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
book books last
I'd read books in Russian, and they would take me forever. I wanted to write a book that would last and would not be superficial. Siberian-travel writing is its own genre.
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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.
funny humor
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.
bag capturing effective ironic larger matter remove scale serious
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.
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I'm one of those people who happen to like trees. I don't know why - I just do. As a kid, I loved to climb them. The distant, upper branches, especially, were celestial and alluring.
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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.
freedom maybe
I would hate to see the idea of freedom disappear, and I wonder if maybe it will.
believe life
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.
along books cross dozens drive drove great knew people taking talk wrote
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.