Rick Moody was declared by The New Yorker to be one of the
most talented American writers under forty at the turn of the
century. His first novel, Garden State (1992), won the
Pushcart Press Editor's Choice
Award. Two years later, he published The Ice Storm, which
became an award-winning film directed by Ang Lee. His other work
includes: The Ring of Brightest Angels Around Heaven (1995),
Purple America (1997), Joyful Noise (co-edited with
Darcey Steinke, 1999), and Demonology (2001). The Black
Veil, a "non-fiction novel," is due out next year. Our
interview was conducted via email during April 2001.
Camille Renshaw: Last year in an
interview, Courtney Love suggested that new technologies, like
Napster and Gnutella, are a major boon for artists, that they can
"serve the artist and serve the public." How does technology — new
audio and video mediums, dotcom magazines, the ability to reach
millions internationally instead of a focused thousand — affect your
ideas of what it means to be connected to an audience?
Rick Moody: Just the way the question is phrased makes clear
that most of the innovation is not on the literary front. It's
obvious that file-sharing software, Napster, Gnutella, are more
focused on populist media right now. The reason they are so popular is
that they arise from a really keen philosophical predicament. Internet
users are experiencing something like a collective consciousness, in
the course of being on the Net, and file-sharing is just a natural
outgrowth of that experience. Copyright seems like an infringement on
a group experience: "Hey, are you digging the new _____ song as much
as I am?" Etc. The inside of your skull becomes a living room into
which you invite your friends, and an intervention on the collectivity
of that consciousness seems like an affront.
But something different happens when you read a book. Reading, by its
nature, is a retreat from collectivity. It's an intimate act,
conjoining a single writer and reader. This is why writing on the Net,
at any great length, seems a little tiresome, whereas the book, that
old-fashioned data storage technology, can still be VERY LONG and
enticing at the same time. What I'm saying is that I don't
see new media as necessary or useful by its nature. I see it as useful
according to philosophical needs. The lie of the bull market was that
every technological innovation was necessary. Or that any creative act
that used a digital technology was innovative by its nature.
Meanwhile, I don't think about the audience aspect of new media
at all. I try to avoid thinking about audience. People can read my
stuff or not read it as suits them. I hope the work is its own
attraction, but I do no pre-formatting in terms of audience. Those may
come who wish to come to the books.
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