Andrew
Foster Altschul is the author of the novels Deus Ex Machina (Counterpoint,
February 1, 2011), which recounts a season in the life of a Survivor-esque reality show, and Lady
Lazarus (2008). His short fiction and essays
have appeared in many journals and anthologies, including Esquire,
McSweeney's, Ploughshares, Best New American Voices and The O. Henry Prize Stories.
A former Wallace Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer at Stanford University, he
is the director of the Center for Literary Arts at San Jose State
University and books editor of the Rumpus.
On your nightstand now:
Since I'm the books editor of a website, my nightstand is always on the verge of buckling. As soon as I finish E.L. Doctorow's World's Fair, I can't wait to read Deb Olin Unferth's new memoir, Revolution!: The Year I Fell in Love and Went to Join the War. Then it's Nabokov's Ada, or Ardor and Carol Sklenicka's Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life. Faulkner's The Wild Palms is somewhere in the pile, too.
Favorite book when you were a child:
As a kid, I ruined my eyes reading all the Hardy Boys mysteries under the covers, after bedtime. In my teens, someone turned me on to a dark, strange set of sci-fi/fantasy books called The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, the Unbeliever by Stephen R. Donaldson. I still think about them sometimes.
Your top five authors:
In no particular order: Salman Rushdie, David Foster Wallace, E.L. Doctorow, William Faulkner, Melanie Rae Thon. What do they have in common? You cannot mistake their voices for anyone else's.
Book you've faked
reading:
Don Quixote. I know, I know....
Book you're an evangelist for:
The Book of Daniel by E.L. Doctorow. My favorite post-World War II novel, a fictional treatment of the Rosenbergs' case and its aftermath, through the eyes of their son. Heartbreaking, infuriating, jaw-droppingly brilliant.
Book you've bought for the cover:
Atmospheric Disturbances, by Rivka Galchen. I wasn't sorry.
Book that changed your life:
Hmm... too many to list. Maybe Infinite Jest? Like watching a trapeze artist flip and tumble through the air... for 1,100 pages. That's when I understood that a writer is permitted to do anything, as long as he sticks the landing.
Favorite line from a book:
From The Book of Daniel: "If justice cannot be made to operate under the worst possible conditions of social hysteria, what does it matter how it operates at other times?"
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Lolita.
Strangest moment while researching a novel:
When I was doing research for Deus Ex Machina, I tried for a long time to get on the set of a reality TV show, but it's almost impossible for all kinds of legal and confidentiality reasons. My friend Stephen Elliott was making a reality-show pilot for Showtime, set inside the studios of Kink.com, a huge porn production company in San Francisco. He was one of the stars. He invited me to come watch them film for a day. Was kind of hard to look him in the eye for a while after that.