Boyko, Miller in National Post "Shortcuts" Column

What lovelier way is there to canter into the sunset than with a newspaper & some short stories in your saddle roll? Check out this weekend's National Post for Steven Beattie's monthly short fiction column, where he talks about the linked collection as Canadian consommé, calls KD Miller's "Kim's Game" the "Citizen Kane of humiliation," and CP Boyko's "The Prize Jury" a " highly amusing riposte to the culture of literary awards, eviscerating the petty politicking, log-rolling and absurdity that can result from jockeying for recognition." Not bad for a rainy end-of-week, huh? Nice to know that KD and Craig are firing on all cylinders, even if we at the office have a bad collective case of math brain.  Happy Friday!

Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award

We're very pleased to announce that Cynthia Flood, C.P. Boyko, Kathy Page and K.D. Miller were just long-listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. Worth €25,000, the award is the biggest prize for short stories worldwide.

Journey Prize-winning author, Cynthia Flood's Red Girl Rat Boy is a precise collection of minimalist stories that explore the lives of innumerable wives, husbands, sisters, and in-laws vexed by short temper and insecurity and trying to navigate through upheaval with grace. 

C.P. Boyko's Novelists is a comedy of manners (and manuscripts), rivaling Vanity Fair for its satirical wit... though not, mercifully, for its length.

Orange Prize-nominee Kathy Page's Paradise and Elsewhere is a collection of dark fables at once familiar and entirely strange.

K.D. Miller has been nominated for a National Magazine Award for Fiction. Her short story collection, All Saints is a moving collection of tremendous skill, whose linked stories illuminate the tenacity and vulnerability of modern-day believers.

Hearty congratulations to all the long-listed authors!

Boyko in Wall Street Journal, Globe & Mail

Who's that guy? D@*ned if I know.

It was a good weekend for Novelists, yes indeed, with wonderful write-ups in both The Globe & Mail and The Wall Street Journal. "Few writers in this country have a better poker face than C.P. Boyko," begins Michael Hingston in the Globe, going on to call him "vivid and wickedly funny," noting that "Boyko is at his best when documenting the ways in which writers insulate themselves from reality by adopting the trappings and jargon of the publishing world into their everyday lives." (He also, ahem, implies that authorship is a kind of terminal madness, and that writing short fiction perhaps lessens one's exposure, and thus the acuity of the condition. Could the same be said for the publishing short fiction? I wonder.)

Today, the same day, the very same day, our good friends over at The Wall Street Journal had this to say (noting that a review of Edward St. Aubyn's Lost for Words preceded it, and didn't fare quite so well):

The stories in C.P. Boyko's uproarious "Novelists" display authors in their many exotic varieties of misery and neurosis .... The signal trait shared by Mr. Boyko's dreamy wretches is egotism; they rarely have the faintest idea what is actually going on around them. (In "The Word 'Genius,' " the author of Edwardian-era melodramas sees a physician about his ulcers and turns out to suffer from hunger pangs, having forgotten to eat.) "The Prize Jury" calamitously throws a baker's dozen of novelists together to choose the winner of the Godskriva Prize, a one-time award honoring "the best novel of all time." (Being invited to serve as a judge gives one writer pause: "Wouldn't his being on the jury disqualify his own novels from being chosen?") Mr. Boyko's ensemble of absurd, inexhaustible narcissists is no more flattering than Mr. St. Aubyn's ship of fools, but it comes uncomfortably nearer to reality.

I'd say you could read the full review online, but really, that'd be a fib, since the WSJ security-monkeys are pretty fierce. You'll have to trust that I've given you the best bits. Happy Saturday, all, and happy long weekend. (Novelists go well with beaches & beer. I swear.)

C.P. Boyko Reading

On Saturday, May 24 at 1pm, join authors C.P. Boyko, Trevor Clark, Andrea Routley and Brett Josef Grubisic for an afternoon of exploring the human condition.

