The Questionnaire: Jenny Hendrix

By The QuestionnaireMarch 26, 2012

The Questionnaire: Jenny Hendrix

How do you get up in the morning?


Coffee, usually.


 


Do you succumb to nostalgia? 


Yes, though mostly in the form of John Banville-ish yearning for a future that resembles an imaginary version of the past.


 


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


I let the piece be the length it wants to be, and then whittle it, usually down, to size.


 


How do you feel about your Wikipedia entry?


The Wikipedia page in my name belongs to a 25-year-old "entrepreneur, model, and pornographic actress" who once won an AVN Award for Best Three-Way Sex Scene for her film The Jenny Hendrix Anal Experience.  This circumstance has occasionally proven awkward, but I have a feeling that longevity's on my side.


 


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


Oh, too many choices. How about: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Geoff Dyer, and Jules Renard.   I'd also like to hang out with Tom Waits.


 


Best piece of advice you ever received?


Figure out what your weakness as a writer is, and make that your strength.


 


Disciplined or hot dog?


I'm a vegetarian so... tofu dog? 


 


What's your favorite negative emotion?


Self-pity, followed closely by impotent rage.


 


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


My "study" tends to migrate from desk to bed to couch to table to floor to park to bar to desk again.  I suppose it would best be described as "labyrinthine." 


 


What is your go-to shoe?


Cowboy boots, Toms, or, in my ideal world, that pair of silver 50s-era suede-soled dancing shoes languishing at the back of my closet. 


 


What's your poison?


Bourbon, rocks.


 


What's your problem?


Inertia. 


 


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


Which one? I have a whole library.


 


What are you so afraid of?


That invisible library above.  Not doing enough.  


 


Do you require a high thread count?


Yes please.


 


Who reads you first?  


Me, because I'm the most critical of my work. My boyfriend, because he's not.


 


Sexy and dangerous, or brilliant and kind?


I suppose I'd rather be thought of as brilliant and kind. Though everyone wants to be sexy.   


 


What character or story haunts you?


The ones trying to piece themselves together in my mind.


 


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?


I subscribe to the wisdom of Lin Yutang: "The best posture is not lying flat on the bed, but being upholstered with big soft pillows at an angle of thirty degrees with either one arm or both arms placed behind the back of one's head. In this posture any poet can write immortal poetry, any philosopher can revolutionize human thought, and any scientist can make epoch-making discoveries." 


 


 

LARB Contributor

The Questionnaire is, as her name suggests, a multifarious and mysterious interlocutor. Chameleon-like, her questions change their color as they approach each new interviewee.

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