A gate with tinfoil on it

A gate with a towel draped over it

A gate with a towel draped over it with some anti-cat spray sprayed on it

A gate with a towel draped over it with some anti-cat spray sprayed on it with a ssscat in front of it

A gate with a towel draped over it with a Joan Miro matted poster propped up in in front of it

A new gate (upcoming)

A scat mat (upcoming; not endorsed by me, for the record)

The basement

You're willing to let one boatload of supplies through. Oh thank you. Don't do us any favors, OK? There are plenty of other countries who would love to get our help, who have benefited from it. Did you watch "Idol Gives Back"? Did you see the special after the tsunami? Just don't talk to Iraq, OK? Because things got complicated there.

Don't you see we're trying to help you? Unless, of course, you LIKE ponds full of dead bodies, contaminated water and a shortage of food. Is that how you do things there?

We see how it is. Your stupid junta wants to take the aid and distribute it and pretend that it came from them, huh? Well tell them "Nice try," because we've already seen that "Seinfeld" episode with the big salad, and we are no George Castanza.

We don't get what's up with your stupid government, or should we say "government." This isn't some sort of contest for your affections. We hear about these crazy ads they're running to get you to vote to give them more control. We think that's messed-up, but we don't care--we don't need another country to reflect back to us how cool we are. I think we've proven that time and time again.

Seriously, get over yourself, all right?

PS You know we all still call you Burma behind your back, right?

Where do you keep your Pulitzer Prize?
I gave it to my mother, who uses it as a paperweight.

What's been one of your favorite voyages, either for your new bookbook, for some other project or personal?
Bad voyages are the best for writing, and I've had a lot of those. While researching A Voyage Long and Strange, my favorite worst journey was a road trip across the Dominican Republic with a reformed drinker who fell off the wagon in the course of our drive. He also taught me the driving rules for the Dominican Republic--the d.r. for the D.R.--which include accelerating when a cop sees you speeding, so you can get a head start and outrun him. Not the safest country in which to drive.

A Seinfeld question: who is your favorite explorer?
Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca, who was second-in-command on a disastrous Spanish expedition to Florida in the 1520s. Of 300 men, only he and three others survived, by becoming faith healers to Indians and trekking across the entire continent over the course of eight years. His was the first great American road trip, and he wrote a stirring account of the journey that makes Lewis and Clark's much more famous crossing look like a Boy Scout outing by comparison.

Have you ever visited a place and just thought to yourself, even with the understanding that all cultures have their pros and cons, "What a horrible place to live"?
Saudi Arabia. No movie theaters, no bars, no mixing of men and women--even an amusement park I went to out of desperation was segregated by sex, so I found myself playing bumper cars with other adult males at Happy Land for Men. Then, of course, there's the Friday afternoon entertainment at "Chop Chop Square," where criminals lose their limbs or heads. After a month in Saudi Arabia I almost hanged myself from the shower rod in my hotel bathroom.

I gave travel writing a go one time and I was surprised by how difficult it was. What's your method for writing on the road?
My method is to have no method. Just see what happens, go with the flow. The best travel, and best writing about it, comes from the unplanned adventures and accidental encounters. That makes for a lot of terror at the start of a trip--Why am I here? What am I doing?--but inevitably, once I've talked to a few people, something strange and intriguing starts to emerges.

How does the rest of the world view America's Civil War, from what you've observed on your travels?
Many foreigners are as obsessed with the Civil War as we are. There are large reenactor communities in England, Germany, Australia, other countries, and you often meet them at Gettysburg. One reason is that their own wars are hard to reenact. I mean, if it's World War I you need tanks and poison gas, and if it's World War II someone has to play the Nazis. With the Civil War, they can inhabit someone else's conflict--and Europeans almost always want to be rebels, who seem more romantic. Blame Gone With the Wind.

Who is your favorite lesser-known luminary from the Civil War?
The Confederate general, A. P. Hill. He had venereal disease, wore a red shirt into battle, and was famous for mad, heedless charges, including the one-man charge that ended his career just a few days before Appomattox. On their deathbeds, both Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee allegedly called out deliriously for Hill to attack.