The Globe and Mail has described C.P. Boyko as “Stunning. . . . Boyko [has an] unstoppable imagination. . . .” His latest work Novelists, will have you rolling in the aisles with what Russell Banks calls "proudly, gloriously, gleefully old-fashioned" literary satire.

Trevor Clark, author of Love on the Killing Floor and Hair-Trigger, has worked as an oil rig roughneck, editor, portrait photographer, bookstore manager, and home entertainment coordinator for a TV movie production company in London, where he lived for a number of years.

Andrea Routley is the editor of Plenitude Magazine, Canada’s queer literary magazine. Her debut short story collection, Jane and the Whales, is a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, an international English-language award for LGBT literature.

Brett Josef Grubisic's novel The Age of Cities was a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Prize. This Location of Unknown Possibilities is his latest work of fiction.

The event will take place in the Alice Mackay Room, Lower Level of the Central Library, 350 West Georgia St., Vancouver. Admission is free though seating is limited.

For more information: call 604.992.9960 or email melissa@nonpublishing.com

The Things They Cultched

Cynthia Flood rocks Red Girl Rat Boy and wicked South Detroit T-Shirt

C.P. Boyko humbly displays Novelists and makes a spring statement with sandals & socks

& Kathy Page gets in your face with Paradise & Elsewhere 

and a lovely cream-coloured cardigan

Biblioasis authors @ The Vancouver Launch of Novelists & Paradise and Elsewhere 

@ The Cultch

Good-looking bunch, no?

Long Story Short, Kathy Page and C.P. Boyko

Join Biblioasis tomorrow evening at The Cultch in Vancouver for a round of short stories from two of  Canada's finest writers in the genre.

The Vancouver Sun describes them as "a pair of restless authors... drawn to experimentation with content, form, and tone, and who are (a reader could surmise) rebelling against a literary orthodoxy that holds up stalwart realism as the true writer’s best and only friend."

Kathy Page, nominee for the Governor General's Award and the Orange Prize, presents what Barbara Gowdy calls a "vibrant, startlingly imaginative collection" in Paradise and Elsewhere, while the Journey Prize-winning C.P. Boyko (Novelists, 2014) will have you rolling in the aisles with what Russell Banks calls "proudly, gloriously, gleefully old-fashioned" literary satire.

Hosted by Cynthia Flood, recently shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, Long Story Short will begin at 7pm and is an evening not to be missed.


As always, admission is free.

Precision-Crafted Machines Spring Anticipation

Over at The Afterword, Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway by the inimitable Alexandra Oliver is one of Michael Lista's four Canadian Poetry Books of the year for 2013, cited for "precision-crafted" poems at once  "[t]heatrical, funny,  [and] formally ingenious."  Also listed alongside the stellar cast of Oliver, Sara Peters and Karen Solie is Amanda Jernigan, author of the much-lauded 2011 Biblioasis debut Groundwork, for her most recent book All the Daylight Hours from Cormorant. Congrats to all!

& for those of you hoping to beckon the thaw with anticipation/wishful thinking, here are The 49th Shelf's most anticipated books of Spring 2014, among which distinguished company you will find mention of not one but two of our forthcoming titles: Novelists, a new short-story collection by the enigmatic C.P. Boyko, and I Was There the Night he Died, the new novel by "the Jerry Lee Lewis of North American letters," Ray Robertson.

C.P. Boyko Shortlisted for the Victoria Butler Book Prize

Good news for fans of Psychology and Other Stories: today it was announced that C.P. Boyko's fiction collection was shortlisted for the Victoria Butler Book Prize. Congratulations to Craig and all the other nominees. For the official press release, read on.

Wednesday, September 11, 2013
VICTORIA, BC – Celebrating our tenth anniversary, the Victoria Book Prize Society is pleased to announce that eight authors from the Capital Region have been short-listed for the 2013 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for adult literature and the Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize. The winner of each prize will be awarded $5000.

