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Steve Erickson Biography

Stephen Michael "Steve" Erickson (born April 20, 1950) is an American novelist. The recipient of the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, he is the only Southern California novelist to win the Lannan Lifetime Achievement Award previously bestowed on William Gaddis, William H. Gass and John Barth.

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Steve Erickson Quotes

a dream is only a memory of the future

Dream, Future, Memories, Memory

For better or worse I'm the writer I am today because of hearing those Dylan records. For better and most certainly not for worse, I'm the person I am today because of hearing Charles.

Charles, Hearing, Records, Today

One of the reasons I'm not so keen on people calling me an "experimental" writer is that it suggests the work is about the experiment, when it's always the opposite - any "experimentation" is dictated by the material.

Calling, Opposites, People, Work, Writer

In my early twenties the nature of conservatism itself changed. When I identified as a fourteen-year-old conservative, it was closer to what we today think of as libertarianism - conservatism, at least for me, had been defined by Jeffersonian credos like "the best governed are the least governed" and "I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man" that were very idealistic and romantic to a kid.

Changed, Kids, Men, Nature, Thinking, Today

It wouldn't have occurred to me that while this old white man, which is to say me, was voting for Hillary Clinton, white women were choosing an overt misogynist [Donald Trump] over the first woman president. Someone will have to explain that one to me someday.

Donald, Hillary, Men, Overt, Voting, White Man

The form is always integral to the expression of the theme or to the sheer telling of the story, and sometimes the right form is apparent to me from the outset and sometimes it isn't.

Expression, Integral, Outset, Sometimes, Stories, Telling

If you're a smart writer, you listen.

Ifs, Listen, Smart, Writer

I was raised a right-wing Republican and was about eighteen when I had to admit to myself that in regards to the great domestic crucible of the day, civil rights and racial justice, conservatives were on the wrong side historically and morally, and that it took too much intellectual and psychological jujitsu to pretend otherwise. I didn't want to pretend anymore; I wanted to be on the right side.

Justice, Morally, Republican, Rights, Wings

I began composing the next poem, the one that was to be written next. Not the last poem of those I had read, but the poem written in the head of someone who may never have existed but who had certainly written another poem nonetheless, and just never had the chance to commit it to ink and the page.

Ink, May, Page, Pages, Read, Written

Western music is arguably America's greatest contribution to the 20th century, cultural or otherwise.

America, Western Music, Century, Cultural, Contribution

In the end I write the novels I need to write when I need to write them.

Ends, Needs, Novels, Write, Writing

In LA, you think you're making something up, but it's making you up.

Making, Think, Thinking

Out of the house and on my own, I faced the fact I didn't much like who I was. I didn't like my judgmentalism; I didn't like my absolutism. I didn't like my repression of natural empathy, my pinched lack of emotional generosity. How I had been thinking politically had less to do with what was wrong with the world and more to do with what was wrong with me, with my fears and insecurities, failings, weaknesses.

Emotional, Thinking, Generosity, Lack, Fact

I tell the stories in the way that feels natural to tell them.

Stories, Way, Natural, Feels, Tell

I'm my own "ideal reader" in the sense that I write novels that I would want to read.

Ideal, Novel, Sense, Want, Write, Writing

There have been times I thought that when I got a certain point in the story, a certain character was going to do a certain thing, only to get to that point and have the character make clear that he or she doesn't want to do that at all. That long phone conversation I thought the character was going to have? He hangs up the phone before the other person answers, and twenty pages of dialog I had half written in my head go out the window.

Character, Phones, Long, Pages, Thought

While I do believe I become a technically better writer over time, in others ways writing gets harder because inspiration is finite.

Believe, Gets, Inspiration, Ways, Writing

In terms of America, I think any profound consideration is bound to return us to the notion of twins because, though you certainly can contend there are many Americas, our history has been binary from the beginning, with its hairline fracture down the country's center between what American has wanted to be and what America has been. That fracture is slavery, of course. To some extent it's still slavery, in that collectively we refuse to come to grips with the American fact of slavery.

America, Beginning, Country, Refuse, Thinking

The material dictates the approach.

Approach, Dictates, Material, Materials

To the extent that I've ever understood postmodernism - and I'm sure there are people out there who do, but I'm not one of them - one of its distinguishing traits is the story's awareness of its own artifice, and how that awareness becomes part of the story. And if that's right, then I have no idea how I ever got lumped into postmodernism except that I believe, since I was first published, people just haven't quite known where else to put me.

Artifice, Believe, Except, Ideas, People, Quite

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