Generally Horrible Questions: Dan Chaon

Dan Chaon

One of our favorite authors, Dan Chaon, has a terrific new short story collection called Stay Awake going on sale in a few weeks.  Gianna reviewed it here.  We had the privilege of meeting Dan when he was touring Texas for his last book, Await Your Reply, and yet for some reason even after meeting us, Dan agreed to answer our questions.  Luckily Dan is the type of guy who, you know, appreciates the twisted.  In addition to being one of the best writers working, he's a huge music fan and teaches at Oberlin.  He's far too cool to be contributing to our blog, but we're grateful for his slumming.


Generally Horrible Questions: Dan Chaon


1. What author or book should we all be reading?

Lint by Chris Ware. Most mind-blowing book of 2011, hands down.


2. What book have you re-read more than any other?
Probably The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson, closely followed by Lolita by Vladamir Nabokov and The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien (though I haven’t actually read The Hobbit in about 30 years. Maybe now that the movie is coming out I should revisit it?)


3. Favorite three bands? 

Idaho; Modest Mouse; Arcade Fire. (At least right now.) All time favorite artists: Tom Waits, David Bowie, Rickie Lee Jones.


4. I have never read ________ and I am so ashamed
Remembrance of Things Past, by Marcel Proust. (I’ve read the famous Madeline passage, but nothing else.)


5. What do you tell your writing students to never do, but sometimes do yourself?

The great Borges...
not a spring chicken even
in 1951, when this was taken.

Despair.


6. Gianna or Liz?
There’s no way to answer this question. It’s like “Cake or Ice Cream?” [Our two favorite food groups! We also assume Liz is the ice cream due to her cold nature.  Also, Liz is always the correct answer.]


7. Coolest writer you’ve ever met?
Jorge Luis Borges [We are incredibly impressed.  Of course, we can't call him to verify....]


8. I have read ____ and I am so ashamed

Dude, all things must end, but we're
sorry for blowing it.

“Lostpedia—the Lost Encyclopedia” in its entirety; as well as “Bad Twin” by Gary Troup; as well as Doc Jensen’s “Lost” blog for Entertainment Weekly. I was a huge fan of the TV show “Lost” and I still feel very betrayed and bitter about how they screwed it up. I know it’s been a long time since it mattered, but it still galls me. [We feel as if we opened a huge can of worms here. Apologies.]


9. Your last name is pronounced “Shawn” which made us wonder who your favorite Shawn is. Sean Penn, Sean Combs, Shawn Carter (Jay Z to the unhip), Sean Connery, Shawn Colvin, Shawn who sat next to Liz is high school calculus, or Shaun of the Dead?

Gianna's favorite book
of 2010.

What about Sean Bean? He’s maybe my favorite Sean of the moment. But if I have to choose from your list, Shawn Colvin would be fine. As for the rest of your group…if they changed the spelling to Chaon, we could talk. “Chaon Combs:” that would be awesome. [...Or we could call you Dan Diddy?  No?]


By the way, if you do a Twitter search for “Chaon” you will find that it is an Urban Dictionary type slang word. People say that something is “off the chaon!” And that means that it is cool and funky. Right on! [We think this is going to take off way beyond Twitter, for chaon.]


10. Can you name five things creepier than twins (Liz is a twin, so think creepier)?
a. Rick Perry;
b. vegetable drawer full of forgotten potatoes that have begun to sprout tiny human eyes and fingers;
c. The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills, esp. Taylor; [This makes us worry for our Dan that he can name a wife…worry and love that is.]
d. the corpse of your dead grandma, somehow animated, somehow alive, rotting and crouched in your closet, a sick smell that wafts over you when you are sleeping and then you open your eyes in the dark and you can hear her breathing, wetly chewing on something with her toothless mouth, and you try to convince yourself: Grandma loved me. Grandma wouldn’t hurt me. This is not real.
e. That awful thing that is constantly staring at the back of your head but when you turn around it’s not visible.


11. What's the strangest or most awkward thing to happen to you on book tour (bonus points if you admit it was meeting Gianna and Liz)?
I don’t remember anything awkward happening when we met, Gianna and Liz. I thought we had a nice time together. Didn’t we? [Clearly Dan didn’t notice Gianna nearly going in for a kiss.]

Look for Dan's newest story
collection in stores in February.

Usually the most awkward moments on book tour have to do with no one showing up to a reading, and having to face the bookstore employees afterwards. Sitting in silence. Listening as the front door is locked and the “closed” sign is put over the door. Signing stock so they can’t return it to the publisher. That one hipster employee, straight out of Middlebury or Oberlin or Swarthmore, that guy who obviously loathes you and who has been spending his days trying to handsell Henry Miller novels, clears his throat and looks at you reproachfully and judgmentally.