The finalists for the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize for adult literature are:

C. P. Boyko: Psychology and Other Stories , fiction (Biblioasis)
Lorna Crozier: The Book of Marvels: A Compendium of Everyday Things , non-fiction (Greystone Books)
Bill Gaston: The World , fiction (Hamish Hamilton, an imprint of Penguin Books)
Christina Johnson-Dean: The Life and Art of Ina D. D. Uhthoff , non-fiction (Mother Tongue Publishing)
Stephen Reid: A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden , non-fiction (Thistledown Press)

The finalists for the Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize are:

Sarah N. Harvey: Three Little Words , fiction (Orca Book Publishers)
Polly Horvath: One Year in Coal Harbour , fiction (Groundwood Books)
Kit Pearson: And Nothing but the Truth , fiction (HarperCollins)

Two independent juries comprised of representatives from the literary arts community reviewed the entries for literary merit. This year there were 39 submissions for the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize and 15 for the Bolen prize. The winners will be announced at the ten-year anniversary awards gala to be held at the Union Club of Victoria, 805 Gordon Street, on October 16 at 7:30. Tickets are $15 and are available now from Bolen Books, Munro’s Books, Ivy’s Bookshop and the Victoria Book Prize Society (250-595-8430).
 

Founded in 2004, the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize is a partnership between the City of Victoria and Brian Butler of Butler Brothers Supplies. The Bolen Books Children’s Book Prize was founded in 2008. Additional sponsors include: Union Club of British Columbia, Greater Victoria Public Library, Island Blue Print, Magnolia Hotel and Spa, Thrifty Foods and CBC Radio. The Victoria Book Prize Society establishes policy and criteria for the prizes, administers the competition and appoints the juries. For further information call Michelle Wong, President VBPS at 250-888-9219 or visit www.victoriabookprizes.ca.

4 Biblioasis Titles on Frank O'Connor Longlist

Congratulations to C.P. Boyko, Nancy Jo Cullen, Colette Maitland, and Nadine McInnis, whose short fiction collections were just longlisted for the Frank O'Connor Award!

About the Frank O'Connor Award

The 2011 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize is worth €25,000 to the winning author of a collection of short stories published for the first time, in English anywhere in the world, between July 2011 and June 2012 (selecteds, collecteds or books containing stories published in a previous volume of stories by the author will not be eligible). Translations are eligible.

This prestigious international short story award in the memory of Frank O’Connor is the single biggest prize in the world for a collection of short stories.

In honouring Cork’s literary genius and its most famous short story writer, it is hoped this award will achieve international recognition for the short story and highlight Cork’s important contribution to this literary art form.

This major international prize celebrating the city’s intimate relationship with the short story was established as part of the literary programme of Cork’s tenure as European Capital of Culture. Since then it has made possible through the generous support of Cork City Council.

It is hoped the Award, for a complete collection of previously unpublished stories in a book collection, will play a significant role in establishing parity of esteem for the short story collection alongside the novel.

Biblioasis Receives Two Nominations for the B.C. Book Prize

Enthusiastic congratulations to C.P. Boyko and Anakana Schofield, both of whom have been nominated for the Ethel Wilson B.C. Book Prize for fiction! AK was of course nominated for Malarky, and Craig for Psychology and Other Stories. Other nominees include: Bill Gaston (The World), Ann Fleming (Gay Dwarves of America), and Yasuko Thanh (Floating Like the Dead). For more about the Ethel Wilson Prize you can consult the B.C. Book Prizes website here. (If you'll look closely you'll see that Patricia Young, whose name also graces the Biblio-backlist, is nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize for her collection Night-Eater. Congratulations all round.) 

About "C.P. Boyko" and Psychology and Other Stories

C.P. Boyko ... or so we're told. When
asked if this was a self-portrait he
replied: "No, I can't draw that well."
(By a 6-year-old friend)

Perhaps Biblioasis's most elusive author, Boyko's biography reads as follows:

"Clearly Mr. Boyko has read too much; no doubt he was sickly as a child. His distrust of psychologists is also easily explained: his parents were therapists, and did not give him enough affection; or he took an undergraduate degree in psychology but failed to make any friends in the department; or he had a bad experience with an analyst."

