“I want to create absurd and hilarious, but also dark and revealing, edifices of language.”

“The book attained a mind of its own, a subjectivity or an autocatalytic machinelike quality.”

Davis called, told me he was dying. He said his case was—here was ­essence of Davis—time sensitive. “Come visit,” he said. “Bid farewell to the ragged rider.” “You?” I said. “The cigarette hater? That’s just wrongness.”

Classic American story: I was out of money and people I could ask for money. Then I got what the Greeks, or even the Greek Americans, call a eureka moment.

 

Sam Lipstye on the powerful qualities of Mary Robison’s story “Likely Lake.”