The Skeleton Box (41 page)

Compare and contrast writing a novel with writing for a newspaper. Which do you find more difficult? Does one inform the other? How so?

One’s more a sprint, the other a marathon. In both cases, you are constrained by the details you can gather (non-fiction) or imagine (fiction). Of course the imagination is rooted in real-world observations stretching back to the day your were born, and a good journalist can often find more of what she or he needs if they have an imagination that will take them to places—physical or mental--they wouldn’t otherwise have gone. Fiction requires more voice, non-fiction more distance, but in both cases, the writing should be clear enough that the reader understands what’s on the page, and engaging enough that the readers wants to turn that page.

Do you play hockey yourself? If so, what position? Do you follow professional hockey? Who is your favorite team?

I play wing. As my pals will attest, I’m not especially fast and don’t have particularly good hands, but I love to be out there, and I think I’m still learning things about how to play (my pals would say, “Finally, Grules.”) My favorite team is the Detroit Red Wings, the best franchise in hockey for the past two decades.

Who are you reading now? What is next for you as a writer? For Gus Carpenter and Starvation Lake?

I just finished Richard Russo’s
Nobody’s Fool
, which took me five months, even though I loved it. At the moment I’m re-reading
The Sun Also Rises
by Hemingway, which will probably take me until 2012; Michael Harvey’s
We All Fall Down
; and
Bin Laden’s Bald Spot
, a collection of poignant, frequently hilarious short pieces by Brian Doyle. I have a busy life.

As for Gus, I have ideas for a fourth book, but I’m also thinking about an entirely different setting and set of characters entirely, so we may be saying goodbye to Starvation Lake, at least for now.