Skewed Lens: A Conversation with Diane Cook
Forest Oliver
Calling in from her Brooklyn abode, we’re lucky to catch Diane Cook in the middle of writing what will be her second novel, the follow up to 2020’s acclaimed The New Wilderness. Based on her first two books, you can bet this one will get weird in all the right ways. Consistently funny, violent, and perverse, her writing skinny-dips between nihilism, and hope.
Diane Cook. Photo courtesy of Katherine Rondina.
Perhaps gleaned from her years producing This American Life, Cook’s stories perfectly capture that desire to connect with people. The desire for companionship.
Occasionally, there’s a little adolescent cannibalism mixed in too.
Throughout our Zoom call, she drops little breadcrumbs about her current project, while giving us a peak into the inner mechanisms of a writer treading real life. We talk everything from geography, to writing rituals, to what writing means in a post-pandemic world.
Forest Oliver: Paper books, Kindle, or Audible?
Diane Cook: I’ve started listening to books, which I never used to do. But when the pandemic started, I had a second child. Since then, I just don’t have the time or space to have a book in my hand. For me, it’s either a kid’s book or, I’m just too busy. So, whenever I have the chance, I’m just listening to something.
FO: Has reading changed since the pandemic? Has writing?
DC: For me, yes. Anecdotally, there’s just not a lot of mental space for reading. That’s what I’ve heard from a few writers.
It’s embarrassing. When you talk about being a writer, you’re usually saying “I’m also a reader.” Like, to be a writer you kind of have to be a reader. But the past three years, I just don’t read anymore. I don’t know what it is…no time? Too intense?
For me, you didn’t read unless your job was reading adjacent. You went to work, came home, you did the things you had to do to survive in the world: eat, sleep, work, make money, and then outside of that, you attempt reading. [During the pandemic], the boundaries between all those things [became] more porous. My mind wanders more now. Also, I never listened to podcasts before, but I started listening to podcasts the past year and a half.
FO: Do podcasts count as reading?
DC: No way! I think [podcasting] is the way I avoid reading. I don’t want to read. It’s weird, I love reading—I believe in it—but I’m avoiding it for some reason. Then sometimes I get a chance to really dive into something, and I love it, you know? It’s so good! But it’s very hard for me to read in a disjointed way.
The times that I’ve really enjoyed reading are when I have had a day to myself, or a day traveling, where I’m not with my family, or don’t have to do anything for anyone else, and I just get to lay there and read all day. That’s the only time I get to enjoy reading right now.
FO: If the book you’re reading isn’t grabbing you, at what point do you ditch it?
DC: I’ll give [a book] a good solid chance. But I will ditch a book. And I don’t want to say it’s because the book is bad. Some books are written for some people and not for others. Even when it’s a great book, not everyone is going to love everything. It’s rare that I ditch it within the first 50 pages. Depending on the length, I want to give a book a quarter.
A lot of times, I’ll really be enjoying a book, but then I find another thing I get into, and I kind of leave it. So, there’s a lot of things in progress, but they’ve been in progress awhile. Then one day I’ll be like, I was reading this, I really liked it, what happened? I’m not monogamous with a book. I jump around.
FO: You’ve moved around a lot in your life. How are you liking New York? Does it feel like home?
DC: No. (laughter) Not to me. I mean probably, if a place feels like home, it’s not where I live. I lived in Portland, Maine, before I moved for college, before it was known for its bakeries. I moved a lot when I was a kid, and I always wanted to live in New York. You get older and it gets harder. Then you’re like, why am I doing this to myself? We did move to California, for like three years, and that was great. It cleansed our palette. I do miss California sometimes…quite a bit.
I’m writing a book right now that takes place in Big Sur, and so I definitely have California on my mind.
FO: One thing I love about your collection, Man V. Nature, is that it’s perfectly weird. You don’t shy away from the bizarre or taboo.
DC: I find it more interesting to process real things through a skewed lens. It piques my interest more. If I’m thinking of other mediums — television, movies, whatever — I like things to be exaggerated. I like pushing to an extreme. I think it’s easier for people to learn from that. We’re humans, we’re drawn to a spectacle of some sort, and I feel like pushing things to an extreme is a version of that spectacle. And we really pay attention. I do anyway.
I mean, yeah, I have a whole story about little boys eating each other! Although now that seems kind of tame honestly. When I wrote [“The Not-Needed Forest”] I was like, can you write this?
FO: Do you practice any writing rituals?
DC: No. (laughter) The best thing I can do is leave the house. I rent a little desk, a little workspace. First come, first served. You come in with your laptop, you leave with your laptop, and sit at any seat that’s open. It gets me out of the house. And I’ve been doing these things called “Pomodoros.” It’s timed writing, where you only focus on that. It’s not like free-writing where you don’t stop writing, but if I’m having trouble focusing, at least I can focus for this five minutes, or at least I can focus for this ten minutes. Then you get your writing done in these little bursts. That’s been working for me fairly well.
FO: Are you the type to write every day?
DC: I don’t believe you have to write every day. I’m not one of those people. But I do think you got to be in it in some way. I had teachers that say, “Touch it every day…Interface with it.” You can interact and touch it without having to sit at your desk and do it. It can be in your head. I feel like I have this floaty part of my brain that’s not in my present, and it’s actually the part of my brain that’s with the story. Ideally, I’d be working while I’m in that state, but I can’t always do that. Then the ritual — if I had any — would be to give myself at least ten minutes to sit down and say, “You can do a lot in ten minutes. Just give yourself the ten minutes to think about it.
FO: Does music play a part in your process?
DC: I haven’t been listening to much music this time around. For my first two books I listened to a few instrumental songs on repeat. I used to work at This American Life and scored a lot of pieces, and listening to some of those songs would help me conjure emotion when I was writing. It helped me visualize. I should get back in the habit of listening again. I found it very helpful, or at least inspiring.
FO: What’s your favorite line from a book?
DC: Any book? Oh my gosh. Currently, I’d have to say — only because it’s resonating with me personally — is from a poem by Jane Kenyon, [“Wood Thrush”] from [the collection] Having It Out with Melancholy:
What hurt me so terribly
all my life until this moment?
My favorite lines from books are always personal, as opposed to artistic. Sentence structure or writing-wise, I don’t really care about writing — the craft of it — I mean, I care, obviously. I’m almost never like, Wow, look at that sentence! It’s always about the meaning.
FO: Do you find more inspiration from poetry than fiction?
DC: No. I have some strong connections to some poems and some poets, but I find poetry often a little inscrutable. That’s not the way my brain works. It’s funny, I don’t respond to fantastic elements in poetry like I do in fiction.
Diane’s website is: Dianemariecook.com. You can read that Jane Kenyon poem here.
