It’s amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.
BEN FOUNTAINIt’s amazing what happens when you stick yourself in a place and let things take their more or less natural course.
BEN FOUNTAINI started publishing stories in small magazines early on, but after seven or eight or nine years you feel like you need a little more than that to show for your efforts.
BEN FOUNTAINI kept going back while I was writing the novel – which never sold, may it rest in peace – and by the time it was finished I had too many connections to Haiti to walk away.
BEN FOUNTAINI realized I was never going to have any peace with myself unless I made an honest stab at trying to write.
BEN FOUNTAINEruptions of talent continue to happen in Haiti, in spite of everything.
BEN FOUNTAINSomewhere along the way America became a giant mall with a country attached.
BEN FOUNTAINI really had to decide why I was writing. I had no interest in going back to law; I very briefly – for about six hours – considered going to get my MBA, but in the end, I realized that the only work I really wanted to do was write.
BEN FOUNTAINI never listen to music when I’m writing.
BEN FOUNTAINIt is sort of weird being honored for the worst day of your life.
BEN FOUNTAINFrom about the age of 15 or 16 I’d had the notion that I wanted to write fiction, and I’d done enough in college to satisfy myself that I had a knack for it – I wouldn’t call it “talent” – though I wondered if I’d ever have the guts to actually commit to it.
BEN FOUNTAINI’m ashamed and embarrassed to say that I’ve read very little of David Foster Wallace’s work. It’s a huge gap in my education, one of many.
BEN FOUNTAINMaybe the light’s at the other end of the tunnel.
BEN FOUNTAINI got brilliant stories from people who’d never set foot in an MFA program and had published very little, and terrible stories from people who’d published a lot and had all the credentials. It was all over the map and that was part of the fun.
BEN FOUNTAINIf you want to write, then write; if you don’t want to write, then don’t write. I fell into the former category, and I just made the decision that I’d keep on because I liked it and might someday do something decent.
BEN FOUNTAINSo many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.
BEN FOUNTAINIt took me 10 years to write a story that pleased me – that I could look at after it was published and not cringe.
BEN FOUNTAIN