Rick Moody
Rick Moody
Hiram Frederick "Rick" Moody IIIis an American novelist and short story writer best known for the 1994 novel The Ice Storm, a chronicle of the dissolution of two suburban Connecticut families over Thanksgiving weekend in 1973, which brought him widespread acclaim, became a bestseller, and was made into a feature film of the same title. Many of his works have been praised by fellow writers and critics alike, and in 1999 The New Yorker chose him as one of America's...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth18 October 1961
CountryUnited States of America
I suppose that the sympathetic/unsympathetic debate about characters sometimes feels to me like a misstatement of purpose. I always think of truly complex characters are falling between the cracks in that debate.
I always feel I have made unfilmable books. I even felt that way about a book of mine that was later made into a movie. But my wife, who has made two films, thinks this one would make a very original film. I'm all for original films.
I am a better writer for having fewer demons, and I am more curious about the world and the people in it. So those of you thinking you might need your demons in order to be creative: I beg to differ.
Tangled in one another's arms and nine times out of ten the things you think about a person make it impossible to touch them.
I think literature is best when it's voicing what we would prefer not to talk about.
I think first-person narrators should be complex, because otherwise the first-person is too shallow and predictable. I like a first-person narrator who can't totally be trusted.
My letters to Pat are apologies. I was the oldest. I should have been there for him.
Nonfiction that uses novelistic devices and strategies to shape the work. That's material that I really like.
My grandfather was a newspaper publisher and his paper had all the comics in NYC, so some of my earliest memories are of reading the family paper and heading straight for the comics insert.
What happened was that after I wrote The Ice Storm I had a period where I was blocked for a little bit, before I wrote Purple America.
What genre it falls under is only of interest later.
When prose gets too stylized and out of control - and Stein is sometimes a good example - when you don't know what the hell is going on, then it's kind of boring.
It made it more personal and easier to talk.
We ran hard and had a few injuries. We just didn't have anything go well this week.