Description

Due to rights issues, the audio of this interview is not available online. Please contact San Diego State University, Special Collections and Archives if you wish to be granted access to the original audio. Larry McCaffery meets with Raymond Federman at McCaffery’s house in San Diego. Federman begins the interview with a discussion of his father and moves to a discussion of Samuel Beckett. Much of the discussion focuses on Federman’s use of autobiography in fiction, why he does not write non-fiction autobiography and how it has played into his fictional work. Federman discusses in detail the inspiration and process of his writing, specifically his first novel, Double or Nothing: A Real Fictitious Discourse. Federman explains why he does not generally write in French even though it is his native language. Federman has a long discussion about his use of masturbation in his writings before finishing with a summation of his views on language and story and why he favors the former over the latter. Different sections of the interview appear in edited versions on pages 285 to 306 of Contemporary Literature 24 (Fall 1983) and on pages 127 to 151 of Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists, ed. Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, University of Illinois Press, 1983.