He offers us no pictures. He frequently declines interviews. So rather than attempt to profile the man & his staggering genius, we shall instead turn to the critics, who sank their teeth with great relish into his satirical collection. 

"C. P. Boyko takes as probing a look into the world of psychology as any doctor might into the confused mind of a patient, and comes away with a similar diagnosis: narcissism, delusions of grandeur, flights of fancy, logorrhoea ... The author bucks current trends in fiction like invisible narrators and single-character focus, preferring instead to soar omnisciently above the human fray, until such time as he deems it necessary to dive-bomb, raptor-like, into the backstory and motivations of a particular character. Occasionally he addresses the reader directly to make a point, a satirical take on the industry he excoriates in this book: don’t worry, I’ll tell you what to think. The style, reminiscent of an earlier time in fiction when authors sometimes played God, takes some getting used to in these days of sparseness and minimalism, but once the reader understands where Boyko is coming from, then, unlike the subject of psychology, it all makes sense. And the explorations drill so deeply into this mysterious medical science that they make the effort worth the reader’s adjustment."—The L.A. Review of Books

 "A smart, funny book, and possibly therapeutic as well."—Toronto Star

"These six stories are all written around the single unifying theme of psychology, which—if you take the time to read these satirical and heartbreaking narratives—is itself perhaps just a story we tell ourselves about the way the human mind works ... Fans of satirical fiction will love this book; so will anyone who has reclined on a therapist’s couch, or taken a psychology course from a larger-than-life professor with obvious neuroses, or read a self-help book by an author whose biography reveals them to be a total mess. Yet the mockery here is never mean-spirited; the book is impeccably researched and unflinchingly intelligent."—The National Post

About Anakana Schofield & Malarky 

Readers of Thirsty have long been won over by Vancouver's most vacuum-friendly, weather-loving Irishwoman, but now for the first time it seems the Mrs. is winning the hearts of awards bodies as well. Nominated two weeks ago for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award (and yes, we're still celebrating in the aftermath of the Afterword, because bloody hell is it a good book!), the Ethel Wilson will be the second major prize nod for the tale of Our Woman.  I've included a few recent blurbs from across the pond that you may not have seen yet. From Mr. Mc-What-Now? McCann? Yes indeedy. Yes yes indeed. Congrats to all.

"Anakana Schofield is part of a new wave of wonderful Irish fiction—international in scope and electrically alive."—Colum McCann 

"Malarky is a terrific read, a brilliant collision of heartbreak and hilarity written in a voice that somehow seems both feral and perfectly controlled. Anakana Schofield's Our Woman takes a cool nod at Joyce, then goes her own way in one of the most moving and lyrical debut novels I've read."—Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

"We become comfortable saying that there's nothing new, and then something like Malarky comes along, which is new and old and different and familiar, but ultimately itself, comfortable in its own skin, wise and smart and crazy-sexy or maybe sexy-crazy—well, you just have to read it to understand. It's a novel that sets its own course, sure and steady, even when it seems like it might be about to go over the edge of the world."—Laura Lippman

Because nothing says Monday like logorrheic psychologists?

Metaphor alert: C.P. Boyko's narratorial
intrusions remind one reviewer of
a dive-bombing raptor. #awesome

Morning, folks, and happy Monday. Always nice to kick off the week with a thoughtful reading—especially one full of difficult-to-spell words. This just in from The LA Review on Psychology and Other Stories. We've got lots more stuff coming up for you on Thirsty in the next few days, though, including book giveaways, event announcements, and yes the next issue of the mythical Draught, so stay tuned!

