The Lightning Room with Jim Krosschell

Jim Krosschell speaks briefly with J. Bradley about his great piece, How to ___ a ___ Lobster ____, from our June 2012 Issue.

1. What can stop The Claw?

Nothing can stop the Claw but a continuous onslaught of tourist money.

2. Where did this story come from?

I write familiar essays about the so-called icons of Maine, so sooner or later I had to face the lobster. To do it slightly differently was a challenge – also not to steal too much from David Foster Wallace’s great essay in Gourmet Magazine a few years ago, “Consider the Lobster.”

3. What else would you crack open and eat?

Any story by Alice Munro.

4. What sea monster would you fight?

When I look at the ocean, I’m pleased to imagine all kinds of monsters under the waves.  The ones in Maine are all friendly, of course, so I’d have to travel to find the giant squid that squeeze you slowly to death, an ink-stained wretch screaming in the middle of the night.

5. How would you inhumanely catch __________?

The most inhumane thing currently is the right wing of the Republican Party. I’d catch them in lies.