Interview with Ben Blum
Hugo House: In a few weeks you'll be reading your winning entry to our New Works Competition at Town Hall. What were your thoughts on hearing that you had won?
Ben Blum: I went through the sequence I always go through on receiving big, potentially life-changing news: surprise, delight, vague disappointment with myself for not having literally EXPLODED with delight, recognizing of course that NOBODY literally explodes with delight, but maybe some people come closer to it than I do. Then I remembered I was still on the phone with Alix Wilber and she was waiting for me to respond, so I just told her I was really, really delighted. This is huge for me. It's the first time I've received any kind of recognition for one of my stories, the first chance I've gotten to read in front of a big audience. I'm terrified. If I stop to think what a huge honor it is to share a stage with the likes of Sherman Alexie, Michelle Tea, David Schmader and Sean Nelson, I don't get any work done all day. So I try not to think about it.
HH: Tell us about writing "Love, Robert Pinsky." What triggered this story for you? Why Robert Pinsky, for example and not, say, Ted Kooser?
BB: The story's about the feeling you get at a reading or a concert or a play or something that the gap between you and the people on stage, those 20 or so feet, is the gap that has always separated you from your REAL life, the life you're supposed to be living. And all you have to do to get there is to CONVINCE someone of this, as if you have only been stuck in your plain, plastic folding chair life by some kind of clerical error that would be easy to straighten out if the proper authority would just sign the damn form already. In a funny way, the story was triggered by the idea of winning this competition, even though I obviously hadn't done so yet while writing it.
Robert Pinksy is one of my favorite poets. The reason he's in this story is that he's the first author I ever realized was a real human being rather than a 10-foot-tall alien from Triton. There's a line in one of the poems from his brilliant first book, "Sadness and Happiness," in which he says, basically, "Come on, Robert. Quit thinking of yourself as the Jewish Shakespeare." I wish I had the book in front of me so I could quote it correctly! But I read this line, and suddenly it came to me in a flash: Robert Pinsky is just this GUY, you know?
HH: What's in your writing future?
BB: Hopefully a lot! I've been applying to M.F.A. programs this year, which is a pretty huge departure from the life I always thought I'd lead as a mathematician of some kind. The first thing I did after hearing my story had won was send a desperate letter (and the story) off to all the schools I applied to, like, SEE! Love me!! These guys did! And apparently it worked, because I've gotten into a few places. I don't know which program I'll attend yet but that's how I'm going to be spending my next two years.
After that, I hope to write about eight or nine novels and then probably die. I've also got a couple of nonfiction books in the works: one in collaboration with my cousin Alex about a recent bank robbery in Tacoma, and one about my childhood experience as a middle-rank math prodigy.
HH: Tell us three nonliterary things we don't know about you.
BB: That's easy, because my having somehow won this competition is just about the only literary thing there IS to know about me. Number one, I'm a few months away (if all goes well) from finishing a PhD in computer science from Berkeley. My thesis research is on protein structure prediction in collaboration with the Baker Lab at the University of Washington, where I've been working for the past two years. Please donate your spare computer time to us, lab projects include HIV vaccine research! Number two, I am a supertaster, which means I have a higher-than-average density of tastebuds on my tongue. Number three, I PARTY. Do YOU party? Sorry, I just love that question! I don't even really know what it means.
