Raptormania!: Welcome Collin Orcutt, to your Raptormania! interview on literature.

Raptormania!: Thank you for joining us.

CO: Always a pleasure to be on Raptormania

Raptormania!: Now, many people believe that outside of court orders and notices of failure to pay child support, basketball players don't read. Is this true?

CO: Well I find time to read in between my court orders and notices of failure to pay child support

CO: But I always have been somewhat of an overachiever

Raptormania!: Who are some of your favorite authors?

CO: Well it's hard to say

CO: I haven't read a book for fun in about 6 years

CO: Thanks to higher learning institutions

CO: I used to like Michael Crichton a lot when I was in 6th grade

CO: If that counts

Raptormania!: Absolutely. We know that working on basketball takes away all of your free time. But in school, what have you been most impressed by?

CO: Well I have read basically everything ever written by Faulkner in the course of the last year and a half

CO: I have been impressed by some of his writing

CO: I like Kurt Vonnegut

CO: Player Piano was very good

CO: as was Slaughterhouse Five

Raptormania!: Do you believe that the better comparison to Faulkner's verbosity is dysentery or Niagara Falls?

CO: I guess I would have to go with Niagara Falls because he has such a plethora of things to say that I picture him not being able to control the flow

Raptormania!: Then the reader would be the man in a barrel plunging to his death?

CO: Well you have to admit, it is a thrilling ride on the way down

Raptormania!: Well, along the way I am hoping for swift mortality.

CO: And at some point on the way there I'm sure you would have an epiphany or at least a deep thought about life

CO: So the good goes with the bad I suppose

Raptormania!: Fair enough.

Raptormania!: What appeals to you about Vonnegut?

CO: His satire

CO: And his ability to be sarcastic in his writing

Raptormania!: We at Raptormania don't condone sarcasm.

CO: That is hard to do and make apparent to the reader

CO: Sarcasm is a lifestyle worth living

Raptormania!: If you like Vonnegut, you'd love Stanley Elkin- I'll give you some of his work.

Raptormania!: What of Vonnegut have you tried to incorporate into your own fiction?

CO: I don't know that I have actually incorporated any of Vonnegut into any of my fiction...

CO: I wouldn't dare say I've reached anywhere near being good enough to use devices that he uses in my writing

CO: (So apparently sarcasm)

CO: No, in all honesty, I am a very straight forward writer and don't like to use language that is too far out of common speech

CO: I think I get a little of that from Vonnegut

CO: That and a good mix of interior though mixed amongst the action in the story

Raptormania!: In a recent NY Times book review, Jonathan Franzen speaks of Alice Munro's disdain for anchoring the action of her fiction to specific moments in time or place, leaving the reader to create his own zeitgeist relative to the story at hand. Would you do her?

CO: No

CO: Too intellectual

CO: I don't like to feel stupid

Raptormania!: Danielle Steele?

CO: Plus I'm sure she wouldn't be any fun in bed

CO: Now Danielle Steele, she has some promise

Raptormania!: You don't believe there's any correlation between intellectual talent and sexual talent?

CO: I do

CO: A negative correlation

CO: Especially with writers

Raptormania!: Interesting. Fortunately, Raptormania has an IQ of 80 and uses voice commands to type on the computer.

CO: Then I'm sure Raptormania is a sex machine

CO: They get wrapped up in trying to figure out what symbols would best describe the event at hand

Raptormania!: Not true! It was only one time I told the girl not to worry, I would personify an orgasm in lieu of her disappointing night.

CO: So how was the next date...?

Raptormania!: She's been busy lately. I'll let you know.

Raptormania!: Other writers you'd sleep with?

CO: I'll be waiting for the update

Raptormania!: Historically?

Raptormania!: Dorothy Parker?

Raptormania!: Charlotte Bronte?

CO: Dorothy Parker is a 4

Raptormania!: She is so a 7

Raptormania!: Are you kidding?

CO: Charlotte Bronte is a negative 4

CO: Bard hasn't lowered my standards THAT much

Raptormania!: "If all the girls at Yale Prom were laid end to end, I wouldn't be a bit surprised." Parker knew of which she spoke.

CO: Then I'm sure she would agree with me that she is 4

CO: Tops

Raptormania!: Well, she did lack confidence. Let's speak about postmodernism, post-modernistically.

