We are excited to share yet another excerpt from a recent interview with REVOLUTION author David Dorrough, conducted by literary journalist Lance Reece-Boyle.
DD: Well, Lance, no author is going to come right out and say, “I’m one of the greats,” but of course some of them do think they probably are, at least some of the time. They can’t help it. And why shouldn’t they? They probably are one of the greats, in most cases.
LRB: Yes…
DD: Other people, though—not the authors themselves but others, like critics and fans—will just say it flat-out sometimes: “That person is truly great, with a capital G. She or he absolutely is one of the great writers.” And often these claims are very well justified.
LRB: Right…
DD: Anyway, claims like that about me would be poorly justified—so poorly, in fact, that they’d fall into a special category known as “dead wrong.”
LRB: Okay…
DD: But that’s fine, Lance. Because no such claims have ever been made about me, or ever will be. I am definitely not one of the greats, and everyone knows it.
LRB: Indeed…
DD: But I do think a real strength of mine as an author is my clear-eyed, incisive self-evaluation. The phrase “I’m one of the greats” would never consider, in its wildest dreams, floating through my mind, not even for a split second. No—I understand myself in astoundingly fine-grained detail, and I know, without a doubt, precisely the type of author I am: not great. Do you see what I mean, Lance?
LRB: Yes, sure. But the question I asked was: what are your favorite pizza toppings?
REVOLUTION 