1. An evil scientist puts you in a time machine, sending you to your least favorite place during your least favorite time in history. His kindly assistant adjusts the settings to give you control over your race, gender, marital status and profession. Where, when, what and who are you?

Although there are many periods of history that don’t interest me, I’m pretty sure cavemen had it the worst in terms of overall dirtiness and daily boredom. So I would probably be sent back to caveman times in, say, northern Europe. What a mean scientist! Language hasn’t been invented! Cavemen are hairy! I’m cold because fire has not yet caught on the way it will five years from now. This sucks.

Given all this, I don’t want to be human. I want to be a Woolly Mammoth. First of all, I’m warm. Secondly, I have adorable babies. Third, when I die by being frozen in ice, 30,000 years later, scientists will take my DNA, combine it with the DNA of an African Elephant, and make a clone-hybrid out of me, thus making me kind of immortal. That rocks.

2. In the year 2000-whatever, your adult children put together a photo album — or its super-futuristic counterpart — chronicling their favorite moments with you during their childhood. Describe some of these moments.

“Wow our Mom was cool. Remember when she won the Pulitzer for her fifth novel? We were very proud of her. Oh and remember when we all graduated from nice colleges and became doctors? That was awesome. Here’s a picture of Mom and Dad standing on the Great Wall of China during our trip there. We saw sooo many monkeys on that trip. Man, we sure had lots of happy Christmases involving good food and love. Oh here’s Mom and Dad on their 50th anniversary. Mom looks only 35 there. Our genes are amazing.”

3. You can choose to be any character in literature for three days. Which character do you choose and why? What part of his or her life do you choose to start your three days?

This is the hardest question you asked. I realized I would not want to be any of the characters in the books I most admire. Who would want to be Mrs. Dalloway or Sethe? So I’m at a loss. Of course, I could pick a tragedy and be, say, Romeo and have him behave more rationally about his secret marriage, but that would make the play boring. Or I could pick something mushy like Scarlett O’Hara and make her introspective enough to realize her love for Rhett Butler, but living in the Old South would scare me. It seems like it would be fun to be Don Quixote until you realize how embarrassing it must be to be him sometimes. So I will pick Moby-Dick. As Moby-Dick, I would swim away so that boring book would never be written.

4. You are a hard-boiled news dame from the 1930s. You have the choice between breaking the story of a lifetime, thus cementing your status as coolest news dame ever, or moving to Morocco with the man of your dreams, effectively giving up any chance to become a serious newspaper gal. What is the story you could break, and which choice do you make?

Hands down, I would cover the story. Whatever, man, if you can’t wait for me to cover my story, I don’t think we would work. I would be like Martha Gellhorn, who married Hemingway and then refused to be a housewife, instead going off to World War II and becoming one of the most important war correspondents of the time.

So what story would I cover? I suppose, logically, the biggest story of that decade would be the rise of Hitler, so I should say something like breaking Hitler annexing Austria. However, you know what would be really awesome? An exclusive interview with Bonnie and Clyde. First, they would take me–blindfolded of course–to their hide-out. They would let me sit in the latest stolen car and Clyde would show me his guns, which would make me nervous but it would be okay. As the evening progressed, they would open up about their poverty-stricken childhoods and descent into crime. The next day, every paper would print my account of their tale of desperation and love. Who needs Morocco?

5. You wake up tomorrow and discover that suddenly everyone in the United States speaks only Chinese. You still speak only English. What do you do?

Once I figured out what was going on, I would move to England where people speak English.

The End.

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I was interviewed by:
Marcia