No. Well, I don't know. It's biochemical to be redistributed, certainly. I think what Jung feared was that his intelligence would get mixed up with everybody else's. [laughs]
Have you written a suitable epitaph for yourself?
The Salon Interviews index -- links to all the interviews related to the Sept. 11 attacks and the events that have followed.
Yes, well, I've already said so in the books: "Everything was beautiful, nothing hurt."
What are you most scared of?
Bad things happening to my children and grandchildren.
What book influenced you the most?
"Candide" by Voltaire, I guess.
What book do you most wish you'd written yourself?
I wish I had written "Romeo and Juliet."
How do you define success?
I don't know. No answer.
What do you truly believe in?
Well, again, getting back to Nietzsche's statement, as a person of deep faith, I obviously believe in something in the end. I don't know what it is, but it's a great big something.
Do you have any regrets?
Plenty.
Given the opportunity, would you fix them?
No. Oh, I suppose, yeah. I don't like the question.
Are you working on a new book at the moment?
Yes, but like everybody else, I was just shocked by the World Trade Center thing. Also what it's done to the world economy. I mean, boy, you think those towers were something? It's such a fragile economy. Don't joke about economics because that's how you get food.
In several of your novels, characters become unstuck in time. In "Timequake," a bump in the space-time continuum causes everyone to relive the decade between 1991 and 2001, repeating everything they did the first time they lived it. Do you believe that, like characters caught in a timequake, we all have a chronology we are destined to follow, no matter what?
I think maybe the future has as much to do with who and what we are now as the past. It may be that you continue. Life is ... there's enough to think about. But I do suspect that the future has a hell of a lot more to do with stuff right now than we realize. And it wouldn't help much to realize it.
So essentially, we're all following a path that has been set for us, without having much control over it?
I'm afraid so. Why, are you in trouble?
About the writer
Christopher Kemp is a writer in Cincinnati.
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