Collection Description

Larry McCaffery is an SDSU professor emeritus of English. In addition to teaching, McCaffery built a reputation as an important postmodern and contemporary American literary critic known for identifying influential and innovative writers. Over the course of thirty years, he and his wife, Sinda Gregory (a scholar in her own right), conducted numerous interviews with notable postmodern and contemporary American writers. In total there are 71 interviewees, including Mark Danielewski, Samuel Delany, Raymond Carver, Joanna Russ, Ursula LeGuin, Raymond Federman, and William Gibson.

McCaffery's unique interview process started with a recorded interview on tape. He then made a loose transcription of the recorded conversation, making changes and rearranging sections as he went. Both McCaffery and the interviewee heavily edited this transcript, which eventually resulted in the creation of a final, collaborative manuscript. Some original audio recordings are reproduced here, while others are only available in our offline archives. This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

McCaffery’s interviews were published in several books: Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists (1983); Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s (1986); Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Authors (1990); and Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors (1995).

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Interview with Raymond Federman, 2001-01
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 and Raymond Federman discuss the morality of obscene material. They then use a computer to change the word “potato” into “tomato”. Federman reads from his poem “Here and Elsewhere”. Federman reads his poem “Origin of the World”, inspired by the painting of the same name by Gustave Courbet. Federman reads his poem “My Life”. Federman reads some of his correspondence with George Tashima. Federman talks about memories of his family, including the circumstances of the arrest of his parents and sisters., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Raymond Federman, 2001-06
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 interviews Raymond Federman in Rancho Bernardo in a recording that fades in and out. Federman discusses his use of manifestos including what he feels a manifesto is: a statement that “demands extravagant self-assurance”. They discuss the aesthetics of printed words on a page. Federman explains how he uses a computer to recreate the typography of his novel Amer Eldorado. They discuss whether Federman’s work will still be read fifty years in the future., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Raymond Federman, 2001-07
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. Raymond Federman and Larry McCaffery discuss the new 2001 edition of Federman’s 1974 book Amer Eldorado. For the bulk of the interview the recording fades in and out while Federman discusses the Holocaust, scars and a recent trip to France. Federman notes ideas and a title that will eventually result in his 2006 novel Return to Manure., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Raymond Federman, 2001-11
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 interviews Raymond Federman in Borrego Springs in a recording that fades in and out. Federman begins with a discussion of a prospective critical study on his written works by Eckhard Gerdes. The interview moves on to a discussion of food as a subject in Federman’s work. After that there is a discussion of furniture in Federman’s work. Federman discusses the kind of reading he was doing in the sixties before he began publishing fiction., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Raymond Federman, 2004
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 interviews Raymond Federman about his friendship with George Tashima. Federman begins by reading a statement about his loss of a homeland when he was a teenager. Federman then begins to talk about his life in the mid-fifties, expounding upon a trip to France in the summer of 1958. Federman then explains how he ran into Tashima, who he had originally met in Tokyo during the Korean War, in New York City after the war, how Tashima explained about the G.I. Bill and how they both ended up students at Columbia University. Federman describes his “Three Musketeers” comradery with Tashima and John Wadleigh. McCaffery and Federman try to determine the timeline of Federman’s friendship with Tashima, aided by letters written by both Federman and Tashima. Later portions of the interview fade in and out., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Ricardo Cruz, 1993-07
The tape begins with rap music The tape is labeled as an interview on San Diego radio station KPBS, a show called “These Days." Cruz talks about the similarities between his writing and music that he is able to produce on his home turntable and mixer. McCaffery asks him to read from his book Straight Outta Compton. The title of the book is the same as that of an album by N.W.A. Cruz talks about one of his themes, “how to escape a ghetto of the mind.” They discuss what “reclaiming your imagination” means as used in the text read. McCaffery invites his listeners to call. McCaffery asks about rap history, starting with contests. Cruz agrees that rap emerged from “talking games,” but a “certain rhetoric” in rap is in the tradition of Greek orators. A caller says that “rap is given a bad name. McCaffery says that rap appears to “valorize sexual conquest” and consumption, and Cruz says rap uses “too much” of the images of wealth and sex. McCaffery and Cruz discuss how these same themes are in blues and jazz, and the improvisation format. McCaffery says that Cruz’s book is “more like collage,” and they discuss the structure of the narrative. Callers, McCaffery and Cruz continue to discuss rap music, including a caller who says that rap is an “extension of the African-American tradition” and wonders if rap is being appropriated. Cruz answers, that rap “should be open to all.”, San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Ricardo Cruz, 1993-12
