Aimee Bender is interviewed in Guernica Magazine, and I'm envious that I didn't get to sit in on the chat. Given the left-brained tilt of my most impassioned reading right now, I was particularly intrigued by this turn of the conversation (and, alas, wished for much more follow-up from the interviewer):
Guernica: Most writers and English teachers seem to be math-averse, yet your novel, An Invisible Sign of My Own, features a main character captivated by numbers. Do you like math? Where did the idea come from?
Aimee Bender: I think a lot of writers do think mathematically, actually, because fiction, a made-up world, requires a lot of working through of logic. So it’s a kind of math, on the page, using words. A word problem, of sorts. Jose Saramago’s allegorical novel, Blindness, is one giant playing out of logic, as placed on human nature. I didn’t expect it, in my book, and just found that writing about numbers seemed to appeal to some kind of structural way in which I think. Plus, numbers are so representative of superstitions which provide structure. Numbers exist in both worlds, so smoothly—the ordered world of math, and also the ordered world of magic, religion, and storytelling.
Bender is the author of the novels The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake and An Invisible Sign of My Own, and two short story collections, Willful Creatures and The Girl in the Flammable Skirt. She has won two Pushcart Prizes and her books have been spotlighted as a New York Times Notable Book and the Los Angeles Times Book of the Year.
Image Credit: Guernica Magazine.
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