MICHAEL GRIFFITH ’s books are Bibliophilia: A Novella and
Stories (2003) and Spikes: A Novel (2001), both from Arcade.
He is finishing up a new novel, Trophy, which Arcade is
scheduled to bring out in 2009. His fiction and nonfiction
have appeared in New England Review, Virginia Quarterly
Review, Salmagundi, Oxford American, Southwest Review, Golf
World, Five Points, Blackbird, The Washington Post, and
other periodicals, and he is the recipient of fellowships
from the National Endowment for the Arts (2004-05) and the
Louisiana Division of the Arts (2001), among others.
A native of Orangeburg, SC, Griffith earned an AB in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Princeton (summa cum laude) in 1987 and an MFA in Creative Writing from LSU (1992). From 1992 to 2002 he served as the Associate Editor of The Southern Review. He is now Associate Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati and teaches in the Sewanee School of Letters as well. In 2004 he became founding editor of Yellow Shoe Fiction, an original-fiction series from LSU Press.
Brief Interview with Michael Griffith
Since we’re currently in the throes of winter, describe your version of summer in several fragments:
Porch, newspaper, coffee. Crossword to cricketsong. Long bicycle ride, wheelsong oddly cricket-like. Work. Porch, lunch—bruschetta from our city garden plot the size of a car hood. Read till eyes go green. Porch, beer. Porch, just one more beer. Cricketsong, or is that traffic, or perhaps the inward head-noise of one too many beers? Porch, dinner. Long walk through neighborhood and park. Porch, sleep with face pressed to hot concrete—banished there for having constructed a summer idyll so *selfish.*
Breakfast or brunch, and if you could eat anything without consequence, what would you have?
A stack of blueberry pancakes the size of a Doric column? Or do I mean Ionic?
What are your favorite songs to drive to?
Right now, Joe Henry’s “Mean Flower,” The Bottle Rockets’ “I Wanna Come Home,” Kelly Willis’s “Wrapped,” plus lots of Lucinda Williams, Uncle Tupelo, Whiskeytown, Neko Case, Old 97s, Son Volt, etc. One my wife hates to have come around on the iPod is Natalie Merchant’s version of “Owensboro,” which always makes me weep with rage against the rich folk who’ll eventually have to share their pretty things.
Tell us about the last time you remember laughing really hard?
I laugh hard every day or lose my sanity. Often the day’s first good snort comes from the *New York Times* obituaries, which are reliably entertaining. Farewell, Fabulous Moolah. Adieu, Suzanne Pleshette (and thanks, *NYT,* for leavening our grief for the husky-voiced Dream Woman of Our Childhood by quoting that *Onion* headline). And a twenty-one-Frisbee salute to the Wham-O guy, too (dramatic percussion provided by hula hoops—a mourner must be prepared to shake his/her groove thing).
If you could wake up anywhere in the world tomorrow, where would it be?
Not on the porch. Do you hear me, Nicola? Not on the porch, but inside with wife and the wee delightful Bix, who’s six months old.