Below is an excerpt from “12 or 20 (second series) questions with Patrik Sampler” at Rob McLennan’s Blog. To visit the post, and to read all twenty questions and answers in their entirety, click HERE.
7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
As I understand it, the role of the writer is to commodify oneself, reify fashionable notions (then evaporate when those notions become unfashionable), and sit for pretentiously composed photo portraits. As for what the role should be… the writer — through their writing — should delight and entertain, invoke strange feelings of our oceanic bond with the mysteries of existence, and touch the sublime. It’s really that simple.
20 – What are you currently working on?
I’m tidying up the first part of a two-part novel about a man with no personality on a journey to the edge of the Earth. Along the way he stops at various decadent cities overtaken by primordialist cults. At each hotel he receives an overwrought letter, in a poor imitation of the style of Anaïs Nin, by an estranged lover he might not in fact know. The second part of the novel, which I’m just getting started on, is a family memoir.
Patrik Sampler 