From The L.A. Review of Books:

"C. P. Boyko takes as probing a look into the world of psychology as any doctor might into the confused mind of a patient, and comes away with a similar diagnosis: narcissism, delusions of grandeur, flights of fancy, logorrhoea ... The author bucks current trends in fiction like invisible narrators and single-character focus, preferring instead to soar omnisciently above the human fray, until such time as he deems it necessary to dive-bomb, raptor-like, into the backstory and motivations of a particular character. Occasionally he addresses the reader directly to make a point, a satirical take on the industry he excoriates in this book: don’t worry, I’ll tell you what to think. The style, reminiscent of an earlier time in fiction when authors sometimes played God, takes some getting used to in these days of sparseness and minimalism, but once the reader understands where Boyko is coming from, then, unlike the subject of psychology, it all makes sense. And the explorations drill so deeply into this mysterious medical science that they make the effort worth the reader’s adjustment."

Sometimes a Free Book is Just a Free Book.

I'M FREE
TAKE ME HOME

Good afternoon, Biblioworld, and happy Monday. It's another big week here at headquarters, with the Windsor Youth Centre doing their What Is Home? fundraiser here tomorrow night, and (of course oh my!) the grand opening this Friday November 16th. Walkerville's going to be hustling and bustling (rustling? dustling) that weekend thanks to their two-day Walk Around street festival.

But it's not enough that people might be coming into the shop to buy our books: no no. No no no.  This month the Bibliomanse is giving them away. As of tomorrow another GoodReads affair begins. Click the gadget to win your very own copy of Psychology and Other Stories. Fiction may be psychology and psychology may be fiction (thanks for that, Jim Bird), but this giveaway is real enough ... Enter to win your free copy today!

Manitoba Steps Up; Petersen Dives Under

See that guy? Right there? He's wondering
when his Spring 2013 catalogue will arrive.

Greetings and salutations, my friends. Three new morsels for the BiblioBlog: first, a delightful explication of Craig Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories from The Winnipeg Review; second, Manitoba's Canadian Materials has assessed Mike Barnes's The Reasonable Ogre, and its contribution to YA & teen lit; and third, Alice Petersen's native land has coughed up its first review (in The Landfall). 

So what exactly do they all say? For starters: "All the Voices Cry announces itself early on as something of a gift ... The authorial voice, far from being elusive, is sharply, poetically present."

Yup.

"The Reasonable Ogre … is intellectually engaging and filled with haunting pieces of art that beautifully complement each story." 

Yup.

"Bokyo’s insights and criticisms into psychology as a profession are biting, but never disrespectful … This shows Boyko’s control over subtlety and his talent as a writer of nuance. Psychology and Other Stories tickled my cynicism just right."

Anybody else have a cynical bone? Tee hee.

The Weekend in Review; Sleeps till Zombies, Two!

Afternoon, folks, and happy Tuesday. It was a good if busy weekend here at HQ, what with BookFest Windsor blasting through town and a spate of new reviews to yap about. See them yet on our spiffy new Facebook page? Which you should like, if you haven't already? Yes? Yes. Go. Do it now.* 

So ... here we are. Two more hits (pow pow!) for Anakana Schofield, who was a knockout at IFOA and written up by her panel's moderator (Susan Cole of NOW). Since when does invoking Ulysses get you hopped up and down on? Find out here. And should you be curious as to why AK would claim that "Behind every vice president is a Canadian episodic novel"—which is to say, if you missed that THING in the VP debates—take a look at her IFOA questionnaire. 

It was also a good weekend for short story champ Nadine McInnis, who appeared at the Ottawa Book Festival on Sunday and was interviewed ("Confronting Mortality") in Saturday's Ottawa Citizen. Both the citizen and the Windsor Star also ran syndications of Emily Keeler's piece from the Post last week (hup hup)! Last but not least, Quill & Quire, stalwart as they are, had a few nice nicenesses to say about Craig Boyko's Psychology and Other Stories. 

