Ask The Author: Ezra Fox

Ezra Fox’s “Get Well Rose” appears in the July issue. He talks with us about female authors, ice cream and taste buds.

1. How do you talk to yourself?

Through my characters. I think people who don’t write fiction don’t quite get that as a story goes through your head the people in it will start to call out their own lines, they tell you what they think of the world, they argue with you and say that they love you or that you’re not worth shit. Or maybe I need to see a shrink. In any case, I learn a lot about who I am and who I’m not when my characters talk to me.

2. What Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor would you invent in honor of “Get Well Rose”?

Good one. It would be called “Fourth Trimester” because all B&J’s flavor names should be catchy non-sequiturs. I’d stay faithful to her shopping list in the grocery story — Cookie Dough florets, Marshmallow fluff swirls, and chocolate covered popcorn clusters in peanut butter ice cream. Only I’d add in chunks of midazolam, a drug that causes short term memory loss used by doctors to help patients forget they just had surgery. People wouldn’t be sure they’d just eaten it. You’d need a prescription.

3. What challenges are there from writing in a woman’s perspective?

Oh, a serious question. It’s true that I’m not a woman, nor have I ever been pregnant. The challenges of writing a woman’s perspective are similar to the challenges of having a real relationship with any woman, which is to say that every woman (like every character regardless of gender) is their own person. Knowing someone else is the hardest thing in the world. Knowing yourself is hard enough. The main thing is to let characters write themselves (see question 1).
In this particular woman’s case, the idea behind the story as I see it is that we all try to get rid of parts of ourselves that we don’t want, but you can’t just do that without there being consequences, without losing something you want to keep. Everyone can relate to that sort of loss, I hope. A pregnant woman seemed like the perfect way to talk about something inevitable that I could make not happen. In terms of gender, I think everyone has feminine and masculine aspects, and to limit yourself to only one side is to lose half of your potential as a human. I guess the challenge was letting my female mind loose.

4. Who is on your to-do list?

First, Isaac Babel. He’s not well known enough and everyone should read him, especially his early and late stories. “Get Well Rose” is an older story of mine, but my new work will deal a lot with Babel’s influence on me. Second, this year I really want to connect with visual artists in Boston. Visual artists tend to be more open about their work than writers, and somehow more into big ideas. I have a lot to learn from them, and I want to tell them all their work has “a lot of raw sexual energy.” I think that’s important somehow.

5. Which fictional military branch would you serve in? What would be your rank and job?

I know I wrote about someone with military connections, but boy are you barking up the wrong tree with this question. Could there be a branch of the military that deals with dismantling the military? I’m a peacenik through and through. I was born this way, I can’t help it.

6. When do taste buds bloom into taste flowers?

Years ago I saw pictures of a condition called black hairy tongue. You can look it up if you want, but it’s truly nasty.