Apr 15

Paris Review – Philip Connors on ‘Fire Season’, Maud Newton

I tended bar, fried donuts, unloaded semi-trailers at UPS, worked nights as a janitor at Kmart. The hours at those jobs tended to be terrible. I became estranged from the normal circadian rhythm. To have found a job that allows me to sit around looking at mountains, and even occasionally take a nap, seems to me an incredible piece of good fortune. There’s a line I like from Gertrude Stein: “It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.” I’m no genius, but I do love to sit around doing nothing. Even when you think you’re doing nothing, your mind can be at play in a way that’s ultimately useful if you’re a writer.

Vanity reblog, except Philip Connors is really, truly worth reading and knowing about. Before he worked as a fire lookout, he lived in New York City, which he still loves, and he talks about that and many other things in some outtakes from the interview, here. Or just go out and buy the book — and the back issues of n+1 that have his essays in them.

Source: derasso