An Arsonist's Guide to Writers' Homes in New England_ A Novel - Brock Clarke [137]
SP: I'll tell you what I think. I think that everything that happened in the novel exists only in my head. It's all my fantasy. I think I'm in prison for burning down the Emily Dickinson House the entire time. The novel is me in prison, imagining what might happen once I get out of prison.
BC: What? No! What are you talking about? Everything that happened in the novel really happened.
SP: Really happened? I thought that's the whole point. That nothing really happens in books. That all books are fantasy, even memoir. That people who say otherwise are fooling themselves.
BC: I suppose. But real things happen in the context of a book that's made up. The book is fiction, but we can understand things as meant literally within the fiction. Does that make sense?
SP: No. It sounds like the kind of thing a memoirist would say to defend stuff he, or she, made up instead of telling the truth.
BC: Now you're just being mean.
SP: You must be pretty pleased with yourself now that all these memoirists are getting caught lying in their memoirs.
BC: It gives me no pleasure at all.
SP: Why are you smiling then?
BC: That's just the way my face is. Seriously, every time I read about one of these memoirists who write memoirs that aren't memoirish enough, I think, That would have made a good novel. Why didn't you just write a novel?
SP: Is it safe to say that you don't like memoirs?
BC: It's safe to say that memoir is not my favorite genre.
SP: Is it safe to say that you hate every single book that's ever been written? That you think the world would be a better place without books?
BC: What? No, it's not safe to say that at all. I love books. I love the writers whose houses get burned in my novel. I love Mark Twain, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost. I love every Edith Wharton novel except for Ethan Frome. That's just for starters. I can't imagine a world without books. I wouldn't want to imagine one. Just because I poke gentle fun at the literary world doesn't mean I don't want there to be one. Just because I poke gentle fun at you doesn't mean I'm sorry I made you.
SP: I suppose you're going to tell me that criticism is a form of love?
BC: I couldn't have said it better myself.
SP: What genre do you think this book falls into? I heard that you got asked to speak on a mystery writers' panel. When you sat down to write this book, did you know that you were writing a mystery, and is that what it is?
BC: I do think this book is a mystery, although I think it's a bunch of other things, too. But no, I didn't know I was writing a mystery at first, and I had a rough time with the novel because of it. It had no direction, no sense of mystery to guide it. That is why I've come to love mysteries. They give the reader and writer a sense of purpose: this guy needs to solve this mystery or else. And I thought it especially relevant in writing this book because you, Sam, don't know the first thing about mysteries, mostly because your mother never allowed you to read them as a kid. And so you're as much a bumbler at being a detective as you are at everything else. That was important to me because the one thing I distrust about some mysteries, some literary detectives, is that they're implausibly good at it. You, thankfully, were not.
SP: Now that you've told my story, what's next?
BC: I'm writing a book called Exley. It's about, in one way or another, the writer Frederick Exley, who wrote the book A Fan's Notes, which he called a "fictional