Tin House: The narrator of Erased lives in an imagined town called St. Nils, but during the narrative he travels to Cleveland, Ohio, a real place. Why did you choose to move him from an imagined place to a real one? Why not two imagined places, or two real ones?

Jim Krusoe: All my characters seem to inhabit St. Nils at one time or another during their lives, so that part came easily. I stick them there because I’m not a naturalistic writer, and it’s helpful for me to use an unincorporated (so to speak) place setting. I did grow up in Cleveland, however, and left it when I went to college, so the Cleveland in Erased is as imaginary, in its way, as St. Nils, but there is also a note or two of truth: On the one hand, the years I spent in Ohio were the unhappiest of my life, but on the other, I think that for most people, including me, the place where they grow up becomes, when recollected, a kind of Eden, a magic world, because everything happens for the first time. Everything is fresh. Everything makes an impression. Somehow these two conflicting versions of Cleveland have merged inside this novel.

I finished the first draft of a novel this morning, and wow, is it ever bad. But in a good way, I think.

For such a short story, it took a long time to write it, what with the birth of my daughter and the loss of my job, and this, that, and the other thing, too. An earlier version of the opening chapter was in Pindeldyboz a while ago.

According to Cullberg, the artist’s profession involves a continual struggle for self-confidence and legitimacy. That was the case during my own crisis: how could I justify my desire to continue with my themes, even though they weren’t really making much more money for myself or for my publisher? How could I presume to claim that my subjects were meaningful, when the literary public wasn’t the least bit interested in them?

This narcissistic trauma was clearly a result of the fact that my great work had gone down the drain. I wasn’t recognised. Precisely because of my early experiences, this was the most devastating experience of all for me. Because I had to create some kind of narrative or frame of reference for my own artistry, I decided that I belonged to that group of artists who never tasted success while they were alive.

~ Sirpa Kähkönen

I used to write before I became an editor, but I don’t anymore. Not only does the journal take the majority of my free time — basically evenings and weekends, as my days are occupied in the development office of a much larger nonprofit — but also, seeing as much of what our peers are working on in a given year as we do, it becomes increasingly difficult to know what to add to that discussion. I can’t imagine myself producing anything that satisfies me the way a new issue of Caketrain does. I can’t imagine measuring up, by my own standards, to the work I’m putting out there. So I don’t write, and I feel okay about that.

@ HTMLGIANT