Last but not least, she says with a tremor and a shiver and a quake, there are only TWO MORE SLEEPS till Mark Kingwell launches Unruly Voices at Type Books. (It's possible that zombies make me a little queasy.) RSVP on the you-know-where today! 

*I had to get that plea out of the way early before I talk about Mark's book, since, um, the third sentence of the jacket copy may or may not suggest that facebook-style 'likes' are eroding complex notions of personhood. Sigh. So 'like' us if you like us, and if not the latter, pretend.

A Wednesday Wrap-Up

Hello, Windsor. Hello, world. What's new? Well, for starters, BiblioPoet Alex Boyd has just returned from the marvellous UNB poetry weekend, which apparently was as fabulous as ever. Thanks to Ross Leckie & to UNB for hosting. Quoth Mr. Boyd, the readings at Memorial Hall—thanks in part to the lovely environs and stained glass—were a bit like Poetry Church. For those of you in Toronto who'd like a poesy experience of a different kind, you can check out Alex (and Sonia Di Placido, Josh Smith and Daniel Tysdal), at LiveWords tomorrow at the Black Swan. More deets here. 

And of course we can't forget our friends in the West, oh glorious West: C.P. Boyko is reading with Rae Spoon tomorrow at Pages on Kensington. Should be a good show. Rae will be playing some of their music and Craig will be opening with a little Psych work. And of the latter? We had a review come our way which will be running in Booklist on Oct. 16. "Readers will enjoy the author's versatility," they say, along with his "quirky (sometimes uproarious) sense of humor, sardonic view of the world, and fruitful imagination. He is also master of the ambiguous clue and unreliable narrator .... Libraries with any short-fiction readers should buy this book and keep an eye out for the next one."

Other reviews in brief: "Unruly Voices has insightful things to say about the corrupting influence of money on public discourse," said the National Post this weekend of Mark Kingwell's new essay collection (for which we'll be having a launch party at Type on November 1st): "The scourge of incivility might not be new, but it is more pervasive. And, as Kingwell warns, the cost to coherent debate is great." If you check out the Montreal Review of Books, you'll see Alice Petersen talking about books and Beckett. And (as a lead-in to Hallowe'en, perhaps?) the next issue of Prairie Fire begins their review of Laura Boudreau's Suitable Precautions with this: "There is nothing like good old gore to lift a short story out of the bland."
Indeed. Good gore. Love it. 

Anon!

About About Love

Those of you in the Toronto-area have probably heard that today's BiblioBash features a special guest appearance from David Helwig: novelist, translator, and former Poet Laureate of PEI. It's true. He'll be reading from and signing copies of one of the handsomest books the BiblioManse has issued. About Love, designed and illustrated by the inimitable Seth, is 114 pages of hunky hardback in 5.5x7.25 format with two-colour printing. BEAUTIFUL. Here's a little preview:

 

See? Innit pretty? Innit??

David Helwig will be reading alongside the full BiblioBash cohort: Alice Petersen, Nadine McInnis, C.P. Boyko, and Norm Sibum. Should be a great night. Come on out! RSVP on Facebook today.
About About Love

Written in France toward the end of his career, these stories are Chekhov’s only attempt at the linked collection. The first is a grotesque Gogolian comedy; the second a narrator's impassioned response; and the third a poignant story of failed love. Altogether the stories of About Love comprise three virtually unknown works by one of the greatest short story writers in world literature. "While there are many translators whose Russian is better than mine," writes Helwig of his translation, "there are not so many who have had a long experience of writing narrative prose. These narratives are my personal versions of Chekhov’s stories; they are also as close as I can make them to the precision and suggestiveness of the originals."
 Critics agree. Francine Prose calls his earlier translations “absolutely wonderful,” and Publishers Weekly has remarked that Helwig is “a pleasure to spend time with.” The book is furthermore designed and illustrated by Seth, author of Palookaville and designer for The Complete Peanuts, who has produced covers for The New Yorker and was the recipient of the 2011 Harbourfront Prize.

