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All In His Imagination - Part Two - Page 2

© Paula E. Kirman

Paula: But it leads to obsession.

David: It does, but he doesn't really do anything to get her back. It's a book about a guy who I think is having a nervous breakdown and doesn't realize it, so he goes through all these things thinking these are rational responses to provocations, whether it's air conditioners or yapping dogs or whatever. When I read the galleys I really thought, "You know what? This is actually a very good study of madness." There are sections in this book where I actually read it and I think, "This is really what it is like to be crazy and not to realize that you're being crazy," but the way this guy's brain is working, seems to me to be crazy. There is nothing crazy about the guy in How Boys See Girls; he's just really hot for someone who's dumped him.

Paula: It was interesting that you mentioned that you now think of How Boys See Girls as a young man's novel. I found a review of Lost Between Houses on the Internet, and the reviewer was saying that in How Boys See Girls, there is a 40-something year old man who is acting like a 15 years old. In Affair with the Moon, a 20-something year old guy, but he's acting like a 15 year old. Here's Lost Between Houses - he is a 15 year old. And now you say you look back on How Boys See Girls and consider a young man's novel.

David: I do only because I don't see the world that way. I actually saw the world in those sort of carnal terms when I wrote How Boys See Girls, but I don't actually see the world like that anymore. Do I think that those people are 15 year olds? You see, I think those kinds of reviewers are just always full of shit because what they're doing is they're letting themselves off the hook. What they're saying is, even if they like the book, when they that it's about a 15 year old, they're saying, "I'm not like that. I'm older and wiser than that." But they're really lying because what I like about those books is that actually all guys are like that and I suspect most women are too. When I re-read How Boys See Girls or Back on Tuesday, I always think, "Everybody's like this." And I've had this happen: people often retreat saying, "Well, gee, this is how children see little girls rather than how men see woman." I just think that's bullshit. If I thought my story was particular to me I wouldn't bother writing it at all, but I do believe in that universal principal that if you write well enough and you're hard enough on yourself you end up writing everybody else's story as well.

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