I read that you first started traveling by hitchhiking around the country. Any scary hitching stories?
No sociopaths, luckily, or I wouldn't be here. But a lot of drunks, stoners, and the occasional aggressive groper. One guy in Denver tried to rape me, and I walked twenty miles or so before getting up the courage to stick out my thumb again.

Have you ever gone on a destination assignment and faced difficulty coming up with the story for the piece?
Only in luxury destinations, which I rarely visit. I enjoy lolling by a hotel pool and drinking out of coconuts as much as the next person, but I have absolutely no idea how to write anything original or even vaguely interesting about that experience. So even in Bora-Bora and Hawaii, I gravitate toward the squalor.

Who have been some of your most difficult subjects to interview and why?
I once met Saddam Hussein's murderous son Uday in a nightclub in Baghdad. He wasn't very chatty, and I found myself strangely unwilling to ask him tough questions. Also in Baghdad, I interviewed the terrorist-in-hiding Abu Abbas, who engineered the Achille Lauro shipjacking. He wasn't hard to talk to but getting to him was--I had to be driven around blindfolded and strip-searched by thuggish bodyguards who poked AK 47s in my nostrils.

What part of history are you currently obsessed with?
The 1830s in America. It strikes me as a neglected decade that too often gets lost between the Revolutionary Era and the Civil War. What attention it receives is mostly directed at Jacksonian democracy. Yet there are all kinds of other great and significant stories in the 1830s, including the Nat Turner rebellion, Indian Removal, the rise of abolitionist and feminist and Utopian movements. And lots of weird little stuff like debate over dueling codes. I'd love to beam back to that era.

There are a few things, like Weird Al Yankovic or Playboy magazine, that, while I'm not personally attached to them, I'm fond of them because they seem to me quintessentially American. This is a broad question but what in your research (or even in contemporary life) has seemed to encompass what is most American to you?
My wife's Australian, and I've spent much of my adult life abroad, so I've had a lot of opportunity to compare other countries to my own. Very broadly--and unoriginally--what strikes me the most when I come home from overseas (other than rampant obesity, I'm afraid) is America's edge and dynamism. There are a lot of ways in which I wish we were more like Europe or Japan or Australia--health care, for instance--but what we have that many other countries lack is the belief (often delusional) that anything is possible, and the constant striving to achieve it. Societies that are more structured and stable and secure may be kinder and gentler places to live, but as a writer I find I miss the restless energy and creative tumult of America.

When was the most recent time you've been back to the Middle East? What from your immediate perspective changed since you wrote "Baghdad Without a Map"?
I haven't been to the Middle East in over a decade, so most of what I know comes from what I read or hear from friends. By far the biggest change is the rise of fundamentalism. It was certainly present in the 1980s and early 90s, when I was there, but not nearly so widespread and public as now. Another huge change is in communications. During my time in the region, dictators like Saddam could effectively seal their citizens off from the outside world by jamming radio signals, censoring all media, and tapping phones. With the internet and satellite TV, that's all but impossible.

What's have been some of the most memorable meals you've eaten on your travels?
Memorably bad ones include the chicharrones--basically, deep-fried pork skins with bits of gristle--I sampled on the street in the Dominican Republic. They looked and tasted like burnt ear. I've also eaten a lot of appalling food in the north of England, like a "chip buttie"--a buttered roll filled with French fries--and a turkey curry at a pub in Yorkshire that had gray clumps of stringy meat floating on a radioactive-looking orange pond. My dog wouldn't have touched it.

You found many lesser-known American legends for The Devil May Care: where do you discover extensive information on forgotten American characters?
In that case, the work was done for me, by the American National Biography, a compendium of 18,000 profiles of characters from every century and walk of life. My job was to pluck out fifty men and women to highlight. Generally, though, I just stumble on curious characters in my reading and then start digging. As with travel, it's usually while you're looking for something else in your research that you accidentally discover the best stories.

