The incomparable Owen Egerton’s first collection of short stories, How Best to Avoid Dying, is back in print with a fabulous new cover! Huzzah! The Chicago Tribune said of this collection, “…Egerton…applies a laser focus to our search for the sacred, with results that are both darker and more divine.”
Owen is a veritable staple in Austin’s vibrant literary community, regularly leading the ruckus at One Page Salon at the Whip In and at assorted readings and performances about town. We’re looking forward to hosting an evening of our own with Owen this Thursday, March 6 at 7pm. He kindly agreed to answer a few questions for us in advance.
__________________________________________________________
BOOKPEOPLE: How Best to Avoid Dying was first published in 2007. Since then, you’ve written a couple of mighty fine novels (The Book of Harold; Everyone Says That At the End of the World). What prompted you to re-introduce How Best to Avoid Dying to the world?
OWEN EGERTON: The original publisher, Dalton Publishing, is no longer around and the collection was out of print. I have to thank Soft Skull Press for the idea of rereleasing the collection. They felt that my national readership has grown since the original version came out in ’07. I love this collection, so I was thrilled at their interest. It’s so fun to see the book back on shelves and being read.
BP: How did it feel coming back to those stories after they’ve been out in the world for seven years? Did you find yourself tweaking them? Doing any major rewrites? Or do they exist now largely as they did in 2007?
OE: The book is expanded. I’ve added four new stories that I wrote after How Best to Avoid Dying originally came out, but are thematically at home with the collection. The older stories I tried to let be. On revising older books Ray Bradbury once said “I don’t believe in tampering with any young writer’s material, especially when that young writer was once myself.” There’s some wisdom there. I’m a different writer than I was seven years ago – not better or worse, just different – and it would be foolish to try and force the stories of then into the voice of now. But I did do some tweaking – slight language work.
Over all I had an excellent time exploring these stories again. I had a lot of fun writing these stories – even the dark ones – and I have a lot fun revisiting them.
BP: The first time I saw you read I was totally bowled over by your performance (and totally bought the book, for the record). How does the experience of reading and live story telling inform your work as you write it? Do you spend a lot of time reading aloud as part of an editing process?
OE: Thanks! I do love reading stories aloud. It’s amazing what words tell us when they hit our ears and not just our eyes. And I learn so much from an audience’s reactions to a story. Many of my stories have their origin in a voice – I hear this person’s voice and I let them talk, often confess. And, yep, I do often talk aloud when writing and revising. Most days you’ll find me in a corner of a coffee shop hunched over my laptop mumbling away… people nearby change tables.
But I also work to make sure a story reads powerfully, working to ensure that the words, characters, and plots have power on the page without depending on a performance.
BP: You’ve been a performer and writer here in Austin for many years. There’s talk these days about the changing literary landscape of our town and the resurgence of a literary scene. Do you sense an evolution? How has the Austin lit scene evolved in your eyes over the years?
OE: I found the lit scene in Austin thrilling when I moved here in 1991, and it’s only continued to inspire me. So I would not say there’s a resurgence, only an ongoing growth. How amazing that we are home to Tim O’Brien, Sarah Bird, Stephen Harrigan, Amanda Eyre Ward, and Larry Wright; home to MFA programs at Texas State and the Michener Center attracting amazing talent both as teachers and students; home to the xeroxed zines, mold-breaking blogs, and nationally adored lit journals like American Short Fiction and Unstuck; home to the excellence in long-form journalism which is Texas Monthly; home to the heart-smart filmmaking of Richard Linklater, Kat Candler, and the Zellner Brothers; home to the genre bending delights of Doug Dorst and Manuel Gonzales. Austin has such a hot-spark spirit of creativity. You can feel it in the music, the murals, the food, the comedy, and the way people live their lives. Step into a random coffee shop or bar or backyard on any day and chances are you’ll find someone creating something wonderful.
All that said, I am curious to see as more writers choose Austin as a home and more presses like the brilliant A Strange Object are born here, if a recognizable Austin style develops in prose. What aspects of Austin will bubble up into the books created here?
BP: The last time you read at BookPeople, there was, among other things, a rapping portion to the evening. What kind of surprises and wonders can we expect this time around?
OE: Yes indeed. We’ll have Typewriter Rodeo composing personalized poems on vintage typewriters, some wine and beer and such, and a little performance centering around one of the stories. I’m pretty damn excited. John Erler (Master Pancake Theater), Tom Booker (The Institution Theater), and Jodi Egerton (Write Good Consulting) will be making a strange dream of mine come true!
BP: Obligatory bookseller question: What are you reading right now?
OE: Quite a few! I feel safer with several books in my bag. But let me limit my answer to Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, I Remain – an out of print collection of the letters of west coast poet Lew Welch I stumbled upon in a used book store, and Reflections on the Art of Living by Joseph Campbell.
___________________________
Catch Owen here at BookPeople this Thursday, March 6 at 7pm! We’re currently taking orders for signed, personalized copies of How Best to Avoid Dying via our website, bookpeople.com. We ship all over the world!
BookPeople 
Reblogged this on Owen Egerton.