Lydia Millet Interview at Willow Springs
Sam Ligon interviewed Lydia Millet in Willow Springs. You can read the full interview here (pdf).
Millet: I was asked recently whether I considered my taste to be minimalist in prose, and I never thought of myself that way, but I do like a lot of space on the page. That is to say, not actual physical white space, but I like there to be space, as with, say, some Nabokov, where there’s a lot of metaphysical space that’s somehow created by the language. I don’t like to be overwhelmed with words. I don’t want someone to try to do some “Wham, bam, thank you, ma’am” with their verbiage. I want there to be room for the silence of the mind in the reading.
5 serve meat over mashed
11. A blue phone told an apple told a little bird and the little bird told me Willow Springs would really like to leer some glow right now. You can submit online. Stop touching your lovely forehead–submit!
5.
Word of mouth, true word of mouth – the good stuff, that actually sends the recommendee skipping off to the nearest bookshop or library – involves the impassioned retelling of a story.
No, not really, Mr. Gibbs. Not necessarily what word-of-mouth means at all, not when someone is sharing a book with me, or me with them. A plot outline? A re-telling of the story? Does anyone here (especially here) recommend books based on words, sentences, worlds created outside context of “what’s happening?” It will fuck your brain. Is that a story re-telling? And how do you recommend books of poetry based on story? Oh man, it’s about this bird that meets McDonald’s fries and they have a kid named Inability of Man to Truly Communicate. Word-of-mouth, the spreading of art by talk/phone/net (fuck Twitter)/blar is delivered in many varieties. I like a lot of books I don’t understand as “story.” It seems reductive, I’m just saying.
55. Aimee Bender gives a pep talk to the Battle Star Galactica people, I mean the NaNoWriMoMoFoSho peeps.
555. And Lucy Corin said, “I love the days I get to write forward from just my head, but those days are hard earned.”
14. Hey flashers! I know you’re there because I keep seeing you naked. Nice penis! Funky loins! Also don’t forget about the Rose Metal Press Fifth Annual Short Short Chapbook contest judged by Kim Chinquee. You miss 100% of the cigars you never unwrap, or something about Wayne Gretzky, something.
Massive People (12): Samuel Ligon
Samuel Ligon is most recently the author of the story collection Drift and Swerve, as well as the novel Safe In Heaven Dead. His stories have appeared in The Quarterly, Alaska Quarterly Review, StoryQuarterly, New England Review, Noise: Fiction Inspired by Sonic Youth, Post Road, Keyhole, Sleepingfish, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. He is also the editor of the most excellent Willow Springs, and teaches at Eastern Washington University’s Inland Northwest Center for Writers, in Spokane, Washington.
Beyond all that, Sam is simultaneously one of the most laid back and yet enthusiastic editors I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. He is, above all else, an excellent person, while also managing to be a hell of a writer. He seems to me a model for what a person in the world of language should be: courageous and yet open minded, enthusiastic and yet no nonsense, giving, attentive, rad. Wise blood, as it were, and most certainly a massive person.
Over the past few weeks I had the pleasure of talking with Sam over email about his new collection, his inspiration, music, the influence of Willow Springs on his work, and much more.