How do you spend the time on the flights from the States to Australia?
Counting how many hours are left. The only virtue of having done the day long flight between Australia and the States a few dozen times is that every other plane trip feels brief by comparison.

How does it feel to be the 207th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Better than being the 206th, I guess. It's been my pleasure.

As I imagined, I got some feedback to my proclamation that at least for one day, Waffle House>>Chick Fil-A. Here you go:

Meghan says:

I affirm the greatness of Culver's, El Pollo Loco, In-and-Out Burger and Superdawg. I would add Portillo's, Cracker Barrel (only if you go in the South, though), Paschal's (not fast food, soul food that you can get fast...almost went into a soul food coma pre-flight it was so damn good) and The Golden Krust.

Jon says:

But Chick-Fil-A is in the Midwest! Maybe not in Chicago, but when I grew up in Indiana, we had them all over the place. Agreed on the Jesus freaks though. Maybe a good anti- beef ad campaign for them could be "Abortion stops a beating heart, and so will hamburgers."

According to Michael,

Waffle House is fun. I spent a lot of high school hanging out in one. Chick-fil-A may have not hit Chicago, but it is in the Midwest. We have a few in Saint Louis, and there are some in downstate Illinois. Jack in the Box is all over the place here. There were many in Texas when I lived there, but few in the parts of the real South I know well. My favorite, by far, is New Orleans chicken chain Popeyes.

(I responded that I too love Popeye's and he informed me):

It's Popeyes. Recently deceased Al Copeland said he was too poor for an apostrophe when he started it. It's named after a character in The French Connection. Over Christmas playing Trivial Pursuit with my family, I gave the correct answer, The French Connection, to a question about Popeye Doyle. I never saw the movie or read the book, but I knew because I love Popeyes so much. I also highly recommend Little Nicky to everyone who appreciates Popeyes. "Unleash the awesome."

My friend Fayrene thought I was...

...totally wrong both about Chick-fil-A and Waffle House. One is awesome and the other is disgusting, and a waitress who calls you baby does not make up for the potential intestinal distress you risk by eating at Waffle House.

I love Whataburger, I think it's probs the best fast food burger. Here's what is so great about them - 1) made to order. you can get pretty much anything you want on them. 2) open late, so good for post-drinking greasy food booze absorption. 3) excellent onion rings 4) very good ketchup 5) breakfast tacos.

Also, I kinda like the ads. What! a Burger! And they have whole-wheat buns available (as does Chick Fil A)

My friend Carrie added:

Chik-Fil-A is awesome. They never fuck up the order, service is always polite, the food is always fresh, and their fruit option is awesome. I think their Christian vibe is working for them.

A waitress calling you baby is cliche at best.

So, based on this scientific experiment I have come to the conclusion that people like fast food and have thoughts on it. Where's my genius grant?

two jars of malted milk, expired 5/05

creamy french dressing, expired 11/07

seasoned tomato sauce for pizza, expired 4/06

leaking can of jellied cranberry sauce

Chunky brand soup in slow-roasted beef with mushrooms, expired 9/06

half-consumed box of 24 candy canes

1/4 full jar of bacon bits

I am one of those idiots who looks on in wonderment when I get to another part of the country and see fast food joints that we don't have in the Midwest--Jack in the Box, In-And-Out and so on. Some places just recently came to my part of the country, like El Pollo Loco and Krispy Kreme.

One of the fast food restaurants on my list that I hadn't tried was Chick-fil-A, which we most certainly don't have in the Midwest. The concept of a Christian fast food restaurant not open on Sundays is a charming notion, although I was also pulled in by their silly advertising and the promise that a friend of mine made many years ago that it's awesome.

Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call it "awesome." I mean, it was fine--I had a breaded piece of chicken on a plain bun that was served in a paper bag and came with some waffle-cut fries. And a Diet Coke. It pained me a little bit to know that I was SOL in Atlanta when it came to getting my beloved Diet Pepsi in restaurants. Chick-fil-A was decent, but it does not belong in my pantheon of fast food, which includes Culver's (for their butterburgers, creepily well-scrubbed staff and frozen custard), Superdawg and the sausage McMuffin at MacDonald's.

