My recent interview with Lydia Millet is in the January Boldtype, and has been featured in Flavorpill as well. Good thing, because Millet’s new book, How the Dead Dream, is superb, squaring its shoulders against “big issues” with pathos, humor, and insight.Here’s Millet on the impetus to write the book:
So much of what’s foretold now by scientists, in terms of, say, extinction and climate change, comes at us like a wall of despair. We stand there facing the wall with nothing to do but throw up our hands. I wanted the trajectory of this character’s story, T.’s story, to evoke a less despairing response that has to do with the richness and excitement of animal life—the wild, imaginative heritage that animals have given to culture and art and religion; the recognition that the future of human civilization is deeply entwined with the future of species that are swiftly vanishing.