Darin Strauss
Darin Strauss
Darin Straussis a best-selling American writer whose work has earned a number of awards, including, among numerous others, a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Strauss's most recent book is Half a Life, which won the 2011 NBCC Award for memoir/autobiography...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth1 March 1970
CountryUnited States of America
brooklyn feeling hands identical lives perhaps slide writer writers
Perhaps it's because a writer lives in Brooklyn that he'd want to get away from it. It can be very sustaining, this community of writers - sometimes it's the feeling of many hands giving you a boost. But all that identical ambition can be choking, too. The many hands slide up to your throat.
detail diary matters memoirs memory percent private rarely unreliable
Memoirs are - memory is - rarely 100 percent accurate. Any autobiography is a construct, ballpark, even unnatural. Private diaries, too, can be unreliable - a detail that matters only if the diary is read.
chooses freedom novelist permission
The novelist has permission to do whatever she chooses to supercharge whatever's interesting in her story. This is also known as freedom.
crazy thinking perfectly-normal
I think each family has a funhouse logic all its own, and in that distortion,in that delusion, all behavior can seem both perfectly normal and crazy.
beef great learned mile national per salads square theaters
In Minneapolis, I learned that there are more theaters per square mile than in any U.S. city but New York, and we also had great Midwestern beef in our salads in a plaza overlooking the national headquarters of Target, Inc.
guitarist jam musician perhaps slide trucks
I'm no fan of jam bands. You can take your Gov't Mule, your Phish, your Rusted Root. But Derek Trucks is a special musician - perhaps the greatest slide guitarist who ever lived.
failure followed letter might
The starkest rejection letter might be followed by a million-dollar advance. Don't let rejection start to look the same as failure.
afflicted brothers half novel profound spent sympathy term three whom
I spent three and a half years writing the novel 'Chang & Eng,' about the conjoined brothers for whom the term 'Siamese twins' was contrived, and when I think of these afflicted people, my only emotion is one of profound sympathy.
best novels share
Even the best novels have their share of stinker lines.
crowded folding guys pads policeman scribbling supporting witnesses
A tragedy's first act is crowded with supporting players, policeman scribbling in pads and making radio calls, witnesses crimping their faces, EMS guys folding equipment.
blank constant dictated freelance hard paths terror understand
Constant rejection. No security. Career paths being dictated by freelance reviewers. And of course, the terror of the writing desk, of the blank page. Why is it so hard for our non-writer friends to understand this - that it's a job?
bad hurts
You get a bad review with a novel, and it hurts. But I imagine if you get a bad review with a memoir, it hurts more because you can always say, 'Well, they didn't like my characters,' but when you're the character, it's like, 'Oh, yeah, they actually didn't like me.'
people suppose
I suppose that, for most of us, the fascination of conjoined twins is that such people can serve as symbols.
work worked york
I thought, 'I'll come back to New York. I worked for the 'Aspen Times' when I lived in Aspen. I'll work for the 'New York Times' when I live in New York.' It didn't work out that way.