MM) When I met you, you had already been writing voluminously, though none of it was shared. Ruthless Little Things was born before you were even A-list. Tell me about how/why you used to write, and what made you start sharing your work?
EVA) You’re a writer, you just write! I don’t know why.
MM) You are a brilliant writer. It’s not hyperbolic to say you are operating at a genius level, and we lesser animals can only regard your work with a kind of stunned awe.
JN) Thank you, you are very kind. I have accepted, more or less, career-wise, that I am doomed to be a David Markson and not a David Foster Wallace. I was bitter about it for the longest time,
MM) So you wrote a provincial period novel set in Tsarist Russia. You are something of a history buff, a Dostoevksky scholar/enthusiast. Still, you’ve lived in Wisconsin your whole life. And still, you’ve traveled more than me thanks to your various musical pursuits. Why and/or how did you start writing in Tsarist Russia?
TP) Ha ha ha. First question and already I laugh deeply from my belly.
MM) Tell me about how Fucked Up was conceived and written. The process seems to have been very personal, and the characters and situations strike a reader as authentic. Did you live through a lot of Fucked Up? To what degree is it autobiographical? When did you finish it, and how was it in a sense a gateway to your more recent writing, which is significantly different?