LARB Radio Hour: Opening Up with William E. Jones

Author and artist William E. Jones joins LARB to discuss his first novel I'm Open to Anything

By LARB Radio HourApril 19, 2019

Author and artist William E. Jones joins co-hosts Eric Newman, Medaya Ocher, and Kate Wolf to discuss his first novel I'm Open to Anything. In the midst of a successful career as both an artist and a writer of non-fiction, William explains what inspired this change, one clearly situated in the Los Angeles of the late '80s, which William encountered after a childhood in the declining rust belt and college on the East Coast. Much like in his writing, insights pour forth as William reflects on the difference between writing and making art, his contempt for sexual ellipses in literature and film, his passion for both explicit sexual realism and literary pranks, and why these inform his love of Denis Diderot.

Also, Poet Tommy Pico returns to recommend Tommy Orange's novel There There, and clarify who's who.