[SCOTT] SIMON: Did you grow up thinking you’d be a writer?
[RON] RASH: I didn’t, but I think I showed all the symptoms. I was very comfortable being by myself. I spent a lot of time alone and particularly out in the natural world. I think I had a particular moment when I was 15 years old. I read “Crime and Punishment,” and that book just, I think, more than any other book made me want to be a writer, ’cause it was the first time that I hadn’t just entered a book, but a book had entered me. I can remember exactly where I was. I was in a biology class. I was supposed to be listening to the teacher but I was on the back row. And I can just remember so vividly just never having that kind of feeling, that kind of intensity from a book. And, obviously, at 15 I didn’t understand exactly what was going on with Raskolnikov. But there was a particular scene early in that book where the pawnbroker was murdered that I will never forget. It’s one of the most vivid memories in my life – not just my reading life (my emphasis)
. Read or, better, listen to the whole piece.
I fell intensely in love with reading at a very early age, and that love affair has never dimmed. When I read a book, it’s not just words on a page; it is even more immersive than going to a movie.
As for the interview, the best part was the brief reading from one of the stories. And in those few sentences, he sets out a very strong sense of character and place and theme. I will have to pick up this book.