My other southern fast food stop was at a Waffle House, which are located about every 20 feet in Atlanta. I'd been to one once before but that particular day I was really in need of some greasy breakfast and so I figured it was worth revisiting. I get the impression that Waffle House is most famous for its hash browns and the various ways it can be served, but I was more excited by the exquisitely greasy fried egg, cheese and bacon sandwich, which was just what the proverbial doctor ordered (after some V8 and Gatorade). What I most appreciated though was the service: my particular Waffle House was staffed by a bunch of middle-aged women with Southern accents who bustled around in a way that at first made me feel like I was in their way and needed to be hustled out of there, but quite the contrary. I think I got called no less than three separate nicknames of affection, and I still feel a little warm in my heart thinking of the "Here you go, baby" I received with my breakfast. I did need some babying, and I got it. My meal was $10 and I tipped $5 (because I'm a high roller.) So the Waffle House was slightly better in terms of the food at Chick-Fil-A, not quite as nice in decor, but a more memorable, pleasurable experience.

I did eat at some other noteworthy places, by the way, that were not fast-food, including the Indigo Girls'-owned Watershed, the Cabbagetown Market and the unforgettably-named Swallow at the Hollow, but I think talking about fast food is way more interesting. If any of you are passionate about any regional fast food chains for whatever reason, please let me know.

First, if you missed my column in RedEye yesterday, you can find it here on page 4 (it's a PDF so it takes a second to download.) I've also done a chunk of stuff for the LA Times.com: you can find an interview with the girl last kicked off "America's Next Top Model" and my thoughts on "30 Rock" and "The Office".

Today I chat with the author of Perfect From Now On: How Indie Rock Saved My Life and Arcade Fever: The Fan's Guide to the Golden Age of Video Games. He is also the editor/writer of the back-page Q+A at Time Out New York and a contributor to The Believer and GQ.

What are you angry about right now?
At the moment (12:30pm on Wednesday, April 16), I'm angry that I don't own a Popemobile. I'm also ticked off (or T.O.'d, as Mom would say) about the Detroit Tigers and their ridiculous 4-10 start. Those douchewads.

When I saw you read, you selected some passages from a grade school journal, mostly for laughs. Were there any entries from that age that confirm opinions about music that you still hold to this day?
You're referring, of course, to the journal I was required to keep for my seventh-grade English class. The entry dated September 12, 1983, states that I liked "Foolin'" by Def Leppard "because it has rock and a good tune in it," and I still wholeheartedly believe that to be true. But here's an entry I'd like to share with you that is in no way music-related. It is titled "Cartoons," and was written on October 31, 1983:

"On Saturday mornings there are cartoons from about 6am to 1pm. The only cartoons I watch are the cartoons that feature characters in video games or Dungeons & Dragons or The Incredible Hulk-Spider-Man Hour or Rubik's Cube. I also watch Thundarr the Barbarian. Although I like all of these a lot, my favorite of these is Dungeons & Dragons. It is when five kids get caught in a land full of monsters and demons. They all turned into adventurers with weapons. A dungeon master helps them go through, giving them little hints. All the time they are looking for a way out of this land so they can get back to their homes. Every other week they play a rerun but that's good because I didn't see the first ones anyway. It is based on the game Dungeons & Dragons."

I found information on John Sellers the activist and John Sellers the jockey. Which would you rather be?
Given a choice between those two dudes, I'd definitely pick the jockey -- although if what I was being an activist for was "free meatballs for everyone," I might go the other way. But I'd rather be John Sellers #3, the author of the 32-page "Foxing the Witch." This is how the book is described on Amazon:

On Allhallows Eve a hungering witch and a poetical fox meet, seemingly by chance, below an old stone bridge. When the fox offers to foretell her future with a peculiar deck of cards, the luck of the witch takes a drastic turn. She is immediately plunged into a haunting quest peopled by an addicted dragon, an ardent fairy and a misogynous wizard. The witch named Mab, last of a line of witches of the same name, inhabits a world of larcenous hearts and ancient cruelties shadowed by colors of strange beauty. Her quest begins and ends with an enigmatic song: The Dragon old, the Fairy cold, Count each ancient emblem. The Turtle jailed, the Lady veiled, A witch's hand to bind them. Fate, retribution and an invitation to breakfast all entwine at journey's end, under a misty rainbow of magical cards.

