AG: What's mysterious to you? (I'm thinking of your Kenyon Review essay, "The Great Unknown," where you muse about how mystery in our daily lives is "in dangerously short supply.")


RM: The question of why we haven't been colonized by an advanced alien civilization. (Bear with me here...) Statistical models suggest a high likelihood of intelligent life outside our quaint corner of the cosmos. Why haven't we been contacted? There's the eerily possible possibility that our present predicament is a simulation (making our fictions simulations of simulations). My favorite theory, however, is that once civilizations reach a certain threshold of intelligence, they bring about their own destruction. So, in other words, intelligence and self-destruction are inextricably linked. (Kind of grim, huh?)



2.

AG: Thoughts on micro-ness? (Here I'm thinking about your book UNDERSTUDIES, a novella which is done in micro chapters.)


RM: The simple mention of micro-ness puts me in a defensive posture. I feel it's a wedge issue between writers of different generations. I've become accustomed to defending it against those that view it as a threat to some established order—or an ugly outgrowth of our digital age. For me, the micro cuts through the noise. We're inundated with a perpetual stream of content (be it news, clickbait, hot takes, etc.). A well-worked short can distill and bottle those overlooked moments, lend weight and reverence to the individual line, and—hopefully, hopefully—slow the pulse of time.



2½.    

AG: Kitchen, living room, bedroom, or porch?


RM: Porch.

I just moved into a new house and there's a beautiful enclosed porch area, so I'm all about porch right now.




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Read RM's micro.

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