Raptormania!: Green

CO: Who?

Raptormania!: Farm fresh eggs.

CO: I don't know what fresh means anymore

CO: Kline has killed that concept

Raptormania!: Glass windshield are bits of sand.

CO: Ah yes, and bits of sand are battered rocks

Raptormania!: Thompson's Water Seal- the protection your wood finish needs.

CO: But not proven as safe or effective as Trojan

Raptormania!: Very good. Let's talk poetry. Which is the more romantic genre- the haiku, or the dirty limerick?

CO: If the dirty limerick is about the dirty sanchez, then i'll go with the haiku

CO: But if not... limericks are always a sure fire way to hit a double

Raptormania!: Why has baseball imagery become such an integral part of sexual lingo?

CO: You know I took a class entitled The Anthropology of Baseball last semester

CO: and I still have no clue

Raptormania!: It seems counterintuitive.

CO: Maybe it's the fact that they hold big sticks with tight pants on and are bent over whenever they're in the field

Raptormania!: A catcher's mitt is not sexy. A splintered bat is not sexy. David Wells is not sexy.

CO: Or the fact that they are walled in-- some people are into the shackles idea

CO: No, David Wells is not sexy

Raptormania!: He's twice the man I'll ever be.

Raptormania!: God willing.

CO: He could eat a man twice your size as well

Raptormania!: And still have room for a 1987 Buick Le Sabre.

CO: With a bike rack

Raptormania!: And a U-Haul attached.

CO: Now you're taking it a little too far

CO: Control yourself

Raptormania!: ...said the restaurant to David Wells.

Raptormania!: Fat people aside, what authors are you eager to tackle next?

CO: That is better than Why did the chicken cross the road

Raptormania!: To flee David Wells?

CO: I'm in the middle of Virginia Woolf because... well I don't really know why masochism is my thing I guess

Raptormania!: Oh God.

Raptormania!: You know who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? I'm afraid of Virginia Woolf.

CO: I want to read more Hemingway

Raptormania!: What have you read of his?

CO: And reading some contemporary fiction would be nice, I think there is something to be said for knowing authors of your time and not just those who died before my parents were born

Raptormania!: Agreed- have you read Richard Russo?

CO: I have not read Russo

Raptormania!: His stories are set in your neck of the woods, too- you'd love him.

CO: Oh I didn't see the Hemingway question-- I read In Our Time

CO: Which I enjoyed

Raptormania!: You recently set a story in Maine- do you plan to write more from the place of your childhood?

CO: Maine is just natural for me. It is so easy to give a story life if you really know the setting.

CO: So I would assume I will write more from stories set in Maine

CO: But I don't want to turn into the next Steven King, so it's something I'll have to think about.

Raptormania!: His literary fiction is quite good, I think.

Raptormania!: But the glasses are a problem, no?

CO: Yeah, they're not strong enough apparently because he walked off the curb into oncoming traffic a few years ago and got hit by a car

CO: Although that may have something to do with the fact that he reads books while he walks

Raptormania!: No, that was Dean Koontz. Know your Family Guy.

CO: I think you are mistaken

CO: Although Dean Koontz may have also

CO: I used to read a lot of Koontz as well

Raptormania!: I don't read the papers. I only know about current events from animated cartoons. So I will defer to you.

CO: That was also pre high school, when I used to have free time

CO: Well I have never seen Family Guy so we are talking apples and oranges here

Raptormania!: Yes, I read The Cat Who Mysteries as a youngster. We've probably moved beyond them both.

Raptormania!: If you could accomplish one literary goal, what would it be?

CO: The Cat Who novels were dope

CO: Hmm

CO: I guess to be immortalized by my writing

CO: To have people read my writing many years after I have died and still be able to relate to what I wrote

CO: I personally think that is the mark of good fiction, when the characters and situations are so real that the setting is lost

Raptormania!: Like Alice Munro.

CO: And I suppose, that the setting fails to matter

Raptormania!: And yet you still won't take her to Funkytown.

CO: Nope

CO: She is Canadian

Raptormania!: Those northern girls will really keep you warm at night. Know what poet said that?

CO: Ben La Farge?

Raptormania!: Close. Brian Wilson.

CO: And look how he ended up

Raptormania!: Well Collin, thank you for a look at the literary life.

CO: It has been my pleasure