The Dizzies

CM: As an example of the second category, We Others offers something unusual: new work along with work that’s been previously published. Why did you choose to do this? How did you think about writing or selecting new work to accompany the earlier stories?

SM: The idea for a collection of new and selected stories wasn’t mine. It was my editor’s. The idea was presented as a kind of honor — aging writer, time to prepare the coffin. I didn’t choose stories that deliberately connected with earlier stories in the collection. I’d argue that connections of this kind are, in fact, inevitable, since all the stories of a particular writer flow out of the same imagination. I’m always a little skeptical about collections that are praised for their “wide range”: that may be admirable, but it also may indicate a desperate and superficial desire to seem varied. A genuine writer’s sentences are stamped with a spiritual mark as surely as a sheet of fine paper is stamped with a watermark. In this sense, every sentence written by a true writer is the same sentence. The logical consequence is that every story by such a writer is the same story. Do I believe this? Yes and no.