How do Guided by Voices' rabid fans differ from other bands'?
GBV fans drink twice as much Miller Lite as any other band's and they're as geeky as people who are obsessed with Monty Python. So we're swill-drinking dorks, which pretty much sums me up.

Who was your favorite Queer Eye guy based on your time with the guys?
I warmed to Ted Allen the most, primarily because he was the most like me, only gay. But the guy who left the biggest impression, not surprisingly, was Carson Kressley. He called me "Chauncey" and "Peaches" and "Pumpkin," and put me on a forced march through the Upper East Side wearing flared jeans and flip-flops. I still have the emotional scars to prove it.

I know you wrote about arcade games in your first book, but are there any current video games that you're into? (The last game I owned was Super Mario Brothers III and even then I co-owned it).
I'll estimate that I've wasted a good six months of my life playing the three Halo games over the past six years, and a friend of mine and I still have a vicious grudge match going on MLB 2004 for the PS2. Other than that, can anything really measure up to Robotron: 2084? No, it can't, and don't bother stepping to me with your pointless arguments about why I'm wrong, because I'm not.

Is Weird Al Yankovic as nice a guy as he seems?
Weird Al is about as weird as I am angry. He's actually pretty normal and is a genuinely nice person. But he bowls a mean game. My favorite part of that experience was running into him later that night after the MTV Video Music Awards. He was still wearing the shoes from the bowling alley. Weird Al is a klepto!

You described in another interview striking out in epic fashion while trying to pick up women with Chris Kattan--I want to know, who was the one bringing down the operation, you or Kattan?
It was totally Kattan. He insisted that we bar hop via limousine -- talk about whatever the opposite of a chick magnet is!

What have been some of your favorite assignments other than the ones mentioned above?
While it's hard to beat the Kattan assignment, the one that trumps it in terms of sheer uniqueness was my lunch with Gary Busey. I met him at a seafood shack in Malibu, and I spent most of the meal being bombarded by little pieces of crab that he inadvertently spewed in my direction. It was disgusting at the time, but now I consider it pretty sweet to have been spit on by Gary Busey.

Which type of game show questions were your favorite to write?
No game show question is fun to write. It is only fun to get paid for writing them. I take the most pride in the first question of mine to air on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire: "What is the predominant color on a UPS truck?" I'm a total genius.

How are the Tigers going to do this season? I'm sure they will look back on the beginning to this season and laugh, right?
The Tigers, 4-10 as I write this, will rise from their own feces and destroy the world, or at least the American League Central. He who laughs last laughs best, and seriously, they will be cackling at all the haters come October.

Are there any bands that you used to be passionate about that you absolutely loathe now?
As revealed in Perfect From Now On, I once saw the Information Society in concert. But there wasn't much passion behind that mistake -- just the misfortune to be 18 and a moron. There are plenty of bands, though, that once captivated me that now cause almost bodily pain when I think about the amount of energy I spent on them. Here they are (in descending order of pain caused): Duran Duran, Erasure, Tears for Fears, INXS, Whitesnake, Joey Satriani, Whodini, and Juice Newton.

What are you ideal circumstances under which to listen to an album? See a concert?
I have always been a fan of listening to albums in cars, and believe that if you first hear a decent band while driving around, you're more susceptible to falling for them. Additionally, there is nothing more awesome that rocking out in a car; there is also nothing more geeky. But more often than not you have to geek out to enjoy something.

