US writer Joshua Ferris, 42, is the author of three novels including Then We Came to the End (2007) and To Rise Again at a Decent Hour (2014), which was shortlisted for the Booker prize. His new book is a collection of short stories, The Dinner Party.
Many of the stories have been published separately over the past 20 years. What was it like reading them back?
I’m a perfectionist, so none of these stories were going to escape scrutiny. I was never guaranteed to pick up 11 stories and think they were all perfect. But they are certainly representative of the person I was back then and the writer I was. And so in a way it’s not just that the stories mean something to me, it’s a record of my life.
Many of the characters in these stories are on the cusp of change. What interests you about this?
I think good fiction is a recapitulation of a dream, and when revelation and epiphany strike, they have a very dream-like quality about them. There’s that intense feeling of discovery one gets when one knows something that wasn’t known before.
There’s loneliness and tragedy in your stories and yet they’re also bleakly comic. How important is that balance?
Some of these situations could be fairly unbearable without the humour, and yet what makes them unbearable is also what makes them funny.
Marriage doesn’t fare well…
Yeah, no one’s happy. I come from a very long line of divorcees. Both of my parents were romantically confused individuals so I experienced the difficulties of marriage first-hand. But there are reasons why I’m still married and my parents never could be. I found it fascinating as a child of divorce to be married and to confront all the problems that they probably did but approach it in different ways.
In that sense, is writing therapy for you?
Therapy suggests that it informed or enlightened me and I’m not sure that it ever did that. But it was certainly a way of playing out a darker or more neurotic version of what life presented me and them.
One of your stories is about a stepchild. Is that autobiographical?
When he’s describing having lived with lots of different families, that’s straight-up me. I lived with lots of different step-parents and their odd configurations.
Who is your first reader?
My wife.
Does that ever pose difficulties?
I always assume the criticism is constructive, which is not to say I’m always pleased by it. I do have to go away at times and not see her face for a few hours but that doesn’t happen very often because knowing that the goodwill effort is there, it’s much more important to dig down and to get out why something isn’t working than it is to be stung by the fact that it’s not.
Short story collections often struggle for readership. Why is that?
I think they’re more demanding as a form. Whether or not we want to admit it, it takes a lot to start [reading] a book and it’s easier for people to start and continue with a novel than to do that 10 or 11 times in a collection.
Is there a misconception that short stories are easier to write than novels?
Yes, I think readers will think they’re a slighter attempt, that they might represent just a portion of the effort and thinking that a novel does when unfortunately that’s not true. Just from a sheer time perspective it’s probably true, but the agony is the same.
Which short story writers have influenced you?
Everyone from Chekhov to Donald Barthelme to Grace Paley to Alice Munro.
What were your favourite books as a child?
I read a lot of Judy Blume, Alfred Hitchcock and adventure stories. And Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig.
Who are your favourite authors?
Don DeLillo, Thomas Pynchon, Zadie Smith, Joan Didion, George Saunders.
Who would you like to write the story of your life?
Is it OK to be frightened by the result? I’d have to say Proust.
• The Dinner Party by Joshua Ferris is published by Viking (£14.99). To order a copy for £11.24 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99
