A Genius In Flip-Flops: An Interview With Christopher Moore

Steinbeck writes of "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," in Cannery Row and you seem to share his affection for people. What have you gotten from your reading of his comic novels?

Just exactly that - his great affection for human beings as flawed creatures. In fact, I think he shows us that it is our flaws that make us human, that unite us in humanity. I have a friend who said, "Steinbeck writes like benevolent god." I don't think you can aspire to anything higher than that. I think before I discovered Steinbeck in my mid-twenties, then sort of had some pretty major failures in my own life, my satire was a little heartless, my humor could be mean-spirited. Steinbeck taught me that I could be better than that.

Your books are full of very likeable but flawed guys. What's the secret to writing a believable human being?

I think perhaps that we are all defined by our desires and our fears. If you know what someone wants, and what they are afraid of, I think you know what drives them, what makes them get up in the morning or what makes them stay in bed. So that's how I approach character, "What do they want, and what are they afraid of."

What's best about people?

They're funny. Their capacity for compassion. What's worst? Their capacity for cruelty and thoughtlessness.

You're in pretty rare company in writing books with a humorous bent. There's Steinbeck, Douglas Adams, Fry and Laurie and….well, Christopher Moore. Is this what you had in mind when you started writing funny books?

I certainly hoped I would join ranks with people like Douglas Adams, Vonnegut, Tom Robbins, people like that. They and Steinbeck were all inspirations for me, but I didn't presume that I'd ever even get into print, let alone be spoken of in company with them. I had also just discovered Carl Hiaasen a few years before I started writing novels, and he was a great inspiration because I'd thought that maybe there weren't going to be any more funny books put into print.

What else inspires you, be it books or video games or cheesy horror movies?

I think I'm inspired by books and movies. While I enjoy video games, they have a whole different way of interfacing with the imagination that is counter to story-telling. I don't' mean that some games don't have great stories. Half-life 2, for instance, has great storytelling - you feel as if you're in the middle of a big-budget movie, but they aren't conducive to the mindset of telling the story. You're sort of too engaged to think in tangents when you're immersed in a video game. On the other hand, really cheesy horror movies beg to be made fun of, which is an inspiration in itself. And books - well, they're a whole world, aren't they?

Your experience with the movies ranges from extraordinary (Disney's purchase of Practical Demonkeeping) to typical (all your books optioned, none produced). What makes you want to be involved with movies or television?

I'd love to see what creative people could do with some of the images I've only seen in my head, but honestly, it's the exposure to a larger audience that pulls me toward movies and TV.

You've lived and written in some fairly isolated places like Big Sur and Hawaii. Is there a tradeoff between the peace and quiet of a small place and the inspiration that comes from being around people?

Absolutely. I have to go where there are people and culture to get inspiration, then I can go back to an isolated environment like Big Sur and let the ideas germinate, but too much time in a beautiful, but isolated paradise and I start to feel stupid - like I need more input.

Back to horror, you've resurrected Safeway night manager Tommy Flood and Jody, the accidental vampire, in the upcoming You Suck: A Love Story. What made you decide on a sequel to Bloodsucking Fiends?

I wrote the original book with the idea of a sequel in mind ten years ago, but my publisher at the time didn't have the confidence in the first book to publish it well, so it languished. (Which is why I changed publishers.) Frankly, it's taken me this long for my career to recover to a point where I could write a sequel to Fiends. This book should have been written ten years ago.

You Suck picks up right where Bloodsucking Fiends left off almost ten years ago. Was it challenging to pick up the story in a city that has changed since then?

It was, and I worried about that for some time, but then I sat in on a meeting of a book club in San Francisco who had just read Fiends. They knew the city and they knew the book, and although the city has changed, they suggested that I just ignore the change. Go forward as if it was the next day. So I did.