The Questionnaire: Malcolm Harris

How do you get up in the morning?

Most of the time.

 

Do you succumb to nostalgia?

No.

 

Do you write long and cut, or short and backfill?

No.

 

How do you feel about your Wikipedia entry?

It’s in that weird zone where my name is red. I’m mentioned in the page for The Coming Insurrection, and that seems good enough for now.

 

Lunch with any three people who ever lived; who do you invite?

John Berger, Jeanette Winterson, Kristen Stewart. Dead people don’t answer invites that well. Not that John Berger does either, but a guy can dream.

 

Best piece of advice you ever received?

N/A

 

Disciplined or hot dog?

Wut?

 

Have you ever been defeated by a genre?

Slam poetry.

 

Which classic author would you like to see kicked out of the pantheon?

I think we could do without the novelists for a little while.

Are you okay with blood?

Yes.

 

Who is your imagined audience? Does it at all coincide with the real one?

God I hope so. Really smart and curious 17 year olds with access to Wikipedia and a conflicted relationship to the legitimacy conferred on writers by publications.

 

What country would you want to be exiled in?

Canada, easiest place for cross-border raids.

 

What’s your favorite negative emotion?

 Righteous hate.

Is your study neat, or, like John Muir’s, is your desk and floor covered in “lateral, medial, and terminal moraines”?

I keep my room neat.

 

What is your go-to shoe?

 

What's your poison?

Weed, cigarettes, and coffee, in that order.

 

What's your problem?

I love bad bitches, that's my fucking problem.

 

Title of the book that you're probably never going to write, but would kind of like to get around to?

Prometheus in Hell.

 

What are you so afraid of?

More of the same.

 

How long can you go without putting paw to keyboard?

I sleep 5-6 hours a night, is that what this question is about?

 

Do you require a high thread count?

No, but thanks to an ex I currently have a set of very soft sheets and I don’t hate it.

 

Who reads you first?

Whoever’s editing it for publication, I generally don’t share drafts otherwise.

 

Sexy and dangerous, or brilliant and kind?

Sexy and dangerous.

 

What character or story haunts you?

 

Does plot matter?

Yes.

 

Does age matter?

Yes.

 

Do you prefer to write standing, or must you lie prone in a field of dandelions with a steno pad and a good pen? Or what?

Or what. I write at a small desk in a small corner of my small room in my small apartment. I am claustrophilic.

 

Who is the author you'd most like to impersonate online?

George Saunders.

 

Is there a literary community?

Unfortunately.

 

What’s the question or questions we should have asked, had we known?

No fair having your last question be a question for more questions. That’s against the genie rules in Aladdin.