Sized Interviews With Not-So-Hideous Men & Women

1. The host of NPR’s “This American Life,” Ira Glass, is interviewed by New York Magazine:

Vulture: Who’s your favorite New Yorker, living or dead, real or fictional?
Ira Glass: It would be great promotion for my August 29 Town Hall event with Rachel Maddow if I’d say Rachel Maddow, but it’s better for me in the long run to say my wife. Also, that’s the truth.

2. (Bisexual) novelist & screenwriter Bret Easton Ellis is interviewed by a reporter for Australia-based The Three Thousand who prepared for the interview by reading 75% of Less than Zero and watching American Psycho while drinking nine beers. Ellis’s latest book, Imperial Bedrooms, came out in June. You really need to read the whole interview, it’s pretty funny!

Robert – What’s your blowjob situation at the moment?
Bret Easton Ellis – I’m in a relationship, so I don’t take them. I’m not touring as a single man.
Robert – Fuck, so this has all been one big tease?
Bret – Well, look, I get numbers whenever I’m doing a signing. Men, women, whoever. Because of my indeterminate sexuality…

Robert – Was it difficult re-hashing and progressing the characters from Less Than Zero?
Bret (laughing) … As if you give a shit!
Robert – Well hang on, I do give a shit … you wrote Less Than Zero 23 or so years ago, why did you decide to write a sequel now? Why after all this time?
Bret – Cross that one out too.
Robert – Fuck. My editor is going to kill me.
Bret – No, no, your editor is going to be happy.

3. Interview Magazine interviews Tao Lin, author of upcoming novel Richard Yates:

HOFFMAN: How did you come up with your book’s title?
LIN: I didn’t know what to title it, and for awhile it was titled Second Novel. After that I titled it Werner Herzog. And then that changed to Richard Yates. And now I view the title as a low-level non sequitur In the same manner that if I typed a really long email to someone, and finished it, and went to the subject line, and, like, didn’t know what to type for the subject, I would just intuitively pick something from inside the email, so that the other person hopefully would sense that I had titled it intuitively instead of doing it in some other way that would have defined the entire email with a tone or one clear subject.

4. The Rumpus interviews Lydia Davis, author of many things including The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis and The End of the Story: A Novel:

Rumpus: Do you think love exists? If it does, why is it so changeable?
Davis: I’d say of course love exists—we have only to consider our child, or our dog, to know that. It’s changeable just because everything is changeable, because we’re alive. In fact, I think it is a very deep instinct in us to welcome change. That’s why sometimes good things are ruined—because some organization thinks it’s important to put its mark on something. A thriving neighborhood is torn down to make way for some urban thing that’s less successful.

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Riese

Riese is the 41-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her work has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very popular personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish and has a cute dog named Carol. Follow her on twitter and instagram.

Riese has written 3238 articles for us.

6 Comments

  1. Since I keep seeing Tao Lin’s and Bret Easten Ellis’s names come up here, I guess I should actually read some of their stuff or at least figure out who they are

  2. Lydia Davis is the very best! Was excited to learn from the interview that she has another book of stories forthcoming. (Flaubert-inspired, no less!)

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