Podcast: |
Laird Barron
By Rick Kleffel / Agony Column -
In hindsight, all is perfectly clear. But in general, to a degree, I favor being both intensely over-prepared and completely uninformed. These may seem mutually exclusive, but really, in my world at least, they are not. I must admit that by remaining completely uninformed about ‘,’ I was unprepared for just how great Laird Barron’s work was.
But having read the book, and taken extensive notes, once I started talking to him, I still felt unprepared for Laird Barron himself, even though it was a phone interview. Actually, perhaps this is why I prefer in-person interviews, since I trust that had we been sitting in the same room, I would have had a better sense of the man and perhaps not been surprised by his stories about his stories.
Barron’s work is in itself amazing, so it should not have been quite so surprising to hear his life story and how he came to his stories. It clear that both by nature and nurture, Laird Barron was cunningly designed to craft the kind of disturbing, uncanny fiction that we find in ‘‘ and ‘The Beautiful Thing That Awaits Us All.’
Barron and I talked about his childhood and upbringing, which prove to be pertinent with regards to the fiction he is writing. As you might expect, there is a lot going on in the short stories and novel that he has written; not just within the stories, but crosstalk between the stories.
For all the Barron is tagged as a writer of horror fiction — because the overwhelming and understandable response to his work is a feeling of unease — his roots seem to be simultaneously both in hard-boiled mystery / men’s adventure and science fiction. He and I discussed the role of science and the elements of the mystery genre that are so striking in his stories.
Barron and I also discussed movie adaptations and his forthcoming work. As far as Laird Barron’s work is concerned, I’m on board no matter what he has on offer. He’s got a storytelling gift for exploring the ineffable edges of the world with the sharpest, hardest edges of the world. If it seems like a paradox, it’s not.
