Ian Frazier
Ian Frazier
Ian Frazieris an American writer and humorist. He wrote the 1989 non-fiction history Great Plains, 2010's non-fiction travelogue Travels in Siberia, and worked as a writer and humorist for The New Yorker...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNon-Fiction Author
Date of Birth21 June 1951
CountryUnited States of America
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America to me is so varied and exciting. I always feel nostalgia for the place I'm not in, and then I get there and find myself in a traffic jam going into the Lincoln Tunnel, and I think, 'God, why was I romanticizing this part of the country?' I think it has to do with the romantic, unrealistic temperament.
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On two or three book tours, I have visited bookstores in the Mall of America and signed copies of my books and introduced myself to store employees who I hope will sell them.
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I would hate to see the idea of freedom disappear, and I wonder if maybe it will.
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I believe that when Crazy Horse was killed, something more than a man's life was snuffed out.
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With reporting, if you work hard, you can usually pull something out. But writing humor doesn't respond to working hard, necessarily. I mean, you could just sit there and look at the page all day and maybe something will come.
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You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.
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Russia has always had a global history. Global history is a bummer. You suffer invasions of all different kinds. And Russia was not defended against them.
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I think Indians dress better than anyone, but I don't want to imitate more than a detail or two; I prefer my clothes humdrum and inconspicuous, and a cowboy hat just doesn't work for me.
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I suppose anybody just losing it and sputtering curses is pretty funny. But I think it would be more of a challenge, much more of a challenge, to make a cursing dad funny.
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When I go to Indian reservations in the West, and especially to the Pine Ridge Reservation, I sometimes feel unsure where to put my foot when I open the car door. The very ground is different from where I usually stand. There are fewer curbs, fewer sidewalks, and almost no street signs, mailboxes, or leashed dogs.
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I was friends with Russians who said I should see Russia. I went there in '93 and it was so exciting, and I went to Siberia and had a great time.
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Writing humor for me is more like a watchful-ness. You have to watch. When you say something funny, or someone else does, it's more like you wait for the piece.
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To me, a bag in a tree is like a flag of chaos, and when I remove it, I'm capturing the flag of the other side. In the end, it doesn't matter how ironic or serious or even effective on a larger scale bag snagging may be.
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Once, America's size in the imagination was limitless. After Europeans settled and changed it, working from the coasts inland, its size in the imagination shrank.