EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW

LYDIA MILLET

What do you need to know about Lydia Millet? She has never cuddled with a bear in the wild. She once brought three nuclear physicists back from the dead. On one page she leads you to the brink of despair. On the next she'll tickle the funny bone in your brain. And her dialogue kills. Read the interview here.

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VOLUME 1
How the Dead Dream
by Lydia Millet
(Counterpoint Press)

Hardcover first editions, signed and numbered by the author. Packaged in a custom, full-cloth slipcase and available only to Indiespensable subscribers.

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February 11, 2008:
I know I am going to die someday and I was afraid I wouldn't be allowed to because of all the students who want to study writing with me. I imagined myself as one hundred, long after my colleagues and friends passed on, standing in front of a class saying, "Okay, get out your fast writing pens and notebooks. Give me the last time you had watermelon. Go. Ten minutes." So I wrote this book Old Friend from Far Away: The Practice of Writing Memoir and my challenge was to capture in the book the way I teach a class. And I think I did it. I'm excited to find out what people think.

Also my last book was a memoir, The Great Failure, about the two most important men in my life: my father and the Japanese Zen Master I studied with for 12 years. I lost a lot of Zen friends when they read the book and it surprised me — and hurt. But I also became free after the book was published. I wanted to see if my next book which is Old Friend could not mention Zen but embody it and give the reader a deep flavor of it and also be a book that wasn't about me and also was as bossy as I can be and also funny.

I loved writing this book. People ask how long did it take. I say, seven months — and 30 years of practice.

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Was the scene as strange for anyone to witness as it must have been for Bandit's family? Their 100-pound wolf-shepherd mix, in the clearing beyond the back deck, cuddling — literally, spooning — with a cat. And while other cats were around! Fup had arrived at their house in the woods that very day; she hadn't yet set foot indoors.

They had their own cats. Great cats! This behavior was unprecedented. Would Bandit ever, in a million years, cuddle with Wiggums? They couldn't imagine. And he didn't even like to be in the same room as Kit.

Hearing this now, Oreo asks, "Can you imagine if someone actually named you Kit Cat? I guarantee they let the kids choose the name."

Fup stood up, putting some space between herself and Bandit. She walked a few confident circles on the gravel. Wiggums and Kit observed without comment.

In the kitchen, not twenty feet away, the startled couple and their children had risen from the table and crowded in front of the sliding glass door. No one opened it, not wanting to interrupt.

Fup balanced on two legs and started patting Bandit's snout. Later, Wiggums would swear he heard the dog moan.