Splicetoday

Pop Culture
Sep 05, 2024, 06:28AM

Where You End and Where the World Begins

A 2024 BOMB Magazine interview with novelist Kristopher Jansma vs. a 1999 INDEX Magazine interview with artist Lisa Ruyter.

Lisa ruyter 28 e1432649556497 662x550.webp?ixlib=rails 2.1

Lisa Ruyter: The minute you have a camera, people sort of freak.

Kristopher Jansma: Yeah, I had a lot of anxiety about that.

Ruyter: So that’s what surrounded us. Like a dye job. [laughs]

Jansma: We probably forget about a lot of that now, but we helped each other get through it that way.

Ruyter: Wrestling and stuff?

•••

Jansma: When I started writing the book, I imagined that would be the whole story.

Ruyter: Which story? They all look exactly the same.

Jansma: Yeah—I mean, think about it.

Ruyter: That’s something I’ve always wanted to do.

Jansma: The twentieth century was such a nightmare in so many ways.

•••

Ruyter: That’s sort of a weird line to draw, I think—where you end and the world begins.

Jansma: That’s hard after spending fifteen or twenty years trying to protect somebody from the truth.

Ruyter: Yeah-yeah. Oh, goodness.  Everything.

•••

Jansma: He mostly wrote about the other prisoners, about what they were reading, sharing from newspapers, and gossiping about—or how they got bored and decided to fix a motorcycle!

Ruyter: He kept me out of that trouble. I don’t know.

Discussion

Register or Login to leave a comment