Interview: Daniel Nayeri
Dec
3
categories : Interview
Welcome to a Teachable Moment extra helping! The holidays had things a bit off schedule so this awesome interview with Daniel Nayeri was delayed by the loads of turkey, stuffing and leftovers that worked their way around the blogosphere. Please take a moment to visit with Daniel.
MF: What’s the one teachable moment you’d like for readers of Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow to walk away from the book with?
DN: A “teachable” moment? Hmm. Like, don’t mess with Middle Eastern dudes who walk around New York talking to their goldfish? That’s pretty good advice.I forget who it was (a writer far better than me—David James Duncan, or Walter Wangerin, or someone, I honestly forget), who described a good work of fiction like a deep river. In a shallow river, the water all flows the same direction. There’s no ambiguity. But the deep river has swirling eddies, and undertow. It moves in many directions at once, thought the entire body of water is flowing one way. To him (or her?), a work of writing was similar. A good work is deep enough to be interpreted and misinterpreted. I would hope STRAW HOUSE has a whole number of teachable moments, but I’m not sure if any one of them is absolutely necessary. I’d hope they look at Sunny and see an 18-year-old boy asking himself what it means to be a man. In Our Lady of Villains, I hope readers will look at the question: “Should we really accept the prevalent notion that each person is the hero of his or her own life”?
MF: What additional genre would you have been interested in exploring as part of the book?
DN: Two words: talking animals. I’d love to try my hand at a story about a bunch of woodland creatures…something like all the rabbits from Watership Down march into to the Hundred Acre Wood and they take one look at Pooh and Eeyore and can’t fathom the ease they have. And so they flip out and start a war. (Those rabbits were pretty hardcore.) Man, Brian Jacques was a genius.MF: Publicity materials for the book have emphasized that this book was written entirely on an iPhone. Why is that significant?
DN: Raymond Chandler is one of my favorite writers (and the inspiration for “Wish Police,” the detective story in STRAW HOUSE). Once, when he was asked about the significance of the genre, he said:“Nor is it any part of my thesis to maintain that it [the detective story] is a vital and significant form of art. There are no vital and significant forms of art; there is only art, and precious little of that.”
Similarly, I don’t ascribe an undue importance to the idea. Several years ago, I was reading a lot of thoughts on how the cell phone novel was “low form.” I felt a lot of that had to do with the fact that the critics didn’t like the content, not the form (an argument comic books faced several decades ago). I thought it was an interesting idea. I wanted to explore the amount that a form could influence the content—which is a question every English major is forced to explore with THE ODYSSEY (“Did it matter that it began as an oral tradition?”) and Dickens (“Did it matter that he was paid by the word, in a serialized format?”). I think it matters some.
MF: Sophie’s Choice time….out of the four novella’s which is your favorite?
DN: Tough question! I think “Toy Farm” achieves the most in terms of delivering a farm allegory, playing with the convention, and executing a concept. I also think it had the highest quality of prose out of the four, and grappled with the largest questions. It was easily the most ambitious, and I think that deserves praise (or, if not praise, at least it deserves the fondness I have for it).MF: In writing the different genres describe which challenged you most and why?
DN: I stacked the deck with this project, as each of these genres happens to be one that I’ve read a lot and enjoyed. The biggest challenge with it was the huge range in style, diction, cadence, and pace. Obviously, a western has a languid pace. It builds tension slowly. The gunfights are rarely more than a few shots. It’s not about a ton of physical action. Conversely, a hard-boiled detective novel is about set pieces, with off-the-wall characters, quick dialogue, and outlandish similes.I wanted to showcase four very different pieces. That was the hardest and most gratifying element. The best compliment I could get is when people can’t believe one person wrote them all.
MF: What are your plans for your next book? Any chance for follow-ups on these stories?
DN: STRAW HOUSE has four very western genres, so I’m working on another set of four stories, but this time in eastern genres. I’m from Iran and immigrated to Oklahoma, so collections about the East West interaction have always fascinated me (Rushdie wrote a great essay collection call EAST WEST).There’s an Ibn Battuta travelogue, a 1001 Nights tale, a parable, etc. I’m about halfway finished. After that, I’d like to go back to “Wish Police” and write more cases for them to solve.
Thank you for visiting again Daniel. For a great read pick up his book Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow now available from Candlewick Press.














