SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Author Robert Stone says his new book, “Fun With Problems,’’ is bleak because he was angry at the country and society. “There’s a lot to be angry about,’’ he says. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
G FORCE | ROBERT STONE
‘Fun’ in name only
SARA KRULWICH/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Author Robert Stone says his new book, “Fun With Problems,’’ is bleak because he was angry at the country and society. “There’s a lot to be angry about,’’ he says. (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)
Robert Stone, the American writer of a distinguished body of fiction over the past four decades, has come out with a new book of short stories, “Fun With Problems.’’ Now 72, the National Book Award winner for “Dog Soldiers’’ presents an unremittingly bleak look at a hopeless cast of losers. They share addictions to alcohol and drugs, sex and violence that fuel disaster. Stone has inhabited this dark world in much of his earlier fiction, but this collection is, by his own admission, the angriest thing he’s ever written. After complaining about the 43-degree day in Key West - “It’s freezing the iguanas’’ - for which he received zero sympathy, he talked about his new collection.
Q. Why were you so angry when you wrote these?
A. I was just angry. I was angry at things in general - the country, the society, anything I don’t have that everyone else has. There’s a lot to be angry about.
Q. But why take it out on them?
A. It’s a tough question for a writer to answer. I just did it. I was writing about some hard places of the spirit and I couldn’t seem to get these people out of the troubles they were in. I couldn’t find them the way out. They were succumbing to their lower natures. I didn’t originally set out to do that, but when it breaks that way, you have to go with it. They’re a pretty doomed group. I’ve always tried in my novels to invoke a glimpse of something transcendent. But it’s not always available to characters. They see more clearly than the characters in these stories what the possibilities are to behave halfway decently. They see something in life.
Q. You took the title from a California rehab video. Have you ever been in rehab?
A. On a scale of yes and no, yes.
Q. How have you handled drugs in your personal life?
A. Drugs were around when I was a high school kid in New York in the ’50s, but I mainly managed to shove them off or keep them at a distance in my personal life.
Q. Why are they so important to you as a writer?
A. I’ve used them as a reductive device. It’s my way of writing about everything else.
Q. Are you moving away from novels to short stories?
A. I didn’t leave the novel. I had these stories to put out there. After writing my memoir, I got more conscious of nonfiction as a form. I’m collecting the nonfiction I’ve already written for another collection.
Q. Like what?
A. I did a Cuba story for The New Yorker. I covered the convention of the first Bush for Harper’s.
Q. Are you working on another novel?
A. Yes. It’s almost finished. It’s in an academic setting.
Q. Is it as bleak as “Fun With Problems’’?
A. I hope not.
Interview was condensed and edited. 
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.