Cruz talks about his Five Days of Bleeding, which was eventually published in 1995 by Fiction Collective 2. McCaffery asks him to compare his “new book” with the already published book, Straight Outta Compton, published in 1992. The title of the book in progress refers to a song. The next question is about rap music, blues, and jazz. Cruz talks about the history of these musical forms. McCaffery likens Cruz’s style to musical forms and talks about appropriating an establishment technology and turning it to other ends. Cruz talks about his relationship with music. McCaffery talks about the similarities between cyberpunk and rap music, and about sampling as a technique. McCaffery asks how Straight Outta Compton evolved. Cruz calls one character a “lyrical terrorist.” Cruz says, “I’m going to throw this music in your face” with his current work. McCaffery asks about allusions to music in Cruz’s work, such as to Muddy Waters. Cruz talks about “black voice” and “the diaspora.” McCaffery discusses rock music and traditionally black music and the criticisms of rap music, such as misogyny and promotion of violence. Cruz says that criticisms of rap music are often used to dismiss that musical form, and discusses its place in black culture. They discuss avant-pop as a “way to free yourself from the boundaries of pop culture." On the second side, the interview continues with a comparison of Ishmael Reed’s and Cruz’s work., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Richard Grossman
Larry McCaffery interviews Richard Grossman in a restaurant. Grossman begins by discussing the importance of the sound of language. Grossman describes what he is trying to do with his American Letters trilogy. Grossman explains his wide range of influences in world art and literature. Grossman explains the genesis and development of his book The Animals. Grossman describes his biography in detail. Grossmen describes his goals in writing his American Letters trilogy., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Richard Kostelanetz
Larry McCaffery, Harry Polkinhorn and Sinda Gregory interview Richard Kostelanetz in Calexico, California. Kostelanetz begins the interview by stating “I do fiction that is more radical than what anyone else is writing today and radical in more ways.” The discussion moves towards what Kostelanetz considers fiction. Kostelanetz discusses how he is interested in language and that all of his work is “literary” precisely because it always involves language as opposed to other poly-artists who don’t focus on language. Much of the discussion focuses, not on Kostelanetz’s writing but on the variety of audio projects he has completed and is currently working on. Kostelanetz discusses his belief in technology and how it can do things with audio and with language that has not been possible in the past. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 200 to 218 of Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors, ed. Larry McCaffery, University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Rikki Ducornet
An edited transcript of this interview appeared in The Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 1998, Volume 18, Number 3, maintained online by the Dalkey Archive Press. Sinda Gregory asks what books Ducornet read as a child. The author says Alice in Wonderland, books on archaeology, and others. Her father was a social philosopher and a Cuban and her grandmother told stories about Havana. She found Max Ernst and Alfred Jarry, “and a whole world opened up to me” and she “oved Cocteau as a very young child. She married artist Guy Ducornet, also interested in surrealism. Her first show was in Algeria because her husband was involved in the Caisse Centrale de Coopération Économique there. Gregory asks about the influence of fairy tales, and Ducornet says she grew up in a “world imbued with magic” at Bard College. The author wanted to explore the concept of “the ogress." The author says that racist speech inspired her to write about “the fire of the Holocaust.” Ducornet talks about Septimus, how she does not “plan scenes,” and about how one character “metamorphoses” into others. She finally began to feel Jewish while in France, and felt “physically threatened.” McCaffery and Ducornet discuss Lewis Carroll, and the current recovered memory controversy. They talk about the epigraph to The Stain, a gnostic prayer. Next, McCaffery asks about Ducornet’s references to food and eating, and she says she loves food as part of the natural world. She is fascinated by the figure of Kali. McCaffery and Ducornet discuss themes and she says a book is dedicated to her father, who was a war-gamer. She discusses her belief that “freedom is meaningless without responsibility.” The last side starts with Gregory talking about how Ducornet is “unattached to linearity.” McCaffery asks if Ducornet wants to mention other authors. She responds with a list that begins with remarks about William Gass’s Omensetter’s Luck, all “major in the library of marvels.” McCaffery names Jose Donoso, and Ducornet says she met him. McCaffery asks about “the new book,” and they discuss (Phosphor in Dreamland, 1995)., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Robert Coover, 1979
Larry McCaffery interviews Robert Coover at Brown University. Coover talks about the use of art as a commodity. Coover discusses the lack of a writing community in America and how American writers have sprung up doing the same thing at the same time without reading each other’s works. Coover explains that in his own writing he is not particularly interested in language but in how fiction “reflects something else and that something else is always a bit elusive for me.” Coover explains that he is interested in story no matter the form and explains how that relates to his early work (his first two novels and first collection of short stories). The interview then focuses around the delays in the publication of Coover’s novel The Public Burning. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 62 to 78 of Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists, ed. Tom LeClair and Larry McCaffery, University of Illinois Press, 1983., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Interview with Robert Coover, 1999
Larry McCaffery and Robert Coover meet at a sports bar (with loud noise and a football game on television in the background) to discuss Coover’s 1977 novel The Public Burning. Coover discusses in detail the genesis of the book, the research he undertook and the work he engaged in during its composition. Coover also explains the long delay between the book's actual composition and the publication of it. An edited version of this interview appears on pages 115-125 of Critique-Studies In Contemporary Fiction, 2000 Fall, Vol.42(1)., San Diego State University, This project was supported by a Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR). The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

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