Barry Gifford Views

Books

Even if you live to be one hundred, it's likely that you won't be able to sign your name to anything as brilliant and esoteric as Wild At Heart. A road novel as twisted as the pavement it covers, it is perhaps best remembered as having made celluloid magic after David Lynch realized that Barry Gifford's writing was meant to be seen. The vexed story of wayward lovers Sailor and Lula is part of a seven books series, which includes the also-adapted Perdita Durango, and was published as a complete collection, Sailor

If you have not yet read Barry Gifford's work, you certainly have plenty to choose from. His truly enviable writing career encompasses several narrative forms including poetry, novels, screenplays, essays and recently, a Young Adult collection. Operating largely outside of the typical writer-in-residence scene that makes up so much of the United States literary world, Gifford is an anomaly in both his influence and recognition. His prose is as straightforward as it is avant-garde, and can turn an ashtray into a flower petal right there on the page.

Barry Gifford was born in 1946 in Chicago's Seneca Hotel, which is still there, nestled in the shadows of the Hancock Building. After a childhood spent largely in Chicago and New Orleans, and a short stint pursuing a possible career in baseball, Gifford focused his energies on writing. And he's never stopped. He's published in excess of forty books ranging from poetry, plays, essays (he even took a stab at the Cubs), screenplays, and fiction.

BG: You know, here's a funny thing about Flannery O'Connor. I'd written some of the novels and a friend of mine, in Chicago, said to me, You know, you have a lot in common with Flannery O'Connor. And then there was a review of one of the books--I think it was even in the Chicago Tribune, if I'm correct--making a joke at the beginning, saying that Barry Gifford is the product of perhaps one night, maybe Flannery O'Connor and Jim Thompson came together and their progeny was Barry Gifford. It was sort of a cute remark. But I had never read Flannery O'Connor. It was a lacuna in my reading history. Paul Auster gave me that 3 by Flannery O'Connor book. That's when I first read Flannery O'Connor. So it was actually really late that I came to her. And I loved her work. I absolutely adore her work. I see her as a sort of Southern cousin.