GALO: Did you happen to see the film The Road based on Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name? His post-apocalyptic landscapes make me think of the ones in Ether.

BE: I didn’t see The Road. I read the book. At some point, early on in the writing (of Ether) and it probably doesn’t show itself at all, I went back and, well it may show itself in some small ways, reread an earlier novel of McCarthy’s called “Suttree,” which is by far my favorite of his books.  [The novel] is set along the riverbanks in a Mississippi city and mainly involves the life of the people who’ve had to live as outcasts along the riverbanks. The main character, I believe, lives in a houseboat. And I think its McCarthy’s most extraordinary work of prose; it’s incredibly lush, gorgeous writing. I purposely reread that, I think mainly because I was trying to loosen up my own writing, and found reading his was good for that. But probably some of the settings may have rubbed off a little bit too. It’s very different from all his other books and especially from the last few, the ones he has gotten really well known for.

GALO: As a journalist, I’ve read that you’ve reported from Afghanistan. How dangerous an assignment was that?

BE: I was there in 2003 when I think it was in many ways a safer place, certainly for an American, at least. The suicide bombings had not yet begun. It may have been foolhardy, but I got around Kabul completely on my own in taxis. And very, very rarely felt threatened. While I was there, the only time I felt immediately in danger was when I went to the US embassy for one reason or another, because the Marines at the gate were so armed, ready, and so scared of a strange car. If a taxi driver didn’t know better and just pulled up to the gate, you’d have half a dozen M-3s on you and Marines screaming. So I quickly learned to get dropped off a block away. I mean, if they saw a taxi coming, as far as they knew, it was going to drive through the gate and blow them up. I think being in a place like that you are constantly aware of danger and I think that’s true for Afghans as much as it was for me.

GALO: You won a National Magazine Award for a piece of yours that appeared in the Los Angeles Magazine. What was that about?

BE: The piece was called “The End.” It was about death. It was very specifically about what happens to your body when you die in the city of Los Angeles — from the moment your heart stops beating. Who handles your body and what are the various possibilities for the journey you’ll be taking. [I] actually had a lot of fun writing it.

I spent time for instance hanging out with embalmers, hanging out with funeral directors, [and] hanging out with autopsy technicians. Most of it was fun. As you might guess, people in those industries have a pretty sharp sense of humor. I think most people that deal with, in their daily and professional lives, death in one way or another end up having effective defense mechanisms that let them laugh at things that most people wouldn’t laugh at.

GALO: They’re not going around crying all day?

BE: No, no they’re pretty funny. I think if you’re in those industries, most people learn not to talk about their work. Nobody wants to hear it. If you spend your days handling dead bodies, you go out to a bar and want to meet somebody; the surest way to turn them off is to tell them you had your hands in corpses all day long. Which means that a lot of them have a huge amount of amazing stories but also that they don’t get to talk about them. They don’t get to talk about their lives even to their families and relatives. Nobody wants to hear it.

GALO: So did you expose some of that behavior in your article?

BE: I hope so, yeah. Some people I was asking to talk about things they never talked about before. And some of them were not only funny but also quite profound. It was hard not to get good stories out of people.

GALO: How interested would you be to have your novels optioned and turned into motion pictures?

BE: [Laughs] You know I may be the only writer in Los Angeles–or one of the few writers in Los Angeles–that doesn’t think along those terms much. If someone were to decide to do that, [then] that would be fine. If I were to get a check out of it that would certainly be fine too. I love film. I love going to the movies. I’m sure that film has played some really large role in the way I write and the way I think about a work of art can relate to the wealth. Even the way I think about scene and whatnot has been influenced by film. On formal levels, I’m sure my writing has been affected by film. But I’m interested in writing because I’m interested in words and I can’t imagine composing outside of the page; composing things that have to be translated to an image on the screen.

As a writer and not writing for film, and not related to the film and television industry, you have a certain kind of anonymity which I don’t think New York affords writers. I think you have a certain kind of freedom that nobody gives a shit what you’re doing, so you’re able to take chances and [be] unbound by certain kinds of conventions. I think in a way that would not be true in New York, or in places with a much more deeply ingrained literary history (not that LA doesn’t have a pretty terrific and largely unsung literary history), but it’s not one that dominates the cultural landscape in the same way. I think I’d have a hard time breathing as a writer in New York.

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