Our Interview With Author Scott McClanahan: "...the only sense that makes sense in the long run is nonsense.

Well, it's finally happening.  PBR Book Club is emerging from its underground lair in the Taproom basement and hosting a public reading this Friday, April 18 at 7:00 in the Roost featuring two acclaimed small-press authors whose works we've recently read:  Sam Pink and Scott McClanahan.  Mr. Pink (as we like to call him, because it sounds like some Reservoir Dogs-shit) hails from Chicago.  His recent works include Rontel and Witch Piss.  McClanahan, author of Crapalachia and Hill William, is visiting us all the way from West Virginia.

Please join us on Friday and show them some love. Coffee and booze will be available and our friends at The Raven will be selling books from the authors.  Visit the FB event page here.

And check out the Larryville Artists interview with Sam Pink here.

Here's our chat with Scott McClanahan:


Chip:  First off, what in hell is possessing you and Sam Pink to trek all the way to Lawrence Fucking Kansas to hang with a gang of hooligans called PBR Book Club?  And what do you predict from this visit? Is shit going to get weird?  Is someone going to have to bail Pink out of jail?

Scott:  Maybe so.  I think it's ridiculous we're travelling all that way, but really the only sense that makes sense in the long run is nonsense.  It's like when you're a drug addict or a drunk.  The only person who will talk to you is God and the only woman who will have you is the Betty Ford center.  I feel that way about Kansas.

Richard:  Our book club mostly liked Crapalachia a lot, right up until the appendix, which infuriated about half of the group by calling so much of the "truth" of your memoir into question.  Talk a little about that book and the appendix. Did you intend to ruffle feathers with that technique? Or to further the continuing debate about the extent to which memoirs should be "true," etc?

Scott: Anyone who believes what they read are pretty silly.  I only think my daddy is my daddy because my mother told me so.

I'm sort of bored with the truth vs. fiction debate.

Chip:  Me too.  Sometimes I wonder if I'm even "real" myself,  outside of this blog.  You know?  So let's talk about the new book. Except, sorry, I haven't read Hill William yet. What's it about?  Is it better than Crapalachia? Is it going to trick me again at the end??

Scott:  Hill William has plenty of girls, car chases, and shoot outs.  It's a laugh riot.  You'll love it.

Richard:  What's the best sentence you've ever written--or the one you're most proud of--and why?

Scott: I think sentences by themselves are rather silly things.  It's like asking a musician about their favorite note.  The thing that is important is when you put all of those notes together and make something out of them.  I'm more interested in the totality of it than the minutia.

Chip:  What's your next project?  Have you considered writing a young adult dystopian novel, because that's apparently where the money is at right now.

Scott: I'm writing a book called the Sarah Book.  It's a love story.

Richard:  I just read an interview with you in the Oxford American where you talk about being lumped in with Southern writers even though you don't consider yourself Southern.  But, as a southern boy myself, I still have to ask you the eternal southern lit question:  O'Connor or Faulkner?

 

Scott:  Neither. I'm more of a fan of Carson McCullers.