"I wouldn’t write a book like this today."

February 24, 2023 12:16 PM

When you live alone with characters you’re making up, you are more alone with yourself than you realize. Re-reading this book after twelve years, I see more clearly than I did then that it’s a hall of mirrors. Not everyone in it is me, but I distributed my own insecurities and madness quite liberally among the figures I modeled after people I knew. And the book I thought I was writing from such a dissembling distance from real life situations turns out to be transparently about people whom a great many other people reading it could readily identify. That doesn’t matter. I wasn’t indicting anybody in front of a grand jury. It isn’t a cruel book, or a score-settling one. from A Hall of Mirrors by Gary Indiana
posted by chavenet (2 comments total)

Interesting perspective, thanks for posting!
posted by rpfields at 2:05 PM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]

Gary Indiana profiled in the Paris Review.
posted by newdaddy at 4:46 PM on February 24, 2023 [1 favorite]