There is an inverse ratio between the size of the venue to how life-changing a particular concert will be for you. To me, a live show is about communing with the band; it's kind of hard to do that at Madison Square Garden or Coachella. So, there's a sweet spot of seeing a band early in its career when it's still playing smaller venues but far enough along that the band has enough material to provide a bit of mystery about what will be played on a given night.

But the better answer to both questions is: while drunk to the bejeezus on beer.

Who is your favorite music critic?
I'm not a big fan of music criticism. Way too often it's overly ponderous and pretentious, and you almost never learn anything from reading music reviews and discourse, other than that the person writing it is a giant douche. Simon Reynolds is the main example of this, and I'm still waiting for the program that will translate what the hell Pitchfork reviewers are saying in their reviews. I guess it comes down to this: Music critics seem to like music, sure, but they don't seem to like it in the right way. They're the guy at the concert who sits there watching a band and thinking about what to say about it later instead of being the guy who's up front getting their ass kicked by the awesomeness of the band. I know who I'd rather hang out with.

That being said, it's not like I'm a total hater. I loved Fargo Rock City by Chuck Klosterman, if you can even consider that music criticism. And while I disagree with him sometimes, Jim DeRogatis is pretty entertaining. And I'd probably like any music critic who agrees with me that Joanna Newsom is painfully bad -- but I'm not sure one of those exists.

What are you working on now?
Besides my new gig doing the back-page Q+A at Time Out New York, I'm working on another book, this one about my weird dad and his lifelong fascination with snakes. We're about to head off to the wilds of Michigan, where I will have to stand knee-deep in a disgusting, Yoda-esque swamp in the hopes that I might catch one a copper-belly water snake. Color you jealous!

I'm stealing this from the Onion but what were the last five songs you downloaded, I'm sure legally?
I am absolutely, 100 percent against illegal downloading, except in cases where incredibly shitty music is involved. Like, anyone and everyone should be able to download Spice Girls and Bright Eyes songs and for free -- and in fact, they should be paid a stipend for the time it takes to do so. To slightly change your question, because I don't usually download individual songs, the last album I downloaded was Times New Viking's Rip It Off and it is truly awesome. I pity you if you've never heard it.

How does it feel to be the 206th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Awesome. Then please consider me a tribute to the number of bones in the body. I would like to be an honorary ulna. Or am I more of a coccyx?

Also, I covered Idol last night for the Onion AV Club and America's Next Top Model for the LA Times.

That is all. But before I forget:

Check back tomorrow for an exciting new addition to the writing agenda.

Mig and Tig

Mobili Mobel

Morlen Sinoway

Orangeskin

Mott

Culinablu

Poggenpohl

Snaidero Chicago

Birger Juell

If there were any good news of the day, it was that I was actually feeling semi-decent. When I first met with Dr. Chin, when I sat in his dignified office with Persian rugs and leather chairs and mahogany walls, he had told me that this was how it would go. There were three stages of chemo recovery. The first week, you feel like your insides are on fire, like the chemicals rushing through you might kill you if the cancer doesn't. The second week, you sense that you might survive; it's not that you feel normal, but you feel the absence of the afflictions that plagued you the last week, so in that way, it's like you won the lottery. And the third week is the one where you can't believe that you ever felt like such a steaming mound of shit. Chemo? You're thinking. That's the best you can dish out? Because that, my darling cancer gods, I can take without blinking an eye. The sick part of this pattern, which I'm sure you've already figured out, is that just as you're on the cusp of returning to your everyday life, right as you press your nose up to healthfulness and start going about your business as you did before the disease mowed you down, you have to start it all over again.

Dr. Chin flipped through my chart on his desk, ignoring his assistant who kept paging him over the intercom, and explained that we'd be doing six or seven months of chemo, a round every three weeks, and based on my reaction to this treatment, we'd proceed from there. At some point along the way, either in the middle or at the end, they'd perform a mastectomy. They would take my breasts from me. He also spoke about what I could expect: fatigue, nausea, and the thing that I dreaded most--hair loss. "The aim of chemotherapy is to kill the fast-growing cancer cells," he explained. "But what also happens as a result is that healthy cells are killed as well. So, for example, your hair follicles are in effect shut down. Fortunately, the human body is resilient and smart enough to know how to grow them back when we're done." He said all of this in the kind of tone that he'd clearly perfected after years of treating depressing cases such as mine. He was firm yet still reassuring, regretful yet still commanding. I sat in his office and stared at his numerous diplomas and awards and medical society memberships, and I simply nodded my head, a small acknowledgment of the inevitable, of resigned acceptance. It's not as if I had a choice.

