I always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel Garcรญa Mรกrquez, Josรฉ Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector. I also love a lot of American experimental writers and surrealist European writers. But perhaps The Persian Book of Kings was the greatest influence - I encourage people to look at it. There is such a wealth of incredible stories.
Porochista KhakpourI always read the Latin American writers. I love so many of them: Gabriel Garcรญa Mรกrquez, Josรฉ Donoso, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Luis Borges, Clarice Lispector. I also love a lot of American experimental writers and surrealist European writers. But perhaps The Persian Book of Kings was the greatest influence - I encourage people to look at it. There is such a wealth of incredible stories.
Porochista KhakpourThere is less gray area there, less doubt. There is a security in being some thing all the way. Our culture, too, encourages this way of being - exaggeration, for example, is the key to advertising success in the United States. But hyperbole also seems a big part of Iranian culture, as well.
Porochista KhakpourThe radical is simply being given more room in the mainstream. And I think young people - I'm talking about the very young millennials - they are bored by so much so fast and have such fast big brains, that they won't digest lazy uninteresting work in the way my generation might have. This is a great opportunity for those on the fringe to be less on the fringe perhaps.
Porochista KhakpourI wanted to literalize the surreal here. Those are my favorite kinds of stories. I love when Gabriel Garcรญa Mรกrquez does that, for instance - it adds to the joy, dares you to believe the unbelievable. And why not: so much of life is so dreamlike, so strange, so absurd.
Porochista Khakpour