From the Publisher
Arjun Basu''s fiction collection is a wry and consistently
provocative book which exposes the realities beneath social
conventions. Squishy asks: Do you still love me? Do you want fries
with that? Do I look fat?
Life is full of small moments that define us, tangents that lead
us to unexpected places, bad decisions and no decisions with
repercussions you couldn't possibly predict. This is the world of
Squishy, where subtle truths emerge from just beneath our seeming
contentment and happiness, our layered social obligations. An
aspiring actress fast approaching her best before date, a world
weary travel writer, a disgraced ballplayer suffering the lingering
effects of a wardrobe malfunction - all characters aware of life's
promise and impossibility, all tempted by something just beyond,
something surely delicious. Full of sharp urbane dialogue and
characters that always manage to act in a way that celebrates their
humanity, this is a confident, stunning debut collection from a
powerful and original voice.
From the Author
Q&A with Arjun Basu
This is your first foray into fiction. How did you come up
with the idea for this work?
An editor walks into a bar….Sounds like the beginning of a bad
joke, I know, but it's true. The editor in this case is Dave
McGimpsey, poet, pop culture critic, guitarist, essayist and
friend. He had called me and said "I need to ask you something.
Wanna meet for a beer?" Sounds ominous - guys don't talk this way.
So a few days later I go to the bar. And . . . an editor walks in.
He asks me if I want to write a book. He says think about it. I say
ok. And now, the book is out. Writing the stories (there were three
that had already been written and published), I didn't set out to
create an over arching theme. But as I thought about what I wanted
to write, a theme developed, a loose theme about chance and choice
and the collision between the two. Life isn't black and white. No
matter how much control we want to or try to exert on our lives, we
can't. Life is more gray. Or, using my word, squishy.
What was the creative process like for you?
I have a full time job. When I was writing the stories, I was
editing a magazine (enRoute) and I was overseeing a dozen other
editorial projects. I don't know how I managed to get this thing
done to be honest. I wrote the first draft of the entire book in
about four months. I used any spare time I had: mornings, evenings,
weekends. Each story had me lost in a different world during its
creation. After the first two stories were on paper, I had a very
productive evening where I mapped out, in very basic form, another
five or six. I had one line synopses or situations down on paper,
four of which ended up in the book. I've never been one to plan out
my fiction much - especially short stories. But the process worked.
As an editor, I understand the importance of deadlines. At least I
like to think so. Dave had given me a deadline and that date loomed
over my head with a force that I found kind of surprising. I handed
in my manuscript with a day to spare. And then the real work began.
Who did you read as a kid, and how did these first forays
into reading fiction affect your sensibilities as a
writer?
I wasn't a huge reader as a kid. I liked dinosaurs and whales and
space (I still do). I had lots of books - I was a big Dr. Seuss
fan. Charlie Brown. I got into the Hardy Boys. The latter aren't
squishy at all, though Dr. Seuss and Charlie Brown both, come to
think of it, celebrate squishiness, albeit in simple ways.
What are you reading right now? I don't have much time to
read. It's one of the ironies of my life. I just finished an
advance review copy of Mark Abley's The Prodigal Tongue:
Dispatches from the Future of English. I'm in the middle of
The Falling Man, by Don Dellilo. I have four or five books
on my nightstand and another two in my office, waiting to be read.
Do you write with a certain audience in mind? Who is your
"ideal reader"?
I write for myself. When I'm working on a magazine, I have an
audience in mind. An ideal reader. But when I'm writing fiction,
it's for me. If other people connect with my writing, that's a
bonus.
Name one person in your life who profoundly infuenced your
work, and why did you choose this person?
Raymond Carver. Does that age me? Reading Carver, I understood,
finally, that art exists in every moment of every life. Art doesn't
have to be "big." A real story, no matter how seemingly
insignificant, exists everywhere. You just have to look for it.
Carver influenced me profoundly. My son's middle name is Carver.
Who is your favourite protagonist in a work of fiction or
poetry, and why?
Frank Bascombe. I think. The protagonist in Richard Ford's The
Sportswriter is a world weary kind of guy, someone who has
been punched more than once by life, though much of his weariness
is self-inflicted. Though I'm not entirely sure about Bascombe: by
the time Independence Day came around, I wasn't interested in him
anywhere. He'd grown too melancholy - to me, at least, he was the
same person as he was in The Sportswriter. I have to throw
in Holden Caulfield in here as well. Maybe because he was the first
character who voiced some of the same concerns I was feeling - of
course, I read him when I was 15. And The Lorax. Yes, he's the
first pop environmentalist but later I also saw him as the
personification of William Buckley's definition of a conservative:
who want to sit athwart history and yell "stop!" Ironic, then, that
conservatives don't naturally embrace environmentalism. I'm not a
conservative. But I can see The Lorax in that vein. In any case,
The Lorax is a tremendous character - his defeat at the end is our
collective loss.
Tell us a little about the overarching theme of your work,
and why you felt compelled to explore it.
I've always been interested by the tangents life takes. That
Sliding Doors movie explored this theme and I wanted to like that
movie but just couldn't. I'm not a Gwyneth Paltrow fan, I guess -
and all Hollywood movies set in London seem false to me. Back to
tangents: we're like pinballs in a pinball machine. Minute moments
or insignificant decisions change our lives without our knowing it.
That's what the stories in Squishy are about mostly. An example:
Elliott Spitzer. Getting caught wasn't the squishy moment. The
first time he decided to call the escort service, or even the first
time he thought about using an escort at all - which may have
occurred years before he actually picked up the phone - that was
the squishy moment. Everything that transpired started there.
That's the moment I'm interested in.