are you ready to fumble?

I always seem to miss my opportunity when people ask me what my novel is about. John Irving says in his 1998 introduction to the Modern Library reprint of The World According to Garp, "Surely everyone knows the two most common questions that are asked of any novelist. What is your book about? And is it autobiographical? These questions and their answers have never been of compelling interest to me -- if it's a good novel, both the question and the answers are irrelevant..." While I tend to agree with the man responsible for making me think I could write a novel in the first place, it doesn't stop people from asking those questions, and paraphrasing his response comes off as a bit impudent.

It's about Compassion. That's what I'd like to say when people ask what my novel is about. That may only come through after the reader is finished with her job and contemplating further, but that's okay -- in fact, I think that's great. But compassion is what I'm putting into it, that's what I'm aiming for. It would be enough to just say that, and when people asked me to elaborate, to smile and put a finger to my lips (the way M4 did when I innocently asked him what was inside of a wooden box that he and J4 were building that made it ping and whir musically) as if to say, "It's a secret" . But unfortunately people don't have to ask me to elaborate. I just go on and on, can't shut myself up, circle around the drain as I try to explain what my novel is about:

It's about a young man dying of AIDS, flashing back to different parts of his life as he revisits them in the present; it's about a burning car, a box of ashes, a dead iguana, a Diana Ross impersonator; there are lyrics to songs by Pink Floyd, recorded by Cher, from the soundtrack to the motion picture musical Hair, made up "on the spot"; it takes place in a mobile home park in Florida, gay porn theaters in Times Square, the Branch Davidian Compound near Waco, Texas, the shore of Alcatraz Island; it's presented in First, Second and Third Person, and features performance art pieces by the title character -- who is not the narrator -- which fall randomly between chapters and are called "interstitials" in the book (S1 gave me that word).

I don't think this description gives clarity. "It's about Compassion" would be a much better answer.

When people ask if it's autobiographical, I usually say, "I'm not dying, if that's what you mean."