Philipp Meyer
Philipp Meyer
Philipp Meyeris an American fiction writer, and is the author of the novels American Rust and The Son, as well as short stories published in McSweeney’s Quarterly, The Iowa Review, and Esquire UK. Meyer is the recipient of a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship. He grew up in Hampden, a blue-collar Baltimore, Maryland, neighborhood often featured in the films of John Waters. His mother is an artist; his father is an electrician turned college biology instructor. Meyer considers his major literary influences...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
CountryUnited States of America
I couldn't understand what was important about school. Dropping out was the first adult decision I made. If I ever have kids, I would hate for them to drop out. But I wasn't a rebel. I never cared to be against school. I just wanted to do what I wanted to do.
I was a bit of a delinquent growing up, a very poor student - I nearly failed several grades before dropping out of high school and getting a G.E.D. But I still read a lot. Thrillers and war novels, mostly, along with the occasional literary novel from my parents' bookshelf.
Nothing prepares you for making art except making art. You have to do it to get better.
I just assume that I'll fail at something for several years - that I'll try my hardest and still fail for several years. With writing, that turned out to be wrong. I tried my hardest and failed for about fifteen years.
I wanted to think about our creation myth; you know, what is the fundamental story that defines America. And it certainly is the West.
What art and books do at their best is investigate why we are the way we are.
After I finished college, I got a job on Wall Street as a derivatives trader, but after a couple years of it, I was calling in sick in order to work on my novel.
Since I quit banking, all my major life decisions, when they could, have revolved around writing.
There's a reason that all societies and cultures and small bands of humans engage in myth-making. Fundamentally, it is to help us understand ourselves.
When you take the fact that you're loved for granted, it frees your mind to go after every other thing there is.
If you're always thinking about someone else's work, about the tradition you're working in, how can you possibly make anything good?
Whenever I'm interested in something, I make sure I'm really good at it.
When you look at 'Grapes of Wrath,' the weakest moments are those in which Steinbeck is spouting a political idea directly at the reader. The book's real power comes from its slower, broader movement.
When we think of the myth of the settling of the West, this is our creation myth. But because we think of it as mythology, not as real people interacting with other real people, we ignore the cost of human lives and blood.