Description: I love books, love interviewing the writers who write them, and someday I do still hope to write a few books of my own. I'm particularly fond of literary fiction, short story collections, and works in translation. A literary short story collection in translation would most likely blow my mind.
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I am frequently in the desert now, which is nothing at all like the downtown Los Angeles I left behind. There are golf carts. And people who care deeply about golf, as deep as their suntans. There are others who have had so much work done I can't even look at them. Still more who seem to shop a great deal and then scurry back to their rambling homes with fancy bags from fancy shops, piling it all inside.
Drive yourself out to Joshua Tree and you will find a completely different kind of desert dweller. The artists. The legit dreamers and doers who have sought out a direct dialogue with nature. So silent are their spaces, so vast are their views, so sandy are the roads that lead you to and from their humble homes.
On paper, I'm not a desert person. I burn inside five minutes. SPF 100 is part of my daily routine. I love the fog of San Francisco, the chill of snowy mountains, the cool air clinging to the bedsheets from an open window on a cold night. 110 degrees and Palm Trees? You could've asked me a thousand times about this in the past ten years and each time I'd have said no.