{"id":1188,"date":"2008-12-16T21:55:10","date_gmt":"2008-12-17T04:55:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/2008\/12\/stephen-elliot-interviews-james-frey-the-rumpus\/"},"modified":"2008-12-16T21:56:12","modified_gmt":"2008-12-17T04:56:12","slug":"stephen-elliot-interviews-james-frey-the-rumpus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/2008\/12\/16\/stephen-elliot-interviews-james-frey-the-rumpus\/","title":{"rendered":"Stephen Elliot Interviews James Frey @ The Rumpus"},"content":{"rendered":"

from The Rumpus.net<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n

Rumpus Original – An Interview with James Frey<\/h2>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m writing books. They\u2019re still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it\u2019s an interesting place to work, especially now. What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and categories and labels mean nothing.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

James Frey<\/a>\u00a0on the things he wishes he hadn\u2019t said, getting older and getting wiser, writing, being lucky, and making art,\u00a0by Stephen Elliott<\/a><\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Stephen Elliott<\/a>: OK. Let\u2019s talk about\u00a0Bright Shiny Morning<\/a>. What was the genesis of that?<\/p>\n

James Frey: I always wanted to write a book about LA, a big ambitious book. Nobody had ever really done it with LA- treating the city seriously as a major economic and cultural power, as the embodiment of 21st century America.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: It\u2019s a monster of a city.<\/p>\n

Frey: Yeah, in good ways, and bad. Dreams can come true there in ways impossible anywhere else, and they can get destroyed as well.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: The book is sprawling, kind of like the city itself.<\/p>\n

Frey. By design. The city has no center,<\/strong>\u00a0no single unifying place. The city grew and was built unconventionally, as was the book.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: The city operates as the spine of the narrative.<\/p>\n

Frey: It\u2019s a huge place, literally and metaphorically. Its beauty and horror. Its\u00a0<\/a>unconventional history. Its draw and allure. Its diversity and segregation.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: What was the process like. You have these four characters. Did you only work on one character each day?<\/p>\n

Frey: It was fun. The most fun to write of the three books. I started at the beginning and just went. No outline, no idea of what was coming next until I did it. I knew the three protagonists, and had an idea of the structure, but nothing else. Coming after all the bullshit related to\u00a0A Million Little Pieces<\/em>, nobody was expecting anything from me. No publisher, no agent, no one. Just me and the book. It was great.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: Sounds peaceful. You were able to get back to that place of no expectations.<\/p>\n

Frey: Yeah, in a way. Mostly just fun. Made me really love writing again. I love the process of being alone in a room. Being a writer now is about so much more than writing. There\u2019s publishing, touring, marketing, web presence. All this other shit. It all disappeared for me and I was happy to keep writing. I consider myself extremely lucky to be able to do this. Live this life. I did it before I was published and would do it if I still wasn\u2019t.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: So tell me about the year. Has it been a year already since\u00a0Bright Shiny Morning<\/em>\u00a0came out?<\/p>\n

Frey: It\u2019s been about seven months.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: You did a big tour.<\/p>\n

Frey: Did a big tour, a fun tour with bands and a multimedia show and other writers I admire, you among them. Had some huge crowds, a small riot in LA, and some empty houses. The book\u2019s reception was polarized, which I love. And it sold, which was very nice.<\/strong><\/p>\n

SE: Emotionally, that sounds like a roller coaster.<\/p>\n

Frey: Compared to other things in my life, not really. I really was thrilled just to have another book out and be able to keep doing this.<\/strong><\/p>\n

[ click to continue reading interview at The Rumpus.net<\/a> ]<\/p>\n

<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

from The Rumpus.net Rumpus Original – An Interview with James Frey \u201cI\u2019m writing books. They\u2019re still a mix of fact and fiction and will continue to be. I think it\u2019s an interesting place to work, especially now. What someone calls my books is irrelevant to me. I consider them works of art and rules and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conversation-information"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bigjimindustries.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}