It’s a special weekend edition here at Galleycat (thanks to out-of-town trips, wonky wireless and other errors of comedy) and what’s everyone talking about now? Why, Kate Braverman’s interview with the LA Times where…oh, let’s let our FishbowlLA brothers round up the choice quotes:
– “I’m not just another writer. I don’t think people understand my relationship with this city, and they don’t understand what I’ve achieved.”
– “There is not another woman writer in Southern California who sits between Bellow and Conrad next to Hemingway and Kafka. I have the most literary stature, certainly, of any woman in Southern California.”
– “I am in the canon. Those other people will never be in the canon.”
– “What has made my life in Los Angeles untenable, and made me have to leave Los Angeles, is that I am treated as a non-person in this city.”
– “I’m the best-kept secret in L.A.”
Not surprisingly, LA-based blogs are atwitter about the interview, as The Elegant Variation remarks on the “headline-grabbiness” of it and Pinky’s Paperhaus wonders “if a biographer wrote this, I could perhaps choke it down. But to put yourself between Bellow and Conrad? She’s back on the coke. Gotta be.” Of course, as L.A. Observed points out, maybe Kate’s so bitter because she’s really not a fan of the city that should give her respect (as outlined in a recent SF Chronicle interview.)
Ron reports that Braverman made similar comments during his recent conversation with her, which he decided didn’t fit the tenor of the item as published: “Frankly, I thought a writer whose debut remains in print 25 years after its original publication, and whose short stories are taught in creative writing programs, probably was entitled to feel a bit confident about herself, so I didn’t attach anywhere near as much significance to that line of discussion as the Times did. Actually, the one part of the profile that tickled me was how, while subtly undermining Braverman’s claims that she should be better known in Los Angeles, the Times neglected to mention her references to an LAT article telling the city she was dead. Because I was told the same story, and I can’t imagine Braverman wouldn’t have mentioned it to an actual Times reporter.”