Victor LaValle
Victor LaValle
Victor LaValleis an American author who was raised in the Flushing and Rosedale neighborhoods of Queens, New York. He is the author of a short-story collection, Slapboxing with Jesus and three novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine and The Devil in Silver. LaValle writes fiction primarily, though he has also written essays and book reviews for GQ, Essence Magazine, The Fader, and The Washington Post, among others...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth3 February 1972
CountryUnited States of America
Social media give me the privilege of learning about more people than I could meet in my whole life. Taken together, the Internet reads like the grandest character-driven novel humanity has ever known. Not much plot, though.
In the past, a writer had to go outside and get to know others before learning about their work, but the Internet has made humanity more accessible for misanthropes like me. I read blogs, tweets, Facebook posts and Reddit threads where people detail their jobs.
'The Sundial' is written with the kind of humor that would make a guillotine laugh.
The horror genre is vast and full of brilliance. Stephen King, Shirley Jackson, Herman Melville, the book of Esther. I'll happily join that list.
The devil that stayed with me most vividly was the one from the cover of Iron Maiden's 'Number of the Beast' album.
Since Queens is the most ethnically diverse plot of land on Earth, we had tenants from all over the globe. The whole world in one building.
People use the notion of God to bully people and hurt people, when we can use the concept to respect and uplift.
No one ever knows if a book is good until they read the book.
My three obsessions are mental illness, horror and religion.
Lumpy and lazy; I aspired to lethargy. In the second year of university, I missed half my classes just because I couldn't pull myself out of bed.
Lonely women destroy themselves; lonely men threaten the world.
It's tough to write beautifully about ugly things, but Mitchell S. Jackson makes it look easy.
In the end, what's any good reader really hoping for? That spark. That spell. That journey.
In fiction, it's a big challenge to keep the reader in one place for so long.