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Thank You for Dying: An Interview with Chris Buckley
April 02nd 11:06:35 AM
As the buzz surrounding Chris Buckley's new book Boomsday continues to build, the Wall Street Journal published an author interview last week. Below are three of Buckley's answers I found to be interesting (WSJ in bold, Buckley in normal print). Ryan Lynch, S4's own witty communications spinster, is currently reading the book, so look forward to hearing his thoughts.
But what makes you think young people can be made to care about Social Security?
If I were "generation whatever," I would be pissed off. We have an $8.5 trillion national debt, and that bill is going to come due one of these days. But people who raise the cry of alarm can be made in our culture of gratification to sound tiresome. Cassandras have always been historically discredited until the monster rises out of the ocean and eats everyone on the beach.
So you're going to make them rise up through satire?
Well, you know, birds gotta fly. Girls gotta dance. This is what I do. I hope younger people read it. I hope they take parts of it seriously. And I hope they get politically active and start forcing some of these harder issues.
You're a modern-day Jonathan Swift?
I'm not. I'm an acolyte of the Swiftian altar, and perhaps a wannabe. But that's not a bad ideal to aim at. That's a pretty good North Star. There have been humorists who think of themselves of sitting at the children's table of literature. We're stuck with this conception that humor, comedy, satire isn't really a main event. I dispute that.
Posted by Natalie Vernon
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