Splicetoday

Pop Culture
Nov 04, 2017, 07:00AM

That’s the Ideal Scenario

A 2017 Splitsider interview with McSweeney’s editor Chris Monks vs. a 2013 The Rumpus interview with author Steven Amsterdam.

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Steven Amsterdam: Do you write?

Chris Monks: All the time. It’s pretty pathetic.

Amsterdam: There would be interesting lessons to be learned in doing that.

Monks: Then you’d get a grammatically correct form letter saying “Thanks, while your piece has merit, blah, blah.” It would ruin the rest of my day.

Amsterdam: In some ways those details are a barrier to the universal.

***

Monks: I’m on salary, but not a lot. Now I have to put myself out there a little bit.

Amsterdam: Obviously there are different ways that people want to sit down and do it.

Monks: We’ve been thinking about it for well over a year.

Amsterdam: I think I’ve digressed a bit.

Monks: You can be forever banned.

***

Amsterdam: But once I started having kids, I became a homebody.

Monks: That’s the ideal scenario.

Amsterdam: Yeah. There were plenty.

Monks: Unencumbered with noise.

Amsterdam: How would you define where the story ends?

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