GD: No barbershops for you?

MC: Too many mirrors.  Too many reflections of myself.  And I’ve probably saved thousands of dollars by not paying for a haircut in a decade.

GD: Edward Weston hated going to the barber. 

MC: When Jeff Atman dyes his hair, is there more happening than a pun on Dyer?

GD: That’s just a little, 'he he he.'  

MC: 'He he he's are fun, but...  In Jeff in Venice you write, “I could not keep track of who was who and what was what.  It was impossible to tell if the person in one part of the story was the same in another part, a few pages later.  Everyone was the avatar of everyone else.” Are you intentionally conflating a fictional Jeff/Geoff with the real Geoff?  For instance, you’ve been to the Biennelle and to Varanasi and you mouth words when you walk and you listen to the same music as the character in Varanasi and you’ve been known to do coke in Venice. 

GD: But I didn’t go nuts and wear a doti and talk to a goat.

MC: And I enjoy the confusion about who’s who, and all the he he hes, but what are you trying to say?

GD: The big question the book is asking is what it is formally that makes a novel a novel? You know, why does this book, with a protagonist who may or may not be the same person in both parts, have an aesthetic unity?

MC: Part of me reacts to the suggestion that it’s a book about what it means to be a novel.  Who cares?  Literature is about so much more—otherwise known as the human condition, right?