Acts of Imagination: Steve Almond Rants & Obsesses

I SPOKE TO STEVE ALMOND about his new essay collection, "Not That You Asked: Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions," on the seventh anniversary of 9/11.

Ostensibly it's a collection of essays spanning nearly Almond's career and dealing with subjects as diverse as his sexual humiliations as a teenager to his experiences as a new father to his run-ins with what he calls the right-wing "Hateocracy."

But the 9/11 connection is particularly apt.

Throughout every essay, whatever its stated subject, Almond is noticeably and dreadfully concerned with the state of American politics and morality.

In "Demagogue Days," he recounts the brouhaha following his decision to protest Condoleeza Rice's appearance at Boston College by resigning his adjunct professorship there, but does so with humor and aplomb, likening his radio interviews and his appearance on "The Hannity & Colmes Show" as different levels of Dante's Inferno.

"Why I Crush on Vonnegut" gives a sympathetic overview of the late author's life and works, with Almond finding in works like "Slaughterhouse 5" a means of dealing with our disappointing tolerance for war and human suffering. "The idea that anybody in modern culture would cheer for a war is morally unfathomable," he explains. "I understand that people are full of fear right now, but a war means that a profound tragedy has taken place. If we're not human enough to recognize the drastic circumstances, we're dead. That was supposed to be the lesson of 9/11, but that's not how it played out."

Almond, who is perhaps best known for his short-story collections "My Life in Heavy Meal" and "The Evil B.B. Chow," addresses his concerns over the fate of humanity with humor, intelligence, and no small amount of belligerence, which keeps his rants from becoming overly didactic. More crucially, he holds his fellow writers — and, for that matter, all humans everywhere — to very high standards, and when they fall short, he names names. (His dismissal of chick-lit author Jennifer Weiner is particularly satisfying.)

And he does all this with snappy prose that expresses heady ideas, dirty thoughts and elaborate punchlines with equal aplomb.

Beyond all the politics and feuding and sexual humiliation, "Not That You Asked" is much more than an author's nonfiction clearinghouse. It effectively serves as a manual on how to be a writer. Aside from "How to Write a Sex Scene," Almond doesn't give specific tips on creating fiction or nonfiction, but instead offers advice — challenges the reader, in fact — to live a life of such obsession and engagement that writing or making art of any kind becomes a moral necessity.

» EXPRESS: Parts of "Not That You Asked" read like a how-to on living a writer's life.
» ALMOND: I hope so. It's not by design, but I write about the stuff that I'm obsessed with, and one of the things that has always obsessed me is how can writing or art of any sort help us deal with the suffering that every examined life consists of in large measure.

» EXPRESS: How did that inform the structure of the book?
» ALMOND: When I collected all these essays together and thought about the lines that run through them, something that kept coming up over and over was, what happens when you really try to engage with your internal life and all the emotionally difficult moments of your life — being a teenager who is sexually humiliated, or trying to consider what has happened to this country where we have so much materially and yet feel so desperately lonely and spiritually malnourished.

The long essay about Vonnegut is an exploration of that, because I think Vonnegut would have succeeded in killing himself, as his mother did, if he hadn't been able to write. I see writing as a profound form of forgiveness. You look at the dark stuff in the world and inside of you, and rather than being completely overwhelmed by it, you try to take it on and capture it in a way that allows you to be more forgiving.

A good piece of art or a good piece of writing makes you feel more, it awakens the feeling that might have been hiding in you. That's a political act, to make people feel more and to make them recognize that they have a responsibility to others who have less than they do.

» EXPRESS: How is writing fiction different from writing nonfiction? Do you have to get in a different headspace?
» ALMOND: For me, having been a journalist initially, then writing short stories and a novel, and now moving back into writing nonfiction and journalism to pay the bills, I think about that distinction all the time. I don't think it's very complicated. Nonfiction is a radically subjective version of events that objectively took place. You're recollecting and reflecting on either your own life or whatever you're observing. Fiction is about constructing a world for the maximum emotional impact. So when I'm doing nonfiction, it's really about recollecting and reflecting on my own life or whatever I'm writing about. When I'm writing a short story, it's more about immersing myself in an imagined world in a way that feels emotionally real.

I'm interested in emotionally dangerous moments and circumstances. I want the work that I do to get at certain unbearable feelings, or feelings that are difficult and complex. If that's accomplished through a short story, great. If it's through an essay, great. I think the reader brings in certain expectations, but if it's an effective piece of writing, you just lose yourself in that world and the writer's only job is to keep you in that world.

» Olsson's, 1307 19th St. NW; Wed., Sept. 24, 7 p.m., free; (202) 785-1133. (Dupont Circle)

Written by Express contributor Stephen M. Deusner
Photo by Erin Almond