About Love is a beautiful contribution to the works of Chekhov in English, and a must-have for all Seth enthusiasts. 

Psychology and Other Stories: An Interview with, Um, Somebody.

"The most audaciously original
collection of Canadian fiction,
ever."—Bill Gaston

Morning, folks. Well we're midway through our 

BIBLIOBASH TOUR, 

where today C.P. BOYKO, NADINE McINNIS, AND ALICE PETERSEN are dropping in the glorious border town of 

BUFFALO! 

Talking Leaves Books

2158 Main St

7 PM. 

If you're in Buffalo—if you know anyone in Buffalo—heck if you know anybody within 10 miles of Buffalo who likes books & who can ride said Buffalo through the streets to Talking Leaves (which is really one of the most wonderful indie bookstores around)—then by all means pass word along. 

We've talked about Nadine's book, and Norm's, so today on Thirsty I feel it's time to talk about the mysterious and enigmatic C.P. Boyko. Who is this man, I'm often asked. Does he really have schizophrenia? Were his parents therapists? And when you say they skimped on the affection, well ... what does that mean? Or why (in the words of one student journalist), did he write this effin strange book?

To satiate the curiousity of the masses, therefore, we conducted a little interview with the man himself. You can also see Boyko, however fleetingly, however obscurely—indeed I urge you to embrace this rare opportunity, as he hasn't yet resorted to reading with a paper bag over his head—tonight at Talking Leaves.

RSVP on FACEBOOK TODAY!   

About the Author

Clearly Mr. Boyko has read too much; no doubt he was sickly as a child. His distrust of psychologists is also easily explained: his parents were therapists, and did not give him enough affection; or he took an undergraduate degree in psychology but failed to make any friends in the department; or he had a bad experience with an analyst.

An Interview with, Um, Somebody

Q. Your collection is called Psychology and Other Stories, yet none of the stories appear to be called “Psychology.”
A. Correct.
Q. Is psychology, the study of human behavior and the human mind, in your opinion just a "story"?
A. I probably shouldn't answer that.
Q. How seriously should we take you when you, along with Jim Bird in the epigraph to “Paddling an Iceberg,” assert that fiction and psychology are the same?
A. I'd prefer not to comment on that.
Q. Elsewhere you’ve called this book a “novel in six parts,” though you remain a devotee of the short story form.
A. Yes.
Q. What about Psychology and Other Stories is novelistic?
A. Perhaps I exaggerated.
Q. Well, how would you define the novel?
A. A book of fiction, 30,000+ words in length.
Q. And a collection of short stories?
A. A book of several fictions, each <30,000 words in length.
Q. What about collections of interrelated fictions, or "novels in stories"?
A. Yes, I like them, too.
Q. But are they novels or collections of stories?
A. I'm not sure.
Q. Moving on. It appears that the subjects of the stories in Psychology and Other Stories are drawn from the fringes of the mental health industry, perhaps moreso than the mainstream (with its clinical trials, controversial research methods, studies of brain chemistry, etc.). What governed your choice of subjects?
A. I'd rather not say.
Q. What research did you do in the writing of this book?
A. Lots.
Q. Who were your influences?
A. Oh, all kinds of people.
Q. Some of the characters -- psychologists among them -- seem disenchanted with psychology and psychologists. Were you arguing against anybody as you wrote it?
A. No comment.
Q. How about this. How about I read to you a list of the authors that you quote or cite in the book, and you blink once if you approve of them or their theories, and blink twice if you disapprove of them or their theories. William James. Freud. Alfred Adler. You’re not blinking. Nietzsche. Stanley Milgram. Thomas Szasz. Norman Vincent Peale. You’re still not blinking.
A. [blinking rapidly, with relief]
Q. Are you in this book?
A. Kind of, but not really.
Q. Who’s your favourite character in it?
A. It’s hard to say.
Q. If you could give this book to one person in the history of psychology (or of psychological literature), to whom would you give it and why?
A. Next question.