Interviews with novelists seem to always run the risk of being completely inane. (So…. how’d you come up with the plot of your book? Your protagonist is craa-aazy! How ’bout that? ) A lot of interviews have the same confused, polite tone. If you haven’t read the book they’re talking about then the interview might not make any sense but if you have read it, the interview might be boring. Either that or the writer ends up just talking about their “process” (3 hours every day, only after midnight, in the bathtub… blahblahblah…) which can be interesting sometimes but is often dull.

Somehow, though, I like reading these interviews despite having a lot to complain about. Rivka Galchen gives particularly good ones so I’ve decided to give her three highly arbitrary HTMLgiant awards based on one interview in The L Magazine.

Best alternative to just saying “Um, No.”:
The L: The omnipresent character Tzvi Gal-Chen is named after your father. Is there significance behind the names of any of the other characters?
RG: If you take all the letters of the names of the different characters, shuffle them, then transpose their value an X increment, it reveals the terrifying and silent name of the God of our divine disorder.
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