People take from fiction the same comfort and soothing feeling of being understood that, I think, also powers a lot of con and forgery. One reason you would answer the Nigerian email is that you want the money. The other reason is because, wow, this is a story I could be a part of: I helped this poor widow of the assassinated oil minister.
We need novels forged in the black fire of despair – personal despair, political despair, even cosmic despair. Novels shot through with a sense that the end is nigh, that all our efforts are in vain, but that we might at least laugh at our predicament. Laugh – but with a laughter as black as the forces that we laugh at.
Yes, a mac and cheese can be very soothing and delicious, but is it true comfort?
One lesson wish I could send back in time to myself, and particularly a lesson for young male writers, is the idea that writing about tough things make you tough. But almost by definition, if you are writing books, you were not a tough kid. But in the writing world it’s not tough to be the tough kid.
Who knows why some characters stick around while others just pass through? The same question could be asked about most relationships, I guess. The only real difference is that, for writers, some relationships exist in the real world, and others exist in your head.
What could all that suffering possibly be good for? What if it was beautiful and that’s what it was good for? What if, in fact, our pain was the most beautiful thing about us? What if, moreover, our pain was what made us beautiful to God? What would that say about the world and our place in it?
“I don’t see my work in relation to the university at all; if I’m lucky, I will continue not to see it that way. Some thrive in academia, but I find it brings out the worst of my slothful, autistic, obscurantist tendencies.”
Burns is most famous for his decade-spanning, highly praised series BLACK HOLE, which chronicles the misfortunes of a group of Seattle teenagers who contract a horrifying sexually transmitted disease which leads to gruesome physical disfigurations and social chaos.
“I’m still interested in good writers, but I’m not going to find them on the internet.”
“While in the tomb Jesus descended into Hell to later return to earth. For me, that was a big realization. Christ descended into Hell and then came back for the rock to be rolled away. I find this story to work as a perfect metaphor for how people overcome tragedy. The loneliness of carrying the cross, the forsaken feeling of being crucified, the time spent in the dark tomb, the descent into Hell, and then the fact that we have to face the sunlight, and get to go live so more.”