Associate Editor Don Peteroy is back with another of the irrelevant questions that one might, if one were science-fictionally inclined, liken to little spaceships zooming madly around in his head, shooting out tractor beams in the hope of sucking up writers he admires. This week’s abduction: one Ron Currie Jr. Now to the alien examination room!
Question: Members of an unnamed alien civilization from antimatter Galaxy NGC 9221are currently coming to Earth. They plan to blow us up, for the hell of it. Their engines are powered by an energy force called Ron Currie Jr. Likes to Read. Worry not. I’ve done the calculations. You’ve got three books to go before they enter our solar system, four before they’re within firing range. If you want to thwart their attack, you can stop reading books right now; if you want to press your luck, you can go ahead and read three more. What would the last three books you’d read be? And you wish to read a fourth, what world-destroying book would you choose?
RC: Since very little I do seems to have any measurable effect on the world, I like the idea of something as simple and seemingly innocuous as reading a book bringing about the end of human life. That in mind, I’m going all the way. Wait, so do I get to finish them all? Does the attack commence the moment I turn the last page of the fourth book? I’m going to assume so. Okay. This scenario reminds me of another circumstance I face fairly often, one with similar stakes: I’m at a restaurant, and I’m starving—I mean don’t-put-any-part-of-your-anatomy-near-my-mouth hungry—and I’m trying to decide what to order, which of course is made more complicated and difficult by the fact that I’m too hungry to think. Chances are I’ve eaten at this place before, and I have my one or two favorite items on the menu. I’d say 25 percent of the time I’m foolish enough to try something new, and when I do, I almost always end up disappointed, which when I’m really hungry makes me angry as shit, and then my whole evening (and, chances are, that of anyone in my company) is ruined. Okay. So wait, what was the analogy? Oh yeah. This is like that, except it’s not just that I’m really hungry, it’s that this will be my last meal ever. So will I be foolish enough to risk squandering the experience on a book I haven’t read, no matter how good everyone says it is? I will not. Instead, I will reread books I know are excellent, and that way I can guarantee I won’t be disappointed. And you know what, just for shits and giggles let’s go with exclusively story collections. Probably will start with The Things They Carried. You know, I haven’t read Malamud’s Collected Stories in a while, and it’s hefty enough that we’ll all live a little longer. Here’s something interesting—I already know what the fourth book will be, and it’s also written by a straight cisgendered white guy, so I’m sitting here debating internally over throwing in a collection by a woman, or a black dude, or a wheelchair-bound Quebecois separatist. Or maybe just Drown by Junot Diaz, because it’s excellent. But you know what? The world’s coming to an end, so demographic quotas, I’m afraid, can no longer save us. Hence, book #3 will be What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. And finally, the only story collection with the power to actually bring the world to an end: Jesus’ Son.
Ron Currie, Jr. is the author of Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles, Everything Matters! and God Is Dead, winner of the New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award. Often compared to Kurt Vonnegut, he was recently presented the Addison M. Metcalf Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