What I didn't tell Dr. Chin, when he asked how I felt, because surely he was referring to my physical maladies, not the emotional ones, was that I was gutted. That the fear that ran through me was nearly paralyzing. That the sheer terror of his words, "you have cancer," caused my breath to leave my body, and that nodding my head in resignation was all that I could do. Anything more simply would have been impossible, because, you see, I was frozen. I was 30. I was the future ruler of the free world. And yet...this. I was 30, and I had cancer. I was 30, and I had cancer. I replayed it over and over again in my mind because it didn't add up; it couldn't add up. This. Could. Not. Be. My. Life. And yet...it was. So I sat in his office, and I tasted the horror that comes from discovering you're not invincible, and maybe it was the cancer, but more likely, it was the spine-chilling terror of my diagnosis, but I literally wanted to curl up and die. Because the sum of Dr. Chin's words let me to believe that I might just do that anyway.

Before I got up to leave, he pressed a card into my hand. "At some point, you might want to go see her." I looked down and read Mrs. Adina Seidel. Master Wigmaker. Dr. Chin offered me a thin smile. "She's the best that there is. And many of my patients find the process cathartic." I met his eyes and wondered how a pile of fake hair could ever make someone feel more complete. But rather than reply, I took the card into my shaking fingers, thanked him for his time, and told him that I'd see him in a few days. As I left his office, I remember thinking that I couldn't feel my legs. That I was walking, yes, surely, I was shuffling down the linoleum-covered floor and through the dimly lit corridor, but how I was doing it, I don't know. I remembered back to high school biology, when my teacher, Mr. Katz, lectured us on the "fight or flight" syndrome: that when an animal is attacked or put in peril, any unnecessary part of his brain function shuts down, that his body responds in a purely visceral way, doing what it must to survive the threat. But my own body, when faced with such a threat, was seemingly retreating. That rather than gathering its army to face the hell to come, it was already abandoning me. Already shutting me down. My legs were just the beginning.

But now, as I wrapped up the last few days of my first chemo round, things were indeed looking up. At least as far as my vomit/nausea/exhaustion/dizzy problems went. Which I supposed was something.

But I also interviewed someone for Zulkey.com! Today I speak with the author of The Book of Dahlia, which was highlighted in the New Yorker recently, a novel about a 29-year-old, pot-smoking, chronically underachieving Jewish-American princess who learns that she has brain cancer. Elisa Albert is also the author of How This Night is Different, is an editor-at-large at Jewcy and is an adjunct assistant writing professor of creative writing at Columbia University.

I've heard Dahlia described as an "antiheroine." What does that mean to you?
That she's not simple to like. That identification with her might not be immediate. That she does not exist for the sole purpose of making us feel good about ourselves. That she challenges us, baits us, shows no consideration for us, maybe pisses us off. That she's untrustworthy.

Did it seem unusual to write about a female pothead? It seems like your stereotypical pot enthusiasts in pop culture are male.
Right. So, no. Girls are supposed to be busy making themselves more likable and fuckable; boys get to sit around doing drugs and geeking out over pop culture and being complex and sometimes unlikable but ultimately lovable. Yeah, so no.

What kind of research did you do for what Dahlia was going through physically in the book?
Your basic webMD stuff. Just wanted to be sure all the bare facts were there, from that point I felt qualified to wax narrative about the emotional process, having watched someone in my immediate family go through something not dissimilar.

I read " There's a sense of guilty relief when Dahlia starts to fail," in a review of the book. Do you think that's the case?
A novel's a deep echoing well from which one can get many different things, I think. I wouldn't begrudge anyone her own take-away. I certainly had no qualms about dooming Dahlia.

