Andrew Sean Greer Refuses to Kill His Darlings

Like so many others (including the Pulitzer Prize committee), I read Andrew Sean Greer’s Less in 2017 and was endlessly charmed by the singularity of Greer’s voice. Rollicking through vivid landscapes and madcap scenarios, Greer’s novels commit to comedy and eccentricity, standing out in an often muted literary landscape. His newest book, Villa Coco, set in a ramshackle villa in the Italian countryside, is just as vibrant; while reading it, I laughed out loud at jokes about superstitions and mistranslations, and I was captivated by the protagonist’s messy romance with a married man. Most of all, though, I was touched by the coming-of-age narrative at its heart. Greer’s characters can be entertaining to a tranquilizing degree: It’s impossible to pinpoint the emotional effect they’re having on you until you turn the very last page and miss them immediately.

I had the pleasure of meeting with Greer over Zoom for Electric Lit’s 23 Questions. He claimed that his workspace was messy and covered in clementine peels, but I failed to see any evidence of this disorderliness; I was just delighted to speak with him. 

— Amulya Tadimety
Editorial Intern

1. Describe your publication week in a six-word story.

Andrew Sean Greer: It’s the calm before the calm.

2. What book should everyone read growing up?

ASG: I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith.

3. Write alone or in community?

ASG: Alone. I love the idea of “in community,” but no way.

4. If you were a novel what novel would you be?

ASG: Any Wooster and Jeeves novel by P. G. Wodehouse.

5. Describe your ideal writing day.

ASG: Wake up, go swimming with my best friend in the San Francisco Bay. Sit in a cafe with him and write. See, I’m not alone, strangely. Go home and have lunch, take a nap, and then write again for the rest of the day.

6. Typing or longhand?

ASG: Typing [laughs]. Good lord!

7. What’s a piece of writing advice you never want to hear again?

ASG: Kill your darlings.

8. What’s a piece of writing advice you think everyone needs to hear?

ASG: Stop while the iron is hot. So in the middle of a great paragraph, if you’re near the end of your day, stop right there because then the next day is so easy.

9. Realism or surrealism?

ASG: Surrealism. Who wouldn’t choose surrealism?

10. Favorite and least favorite film adaptation of a book:

ASG: The Hours is my favorite film adaptation. I just couldn’t believe they pulled it off. Least favorite is A Wrinkle in Time.

11. What’s your favorite comfort snack?

ASG: Apparently it’s clementines. I have a lot of peels next to me.

12. Edit as you go or shitty first draft?

ASG: A combination. I edit as I go and it always turns out to be a shitty first draft.

13. How did you meet your agent?

ASG: She read my first novel and contacted me because I was without an agent. I saw a couple agents, and I asked her, “If I call you, will you answer the call? Or will you say you’re gonna call back later?” She said, “Of course I’ll answer.”

14. Best advice for pushing through writer’s block?

ASG: Write anything. Anything at all. Even take a walk and write down things you see on the street. It doesn’t have to be about the novel . . . It will turn out to be about the novel. Block means that you need to go somewhere else, and you discover where you go by just rewriting, even.

15. What’s your relationship to being edited?

ASG: I love it and hate it. I need to be coddled and praised and flattered and manipulated into doing what I know is necessary.

16. Book club or writing group?

ASG: Book club . . . I’m in a poetry book club that’s been meeting every Saturday for six years. That’s pretty wonderful. It’s an easy book club because poems are short and we do the same poem for like five weeks.

17. The writer who made you want to write:

ASG: Well, I wanted to write when I was really young, so I will say Richard Adams, Watership Down.

18. How do you know when you’ve reached the end?

ASG: Oh, I know what the end is going to be when I start writing the book. So I can’t wait. It’s such a wonderful downhill moment when you’re like, I know exactly what I’m gonna do.

19. Writing with music or in silence?

ASG: Silence. Sometimes if I’m in a cafe, I put on Philip Glass.

20. Describe your writing space.

ASG: A little messy. Incredibly messy. There’s a pile of books to my left that are the books I think can help me write the book I’m working on, and a couch that I can nap on.

21. How do you keep your favorite writers close to you?

ASG: I keep a copy of Proust. I have one on my computer and . . . because I live between Italy and the United States, I have copies in both houses because you can’t carry that stuff around. But if I need it, I have it there.

22. What’s the last indie bookstore you went to?

ASG: Booksmith, yesterday . . . I bought Ayelet Waldman’s novel A Perfect Hand.

23. Outside of literature, what are you obsessed with?

ASG: Fashion. Everyone needs something; they know baseball statistics, or the intricacies of politics, or something outside of the writing world. I like to look at secondhand clothes.