Jayson Greene on Uncanny Grief and Uncanny Novels

This is Thresholds, a series of conversations with writers about experiences that completely turned them upside down, disoriented them in their lives, changed them, and changed how and why they wanted to write. Hosted by Jordan Kisner, author of the essay collection Thin Places. Thresholds is a co-production between Black Mountain Institute and Literary Hub

*
Jordan sits down with author Jayson Greene during a live taping of Thresholds at the Beverly Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada. The two talk about Jayson’s new novel, UnWorld, the uncanniness of grief, the instability of memory, and how presciently his novel anticipated the way AI is changing human intimacy.

Jayson Greene: You want to believe that you remember the last words your grandmother ever said, and you want to believe that you remember the smell of the air in the room when it happened. And there’s a part of you that holds onto those things, but the trouble is that memory is so inherently subject to revision in ways that are constant and invisible. You are always writing over or erasing a previous version of this memory. I became very haunted by this when [my daughter] Greta died. Because I could feel it happening in real time.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts!

Jayson Greene is the author of the memoir Once More We Saw Stars and the novel UnWorld. Previously, he was senior editor at Pitchfork. He lives in Brooklyn.

________________________________

For more Thresholds, visit us at thisisthresholds.com. Original music by Lora-Faye Åshuvud.