Are you one of those writers who mourned the loss of Dahlia or was she just a character to you whose fate was her story?
The act of writing the book was a decidedly mournful one, in the character's honor. Her fate is her story, her story is her fate. I didn't harden my heart to her even as I methodically killed her off, in other words.

Did writing the book make you think about how you'd like your exit, or funeral to be?
A little too much.

How was working on a novel different from a book of short stories?
Novels are much longer.

(It can take a while before you realize you're on the wrong track. You can't complete a novel and hand it to someone and get a response twenty minutes later. When you think about maybe throwing out an unsuccessful story, it doesn't make you feel physically ill.)

Are you aware of how your students perceive you when you teach at Columbia, especially considering that you came out of your program?
I've taught undergrads, so it's not the MFA program I went through. But yes, in general I find I am all too aware of how I think others perceive me...

What can a Catholic girl learn from reading Jewcy?
Hopefully that stereotyping Jews is uncool. Also that many aspects of the human experience are universal. That if you prick us, we do in fact bleed.

It seems like you have a lot of stuff going on at any given time: how do you prioritize your work?
I let procrastination morph into panic. Then I'm good to go.

I stole this question from the National Yiddish Book Center discussion questions for How This Night Is Different: In the closing story, "Etta or Bessie or Dora or Rose," Elisa Albert comments sarcastically, if
indirectly, on the literary merits of the preceding nine pieces, implying in the words of a British student in her writing workshop that all her Jewish stories are the same. Do you think these are the "same stories over and over again" or is the author short-changing herself?
That was an amusing (to me) way of grappling with my own worst fears about my work. I learned -- as a train-wreck of an adolescent -- that if you can find a way to articulate all that is possibly wrong with you, others are usually content to enjoy the spectacle of your poking at and shaming yourself. Or, to put it in slightly twisted therapy-speak, self-awareness is everything. Pity the shrinks of writers.

I read that you're a dinner party hostess: what's the biggest disaster you ever faced and how'd you deal with it?
I've yet to experience anything truly disastrous (though fully expect to now; thanks!). What I hate is that phone call an hour beforehand saying "I'm so sorry but I can't make it." You have to come! You agreed! The whole balance will be off now!

What's been the last playlist you made and what was on it?
It was for traveling around on book tour:

Someone Great -- LCD Soundsystem

Came a Long Way -- Heartless Bastards

Hardwire -- Metric

Feeling in Love -- JJ Cale

Lonely Holiday -- Old 97's

Burning Up -- Madonna

Failsafe -- New Pornographers

Fucker -- The Brian Jonestown Massacre

Toes -- Norah Jones

One Step Up -- Bruce Springsteen

Paper Planes -- M.I.A.

Work That -- Mary J Blige

The Night is Still Young -- Billy Joel

Missed The Boat -- Modest Mouse

Eyes Closed -- Rowboats

It must have taken an emotional toll to write about your Times announcement and subsequent divorce. Did you talk about it at all with your ex before publishing it?
Writing about it was cathartic and helpful to me in getting through the whole ordeal. My ex is a great friend, happily, and he was highly impressive about letting me say what I had to say.

I have to admit that I have been thinking about submitting my own announcement to the Times but do you think yours is a cautionary tale?
I do not think that having your wedding announced in the New York Times will doom your marriage to failure. I think having a crappy relationship will doom your marriage to failure.

You live in Brooklyn but were raised in "LA-LA land." How do those bicoastal traits reflect in your writing?
No one's really concerned with seeming smart in L.A. (at all). So I feel like I have a great bullshit meter for pretension, which can come in handy here sometimes.

What are you reading now?
The End of Vandalism, by Tom Drury. On deck, Black Postcards, the memoir by Luna frontman Dean Wareham. Slightly nervous Wareham'll come off irritating as fuck, 'cause I live for Luna, but can't not read it.

How does it feel to be the 205th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Awesome! Thanks.