I read a ton of nonfiction. I tend to read about a lot of very extreme situations, life-or-death situations. I'm very interested in books about Arctic exploration or about doomed Apollo missions. I tend to read a lot of nonfiction that's sort of hyperbolic and visceral. And then I kind of draw on my own personal experiences and my own sort of generic life experience, and I kind of try to feed my day-to-day reality that I have with sort of high stakes reference points that I read about. They're things everyone can relate to.
Simon RichI never really liked "cool" books. I plowed through as much Borges and Joyce as possible, read the first half of V. and spent whole Bar Mitzvah checks on Beat poetry.
Simon RichI was never a cool person; in fact, cool people have always made fun of me. Thatโs why I loved [the Robert Cormier YA novel] The Chocolate War - because the cool kids (not the establishment) were the villains. I totally identified with that.
Simon RichIโm too young and ridiculous a person to speak for my generation, but Iโd be happy to talk about my own experiences as a generation Y writer. I was raised by a generation of hippies. Throughout my childhood, teachers urged me to fight the establishment. My English teacher assigned Ginsberg and Kerouac and declared Bob Dylan โa genius.โ My science teacher told me that television was โthe new opiate of the massesโ and bragged about never having owned one. My drama teacher made us perform Beckett.
Simon RichIt's easier to be a grownup than to be a kid. When you're a kid, you lie constantly and people are always calling you on it. And when you're a grownup, you lie constantly and people rarely do. Children are constantly being caught. Adults rarely so. Being an adult, you also get a free pass, which means you have to actively be a good person because nobody's around to tell you to do that. Even evil kids will be good when adults are watching. But once you're an adult, no one is. As a grownup, you've got an agency over your own life, which hopefully you use for the greater good and not evil.
Simon RichI wanted to be an artist after all, and my teachers told me these were the best authors the 20th century had to offer. But these books sucked. They were so boring and sloppy and plotless. And Bob Dylan's lyrics seemed nonsensical to me - almost like he had just gotten high and written down whatever random thoughts occurred to him.
Simon Rich