Call me a fan. The week, no, the day David Means's new story collection, The Secret Goldfish, came out, I rode the number 8 bus to Powell's and purchased a copy. If you are not familiar with Means, stop reading this interview right away and head for your local bookseller. While you're there, also pick up Assorted Fire Events (winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award). I can do nothing but sing the praises of Means's work: the deep layering of character, the clear intensity of emotion (the mess of life and love and death), the ambition of his formal risks, and the muscular lyricism of his sentences. Only a handful of other writers (Maxwell, Flannery O'Connor, Paley, Munro, Salter, Dybek, MacLeod) bring me the same sort of pleasure. -Jay Ponteri

Loggernaut Reading Series: With stories like "Lighting Man," "A Visit From Jesus," "Dustman Appearances to Date," "Elyria Man," and "What They Did," you seem to be remaking the American myth, writing a kind of hybrid that embodies certain characteristics of the tale (fantastic flourishes, natural disasters, grotesque details, voice) while also remaining loyal to literary storytelling (which strives for complexity, for deeply realized characters). What about the folktale is so alluring to you?

David Means: I wish I could say, with a straight face, that I'm remaking the American myth. But the stories were all written at different times and under different conditions. There were times when I was working on the stories that I felt myself began to narrow my vision down, and to limit myself somehow. I was thinking a lot about the country, about certain spots that seemed to be waiting for narrative, but then that's nothing new. Sometimes the stories just demanded to be written that way, or rewritten into forms that might seem close to folk. The style and form came out of the digging, the work itself. I'd say they became hybrids as a secondary aftermath. I just wanted to tell good stories, full-hearted, and in a way that pleased me in the end. When you think about it, there really is a fine line between the short story and the folktale, anyway. I'm thinking here about Cheever's story, "The Swimmer," and a lot of Borges, and Singer, and Isaac Babel. There's a folkloric element to the form itself, to the brevity, to the weight the small things have to carry.

LRS: Natural disasters and human disasters (along with the grief such disasters bring) recur throughout your work. What draws you to these disasters as a writer? As a human?

Means: I'm not sure. Each story is a different case. Mainly, I'm just looking for story and for my vision. I don't set out to intentionally write dark stories, or to court disaster, or to put characters through hell. As a matter of fact, I'd say it's the other way around. It pains me to no end to see how much stupid suffering there is in the world, much of it needless. On the other hand, when a story goes in that direction, I want to get in deep and examine the hard places, the weak joints, the moments when my characters open up, revealing—how do you use this phrase without sounding silly?—the human condition, the secret complexity, the elemental moments.

LRS: Related to this—your work deals with lost, angry characters, often down on their luck, who turn to violence as a means of survival, yet the moments you choose to explore within these characters' lives tend to be more reflective and quiet. This creates compelling tension between form and content. I wonder what other writers (poets included) influenced your inclination towards more meditative fiction.

Means: I have to believe, and I hope it's true, that it comes out of tenderness and compassion for the kind of people I want to write about. Good stories are often found around the margins, the edges, and I agree with Frank O'Connor who said the story form tends to naturally lean towards the submerged, the lost, those on the edge. Although you can find plenty of stories that disprove his theory. I can't say much more than that about why I might be interested in lost, angry characters, without getting into personal stuff, and I'd rather not go into autobiography. Let's just say I've had some firsthand experience with those on the edge. Including family members. The work is the work, and it stands on its own apart from my own life. On the subject of influences, it's hard to list the influences because when I start I tend to start rambling: the Bible, the Zohar, Thomas Merton, Isaac Babel, Chekhov and Hemingway, Faulkner, Beckett, Joyce, Raymond Carver, Denis Johnson, Alice Munro, William Trevor, James Agee, William Maxwell, Kafka, and many, many others. I'd also say I'm hugely influenced by music, both rock and classical, and the way songs work, hanging there, limited, only partly finished, but seemingly full, too.

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