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
There are times when I need to dig up the diagram for a type of satellite dish, for instance, but I just can't seem to phrase this need correctly. As a result, I'm inundated by advertising for satellite television and people's online customer reviews of such services when, in fact, I was only trying to figure out what a certain component is called.
The people I am most interested in are the ones on the edge of losing everything and falling into the last bit of despair. I'm trying to write about how people exist on that edge and how they can come back.
I'm always trying to make myself laugh. I'm the most enthusiastic audience I'm likely to find, so if it doesn't make me smile then it probably won't work on you. The jokes that only make me shrug get cut.
'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.