I don’t know why I was thinking about that. So if tomorrow somebody pulled up in front of the office here at 849 Valencia and said, Hey, do you want to go on a cross-country trip in a car shaped like a banana, and we’re going to visit all of the national parks that have waterfalls and we’re going to adopt a bobcat and name them Steve-if I felt like doing that that day, then certainly I would.
And if it ends up being not a total success however you judge it, then that’s fine.īut in a short life-and I’m exquisitely aware of how short life can be-I want to do anything I want to do. And I think that the best way to honor that luck is to do anything you want to do. I feel every day so lucky to be able to do this, to be able to get up in the morning and create stuff and think about wooden covers for a book about a dog at a park. To be given the gift of writing or creating for a living and then to cage yourself within the boundaries of what’s deemed acceptable is just the worst tragedy of all.
If that is your way and if that is the way that you feel most happy and-to use a terrible word-fulfilled, then great.īut when I hear or or feel like somebody is going through their life as an artist in a way because they think that that is the right way or that they will be perceived as having done it the right way or the most appropriate way for them, that is a tragedy. But I think there might be people out there who are like, is this a wise path? Is it distracting at times? Do you find yourself starting things and not finishing things? Do you ever feel like you’ve lost the thread and you’re overextended?ĭave Eggers: Well, I think that you’re talking about freedom, right? And this is the major theme of this book, is that if you are beholden as an artist to some perception of, well, what’s the right way to go through a short life in a universe perhaps without meaning, and if you’re going to say, well, the right way is to write variations on the same novel every four years until I’m dead, that’s a very sad, sad way to go through life.Īnd if that is someone’s way and they want to do it that way-and I do know artists that are very methodical and they’re very happy with their method, with it being every once a decade you put out a work of art, whether it’s a book or an opera or something. You must feel like it gives you something rather than takes something away. You have a more diversified output, and I’m wondering how you experience that.
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