You are a human animal.

You are a very special breed,

or you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read.

Hi, this is Michael Silverblad, and welcome to Bookworm.

My guest today is Rick Moody, the author of a novel, The Ice Storm, published by Little

Brown.

He's the author as well of the Editor's Award from the Pushcart Prize of a previous book

called Garden State.

Now, I guess let's begin by placing ourselves here. On the one hand,

the subject matter of these novels is dear to minimalism, the life of suburbans and the

small desperations.

And yet the structures and subject matters seem to be very much more postmodern pop.

Where do you fit?

That's a good, you know, I think that's a good question.

I sort of feel that the, I've absorbed some of the influences of both tendencies.

You know, I was I was reared, as it were, in the postmodern school, or at least the experimental writers of the 60s and 70s.

And that was the stuff I loved as a teenager, you know, all that

pinch and hawks, barth, that stuff. But when I got into graduate school in the 80s, that was the

moment of Carver and all that, too. So I think just both kinds of influences have been functional

in my development, you know,

and I like the heterodoxy of that a little bit.

...