I wanted to be the best Greek novelist and I can't understand the words, so I imagine that they mean all sorts of great things.
There's a great webzine, based out of Belfast in Northern Ireland called Dogmatika and they do some very nice little interviews, including a couple in the recent months with Soft Skull authors, herewith some out-takes and the links to the whole shebangs.
I wanted to be the best Greek novelist. An Interview with Robert Newman
One book you wish you had written, and why?
I most often wish to have written Anne Tyler novels, simply because of the person I would have to be and the life I would have to have been living to have written them. To have written her novels I would have had to have become be an understanding, sociable, loving, interested, observant, thoughtful, connected, in-the-moment person who took life seriously in all its manifestations be they never so humble. She makes you feel that to write well is to live well. More than be able to write well, I would like to be able to live well like that and understand well like that and to be that kind of soul.
If there's one novel though that would be Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex a) because it's the best novel for decades and b) because I wanted to be the best Greek novelist.
Which painting, or other piece of art, best describes you?
I can't think what visual art describes me, but I can tell you my favourite. Is that any good to you? My favourite piece of visual art is the slapstick routine performed by Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin when they are both well into their sixties. The routine is at the end of the indifferent melodrama Limelight. Then suddenly, the two masters onstage together. Buster is playing piano and Chaplin is playing violin. Well, that's the plan. It's funny and moving. This is the last hurrah of two all-time geniuses. And the sketch is full of loads of surprises as if they are just inventing slapstick there and then, loads of gags and twists you have never seen before. They are performing to an audience who are really above this kind of comedy, and so there is an embattled dignity about the two men who are dressed for concert rectial in stuffed and padded tuxedos.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a few things. A novel called Collide-O-Scope that involves a United States city under siege by a right wing government in the near future. A series of books with visual artist Jadina Lilien—the one we are working on now is an illustrated rock opera. A graphic poem with the artist Scott Gillis that is a mix of my experiences as a medic at the World Trade Center attack, the history of Afghanistan, and the early days of aviation. And a musical theater piece with Mabou Mines called Song for New York, for which I am the Manhattan poet. I also just finished a screenplay called Swirl with my writing partner Felicity Seidel.
Do you listen to music as you write?
Once in a while, depending on what I’m writing.
If so, what?
Greek gangster music from the 1920s. I like it because I can’t understand the words, so I imagine that they mean all sorts of great things.