one laughs but then sighs

The Believer's October issue has an interview with Lorrie Moore. Some favorite bits:

Oh, the precarious position of fiction in our world: that over the last several decades the novel has continually been declared dead, and the short story is in constant resurrection, which means half-dead or post-dead or heaven-bound. But one continues writing anyway—as has been said by many—because one must.

What little reality television I’ve seen seems to be about economic desperation. Like the marathon dancing of the Great Depression, which should give us pause. People willing to eat flies and worms for a sum that is less than the weekly paycheck of the show’s producer. I haven’t seen 'reality television' that is other than this kind of painful, sadistic exploitation of fit young people looking for agents. Memoir, it ain’t.

Why is getting into the groove a good thing, when so many people would like to climb out of one?

But awkwardness is where tension is, and tension is where the story is. It’s also where the comedy is, which I’m interested in; when it resolves it tends to resolve toward melancholy, a certain resignation, which I find interesting as well.

BLVR: The other day someone told me that our current president said he was a big fan of Thoreau—specifically, that he loved On Walden Pond.
LM: I hadn’t heard that On Walden Pond remark. This is funny—but funny and sad, no? One laughs but then sighs.
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