The Questionnaire: Lindsay Reckson

By The QuestionnaireMarch 26, 2012

The Questionnaire: Lindsay Reckson
How do you get up in the morning?

"By the raised finger of the dawn," and usually before the alarm.


 

Do you succumb to nostalgia? 

As the political theorist Wendy Brown puts it, "what if we let our objects fly?"


 

What is your go-to shoe?

What's your poison?

What's your problem?

For me these are all variations on the same question.


 

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

What are you so afraid of?

These are the same question, especially if you'll revise the first to read "title of the book you're probably going to write, and would kind of like to get around to."


The title is Realist Ecstasy.


 

Who reads you first?

My husband reads my face; my writing group reads my writing.


 

Sexy and dangerous, or brilliant and kind?

MWF/sexy and dangerous. TTH/brilliant and kind. Weekends off.


 

What character or story haunts you?

Olive Chancellor in James's The Bostonians. She's fastidious, fanatical, queer, and brilliant, and her (spoiler!) self-immolation at the end of the novel telescopes an enormous history of women being beside themselves as an act and affect of politics. Spooky.


 

What are the questions we should have asked, had we known? 

My sentiments exactly.


 

 

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.

Share

Did you know LARB is a reader-supported nonprofit?


LARB publishes daily without a paywall as part of our mission to make rigorous, incisive, and engaging writing on every aspect of literature, culture, and the arts freely accessible to the public. Help us continue this work with your tax-deductible donation today!