Andrei Codrescu interviewed by John Wisniewski.
3:AM: When did you begin writing, Andrei?
AC: Before I started reading. I had to repeat first grade because I couldn’t read, but I wrote a lot imitating the letters in books. When the reading bud opened in my brain I read what I wrote — ethereal beautiful made all kinds of sense (to me). Schoolbooks were excruciatingly boring by comparison. There are few books I’ve read since that came close to my preliterate works. I wish I still had them but my stepfather burned them for heat in the winter of 1953 when Stalin died.
3:AM: Could you tell us about your early life?
AC: I was paralyzed by terror that my mother was an ice witch. I was shot by soldiers from a moving truck and was hit below the knee with a wooden sabot by a little girl when we moved to a new apartment. I loved my mother’s sister Anna who wore glasses, chain-smoked and read books in three languages. My cousin Y showed me hers and I showed her mine: there was no hair around either hers or mine. Her father taught me chess and let me win.
3:AM: What inspires you to write?
AC: Novelty, surprise — streets I never saw before, people on the New York subway, witty people, story tellers, great books by authors nobody has heard of, found texts of pamphlets, wind blown newspapers, lost letters, exhibitionists, masked humans, people with humdrum jobs who change into royalty at festivals, Orchard Street and brunch at Katja’s on the Lower East Side, NY; funny things my friends do, intelligent dogs and repair shops.
3:AM: What were your first published works?
AC: All my work was published in the akashik record, then in print in Steaua (The Star) and Flacara Sibiului (The Flame of Sibiu) in Transylvania, then in The World (New York) and El Corno Emplumado (Mexico City).
3:AM: Any favourite authors and poets?
AC: It’s true: authors are not poets. I don’t like authors, but I like the poets Arghezi, Bacovia, Blaga, Berrigan and Villon.
3:AM: Tell us about writing the film Road Scholar — what was the idea for the screenplay?
AC: There was no screenplay, there was only a cherry red convertible Cadillac and America.
3:AM: What was your idea for convening Exquisite Corpse?
AC: I published Exquisite Corpse, I didn’t “convene” it: I would have to be God to convene a corpse, whether dead or alive! Exquisite Corpse was a flat, long newspaper aka The Pravda of the Avantgarde. The idea of the Corpse was to kill all dead establishment poets and expose live ones to the blitzkrieg of small press fame.
3:AM: Why did you decide to speak on National Public Radio?
AC: It was amusing!
3:AM: Any thoughts or controversial remarks?
AC: Yes. I didn’t make enough. Hopefully next time you look me up, Google will be a thing of the past like Xerox
3:AM: hat are you working on now, Andrei?
AC: A secret project with arctic AIs.
Check out our previous interviews with Andrei Codrescu from 2003 and 2009.
ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER
John Wisniewski has written for amfm Magazine, Perfect Sound Forever magazine, the LARB and Chiron Review.
