Q: Romer's Rule says that the hominid who came down from the trees and developed bipedal locomotion wasn't trying to become a man, he was trying to remain a monkey in the face of changed environmental circumstances. His adaptation allowed him to radiate into an uninhabited niche. But that wasn't why he did it. That wasn't his purpose. It was a side-effect. An unintended consequence.
A: Lagniappe.
Q: You were trying to be a mainstream commercial novelist on the worldwide web. Instead you became a serial novelist--or a serial memoirist. Indeed, you invented a new form, that combines fiction and autobiography in interesting ways.
A: Poetics, critique, and popular storytelling. Popular storytelling, critique, and poetics.
Q: Michael Connelly wrote about what effect mojos had on journalism, with
their part-time, no-benefit, at-will employment.
You explore what effect
writing on the web had on you as a literary writer. And before that mail art, and
before that little magazines and small presses. 40 years in the wilderness.
Can you be a man of letters in the underground?
A: A man of crank-lettres.
Q: John Leonard died.
He was the last of the breed.
But
you're a man of letters. Just, on the Internet.
You're a great American
writer. Just, nobody knows it but the Buzzard Cult.
A: Maybe. Maybe I was playing tennis without a net.