LBS Interview Series 2.1
After a rigorous 4 day literary tour in Montana, Adam Bradford Ross was gracious enough to let me ask him a few questions about his style and career. He had me meet him at a strip club before it opened, apparently he has a key. When I arrived he ushered me to a table in the back. He was barefoot and the place smelled of hot wings.
INTERVIEWER
It must be a great advantage for the writer to have a memory as good as yours. I don’t suppose
you have to do much note-taking?
ROSS
Well, a good memory doesn’t make the ideas any better, really. If someone had a skill, like, of always being able to recall their nightmares every night it would be a notable gift in a sense but would you really envy that person? That’s how I see my memory in relation to my writing. I have this inborn gift that everything I see is recorded inside my head for posterity… but I think that posterity will probably opt to flip on the television instead.
INTERVIEWER
Then you don’t spend much time prefiguring your work?
ROSS
Quite the contrary. I spend the vast majority of my time prefiguring my work. Probably, if I were honest with you, I would admit that I spend about 90% of my time prefiguring the work and 10% of my time in the actual writing. If I was really honest with you I’d admit it’s closer to 100%. That and internet gambling are the reason that I’ve only finished one story in my 29 years.
INTERVIEWER
Is the act of writing easy for you?
ROSS
That’s like asking the Dalai Lama if he finds it easy to dunk a basketball. He’d say “yes” but only because he’s never tried it.
INTERVIEWER
Then it’s rare that your work comes out right the first time?
ROSS
It’s rare that my work comes out. Period. So I don’t have to struggle with issues of “quality”.
INTERVIEWER
Does the fact that you’re dealing with humor slow down the production?
ROSS
Yes, absolutely, but only because I’m not funny.
INTERVIEWER
Do you envy those who write at high speed, as against your method of constant revision?
ROSS
Did you listen to my answers to your previous questions?
INTERVIEWER
(Nodding head absently) Yes, I’d have to agree. And what about your drawings, you have said that they often don’t come out the way you intended?
ROSS
Yes, this is true, and it’s a matter of execution not conception. I get an idea for a drawing and I go right to the table to start into it. Within an hour I’ve completely worn out the black [crayon] and am forced to switch to other colors that really aren’t appropriate for the idea at all. So, for instance, once I was drawing a picture for the New Yorker of the grim reaper taking my wife away moments after she asked me to take out the garbage bins. In my anger and inspiration I soon had worn through the entire black crayon and so the reaper’s sickle ended up pink.
INTERVIEWER
But the head of the New Yorker still published it.
ROSS
Yes, but that was incidental. It was breast cancer awareness month so it just made me look benevolent. I was on quite a tear with the ladies for a bit after that one, I might add.
INTERVIEWER
Can the New Yorker be effective in developing you as a writer?
ROSS
Meh.
INTERVIEWER
It’s strange that one of the main ingredients of humor—low comedy—has never been accepted for The New Yorker.
ROSS
Yes, this is true. They are all sophistication but no low brow. Someone should start a website that combines the two.
INTERVIEWER
In the long run did The New Yorker have much direct influence on your own work?
ROSS
Absolutely, they rejected scores of my stories.
INTERVIEWER
Henry James was a strong influence?
ROSS
Yes, no doubt, but I’m not sure to whom.
INTERVIEWER
But there were things to be learned from him?
ROSS
Oh yes, yes, certainly but at the moment I just haven’t the time. NBC’s fall lineup kicks off soon and besides, it’s autumn.
INTERVIEWER
How about Mark Twain? Pretty much everybody believes him to have been the major influence on American humorists.
ROSS
It will surprise you but I haven’t read a word of him yet. I’ll ask my son to read one of his books to me next week.
INTERVIEWER
Could we ask you why you’ve never attempted a long work?
ROSS
I haven’t put much thought into it, but if I have to give an off-the-cuff answer I’d say it’s because my short works are so awful.
INTERVIEWER
Perhaps the fact that you’re writing humor imposes a limit on the length of a work.
ROSS
That and a dearth of talent just about do the trick.
INTERVIEWER
Wasn’t Faulkner’s criterion whether or not the author dared to go out on a limb?
ROSS
Yes.
INTERVIEWER
Though you’ve never done a long serious work you have written stories—“Tomorrow is Wednesday” and “Showing Pink” in particular—in which the mood is far from humorous.
ROSS
(a hint of anger in his voice) You didn’t think those were funny?
INTERVIEWER
Some critics think that much of your work can be traced to the depicting of trivia as a basis for humor. In fact, there’s been some criticism—
ROSS
It’s made to seem as if this is some conscious decision on my part; my theory of comedy so to speak. It’s made to seem like I am trying to start a school of writing. None of this could be further from the truth. My comedy is rooted in trivia because I’m a trivial guy trying to write comedy.
INTERVIEWER
Would you care to define humor in terms of your own work?
ROSS
Humor, probably for me and certainly for my readers, is that which causes laughter and occurs in between the times spent reading my works.
INTERVIEWER
Does it bother you to talk about the stories on which you’re working? It bothers many writers, though it would seem that particularly the humorous story is polished through retelling.
ROSS
Humorous stories can be polished through telling and retelling. If the story is fairly humorous to begin with then perhaps two tellings is sufficient. I haven’t been so lucky. My first idea tends to be rather vague and so many, many retellings are required before some of the humor begins to creep in at last. I once had a the idea for a comedic story where I had to retell it so many times before I hit upon one joke that worked that I got layringitis and couldn’t talk for a week. During which time, it should be added, I forgot the story altogether. This is how I write my stories.
INTERVIEWER
You write them?
ROSS
In a sense though I have such a sense of repulsion for my finished works that I feel like there’s a remove there. Because they don’t end up like I had first pictured them (at all) it feels as though I weren’t really the writer after all. It would be more accurate to say of my stories that I ghost write them.
INTERVIEWER
How about the new crop of writers? Do you note any good humorists coming along with them?
ROSS
Child is quite good.
INTERVIEWER
Has the shift in the mood of the times had any effect on your own work?
ROSS
It hasn’t. I’ve always had a very post-9-11 mindset.
INTERVIEWER
No matter what the “mental climate,” though, you would continue writing?
ROSS
Yes, unless my mental climate was “brain cancer” then I think I would put down the pen… maybe take up singing.
INTERVIEWER
In your case there wouldn’t be much chance of this?
ROSS
Not true, it runs like wildfire through my mother’s side of the family.