Description

This tape is labeled undergraduate class. Katz says one story woke him up in the middle of the night. A student asks, “Do all your stories have a meaning?” He answers, “The story is mine; meaning is yours.” A student asks how long it took to write 43 Fictions, and Katz says “about 15 years.” McCaffery asks why Katz stopped studying veterinary medicine. He took some writing classes, which he said freed him up to write, but it took him about 10 years to get over the influences. A student asks about writing every day. He says, “You have to do that every day.” They discuss his book Posh, which he says he wrote to make money. Someone asks about imagination, and Katz answers that he notices that he is “occasionally haunted by some images or some ideas.” Someone asks about “a message” and he says a story is story and meaning is meaning, and that students are made to find them. On the next side Katz talks about his drug use while writing. Someone asks what he is going to do next. Katz says he does not know, and begins talking about “metalanguage.” In answer to a question about systems in art, Katz discusses systems that “consume” people and make products of art. He talks about his book The Exagggerations of Peter Prince published. Someone asks about the Fiction Collective, and he answers that “commercial publishers aren’t publishing the work of serious authors.” McCaffery asks about stories in the book Creamy & Delicious. Someone asks about his favorite authors, and he mentions Doris Lessing, Georges Sand and George Eliot, and says Carol Emshwiller is his favorite woman writer, adding that he cannot think of any male writers he likes. Someone asks why Katz writes. He says he has “been asking myself that question.” They talk about the Readers Theater performance that was done of his work during this visit.