TSR:
What
does the word "story"
mean to you?
DC:
It's akin to a poem but something exceeding or otherwise unsuitable for
a poem. The story itself - as plot - is less important than the images.
Or, better, the plot is itself an image, an extended metaphor, of the
story's concerns. I don't, on the whole, like naturalistic fiction and
I really don't like stories that tie things up neatly at the end. I
detest the idea of "closure".
TSR:
Do you have a reader in mind when you write stories?
DC:
I think of certain people, a few, who, I know, would read them attentively.
TSR: Is
there
anything you'd like to ask someone who has read your collection,
anything at all?
DC: I'd always be glad to know what people who read attentively think.
TSR: How does
it feel knowing that people are buying your book?
DC:
It's a contact, and I like that. I've been very struck by how
differently people read the same stories, and how widely their
preferences vary. As with poems, once stories are published they don't
really belong to the author anymore (even if they ever did). That is
perhaps the loveliest thing about poems and fictions - they are for
somebody else.
TSR:
What are you working on now?
DC: Another story. Apart from that, I am translating a novel from German and waiting, in hope, to write poems again.