Not that this has happened to me, mind you. There are always crowds upon crowds at my bookstore appearances.


12. Liz and I are starting a band; can you suggest a few names?
Cocoa Ono
Craniopagus Parasiticus!
Mamas Who Let Their Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys
The Uncircumcised Girls [Clear winner…Dan must have a real sense of what our band will be like.]


Thanks Dan!  You're the chaon!

Identity Issues

It's eerie how often Gianna and I agree on books. Considering that we barely knew each other a little over two years ago (she actually walked up to me at Book Expo several years ago before I worked for Random House and I didn't have a clue who she was until she reminded me that we'd met before), we nonetheless seem to love many of the same books. We'll have these discussions where she'll call me and ask if I've read a book that I haven't thought about in years and I'll remember that I loved that book, and it turns out that she loved it too. So when Gianna recommends that I read a book, when she's so enthusiastic that she's sputtering with delight, I KNOW that I must read that title. She doesn't steer me wrong.

Back in January we began to find out what titles Random House planned to publish for this coming fall, and it's a phenomenal list to say the least. Gianna found out that there will be a new book from Dan Chaon, so she called me to see if I had read his previous books, AMONG THE MISSING and YOU REMIND ME OF ME. Of course I had, and of course I loved them. Chaon is one of the best writers out there and in a just world he would be a literary superstar and I would read about him on my cousin's Facebook posts instead of...the gagging drivel she reads and claims is "profownd" (sic). The new book, Gianna told me, was called AWAIT YOUR REPLY. Because it was on her side of the company, and because I needed to read about 15 other books before sales conference, I refrained from diving into the new Chaon book, the dessert to my meal of books that I would actually sell myself. Gianna kept teasing me, though. She sent me the first page of the manuscript, and she constantly asked, "Have you started it yet? You need to read it. I need to talk about it. Read it, read it, read it...."



So finally I read it. Holy crap! I love this book. The early comparisons among the sales force are authors like Patricia Highsmith (Talented Mr. Ripley series) and Flannery O'Connor, and in the acknowledgements Chaon mentions writers who've inspired him such as John Fowles and Joyce Carol Oates. AWAIT YOUR REPLY contains elements of all of these masters of fiction. The novel focuses around identity and what it means to exist (or not) in this world. The opening page Gianna sent me? Let me set the scene for you. A son is cradling his arm and drifting in and out of consciousness. His father is driving the car and trying to reassure the kid that they'll make it to the hospital. And sitting between them in an ice chest is the boy's hand, cut off at the wrist. AND the boy isn't convinced that his father's even taking him to the hospital. Who doesn't want to keep reading a book that starts this way?

There are three stories swirling around each other through AWAIT YOUR REPLY, and what Gianna didn't tell me when she kept harassing me about reading the book is that one story line focuses on a set of twins. Twins are freaky and weird and a bit of an obsession for me and I'll read just about any book that features the multiples. It makes lots of sense that twins feature prominently in Chaon's book, too, since the theme is identity. Without giving away too much of the story, how do you know who you are? Say you don't have your name. Are you the same person? What if I weren't named Liz? Wouldn't I be a totally different person if I went by, say, Stephanie? I would have missed out on all of the elementary school "lizard" names. And people named Liz, in my experience, are smart asses. Nice, vapidly sweet Elizabeths are usually shortened to Beth. I am not a Beth. So twins further complicate self-identification. Here's your carbon copy(if you're identical, but to a lesser extent the same holds true for fraternals), yet you are two distinct people. At the same time, though, you cannot separate your identity from that of your twin. Twins know each other before they even meet their mother and they grow up with a mirror image of themselves against which to measure. Your life is a jumbled mess of identity politics. It's fascinating...and weird...and perfect for Chaon's book.

So, confession, I am a twin. I sometimes hate it, but I cannot imagine my life otherwise, and I hate to think of a world in which my twin no longer exists. I look at her and marvel that we're even siblings (she's an aerospace engineer) and I try to imagine what I would be like if I had followed her course in life. I still respond to her name when someone calls it because growing up people constantly confused us even though we're fraternal and she's friggin' blonde for crying out loud. More often we were just "the Sullivan twins." So I personally related to the parts of AWAIT YOUR REPLY that deal with twin brothers on different paths, seeking each other and running away. What if my twin were a hustler, or a Broadway singer, or Lindsey Lohan? Wouldn't I have a different identity if she were someone else? (The answer is yes.)

Dan Chaon is a terrific writer. I can't emphasize this point enough. This book works on so many levels--literary exploration, character study, thriller--and both Gianna and I are giddily anticipating the publication in August. AWAIT YOUR REPLY may be the best book I read this year.