Chicago, Fiction

Stuart Dybek’s "Long Thoughts"

jacket imageToday Zulkey.com features an interview with Stuart Dybek, author of Childhood and Other Neighborhoods. In the interview, Dybek talks about one of the stories from the book, titled "The Long Thoughts":

Have any of the characters in your stories had impact on your real life relationships? Meaning that, if somebody recognizes themselves in one of your stories, how has that impacted his relationship with you?
Despite the fact that I’m writing fiction and have taken the liberties that fiction allows for, people have at different times recognized themselves in some of the characters. Mostly the reaction has been favorable. I had one old friend who appeared in a story called "The Long Thoughts," who would give the book that story appeared in to people as gifts so that they could read about him. There was an instance however when a dear friend who saw himself in one of my stories—a version of a story that he told to me—was offended not by his portrayal but that I would use a story he’d told to me in private. I should add that the story he told to me was fantastical and I changed it further and made still more fantastical. Still, he treated it not as my stealing something but as a broken confidence.

You can read the rest of the interview here.