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Every Monday, Joe posts answers to questions he receives over at the Frankophiles Forum. Ask your question now, and come back Monday to see if it was answered.

March 19, 2007

Two questions: I bought, read, and enjoyed "The Queen of Puerto Rico" - so far as I know, the only thing you've ever committed to print. Why have you not committed more of your work to the slightly less ephemeral medium of dead, pulped trees?
Jerry Chase

A. For the same reason I refuse paper bags at the checkout counter in the supermarket. It's a moral choice.

Actually, the advantage of working in radio was facing a weekly deadline, which forced me to produce material I otherwise might have put off indefinitely. Having a weekly audience of thousands was also highly motivating and immediately gratifying when compared to the lonely and uncertain world of fiction writing. I also liked using music in my programs to enhance the moods of my stories and to obscure what I feared were my shortcomings as a writer.

Second, is that your mother in "The Road to Calvary"? It would seem to be a source tape for the events you described in a "Death in the Family" - the decline of your step-father. I'm not especially interested in mapping your characters to real-life people, but I found these phone conversations especially compelling (especially your decidedly deferential "mm-hmms" and "uh-huhs" which you were not able to completely edit out of the conversation) in the context of the rest of your monologue concerning Jesus, belief, redemption, sacrifice... the music you chose for the excerpts of the woman at the hospital screamed "Judas" to my inner ear. Here's my crazy speculative question: Do you feel that you betrayed your mother by recording her for broadcast?
Jerry Chase

A. My mother did not mind my broadcasting our conversations for my radio show, although in this instance she didn't know she was being recorded. I received her permission to use the material later. The truth is that my mother wanted to be known by a larger public than her small circle of sadly disinterested friends and often spoke of writing her autobiography. In fact, she revealed far more deeply disturbing things about her life in other recorded monologues, especially in the tragic story of her honeymoon. Of course, I could have decided not to use the material, anyway, to protect her privacy. But the world she inhabited in Florida was so removed from the world of my radio show in LA that it didn't seem a Judas-like betrayal. There are countervailing values in these decisions but it's true I've always tilted in the direction of creating art I felt was meaningful and would resonate with listeners -- at almost any cost.

OK, I'll cheat and ask a third completely unrelated question: David Cross appears on several earlier shows, and I assume he's the guy who often sounds like a slightly misinformed, standoffish, pseudo-intellectual, but hilarious African American dude. Your thoughts about his comedic stylings and race-shifting?
Jerry Chase

A. David Cross appeared brilliantly as O.J. Simpson's personal valet in "The O.J. Chronicles" and as the minister in "Jam." The "slightly misinformed, standoffish, pseudo-intellectual" was performed by my dear friend and collaborator, Arthur Miller, who appeared in many programs in the early years and is a comic genius in his own right.

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