Christopher Boucher, "Shopping Cart"
It’s December 12. Christopher Boucher, author of Big Giant Floating Head, would also have used a basket in a pinch.
How would you describe your story?
CHRISTOPHER BOUCHER: This story’s about a man in stasis who befriends a living shopping cart. The speaker’s emotionally paralyzed, and for me the story speaks to the strange ways—in this case, via a precocious shopping cart—that fear, despair, wonder and goodness can manifest. The world can be lonely, frightening, amazing, beautiful—and we never know where help and hope reside.
When did you write it, and how did the writing process compare to your other work?
CB: I wrote “Shopping Cart” in stages over the past few years, on breaks from writing a novel. I’d write a draft, put it away, come back to it, write another draft. Some of the stories I’m fondest of in retrospect seem a bit too far afield to me at first. That’s how it was with this story—it had to convince me that it could be a story.
What kind of research went into this story?
CB: I consulted some maps to help me make sense of the story’s geography, but that was my only research for this story.
What, to you, makes the short story a special form? What can it do that other kinds of writing can’t?
CB: I like to think of stories as small machines, each operating in their own way. Many of my favorite stories—by writers like Denis Johnson, Diane Williams or Donald Barthelme—have that in common: They’re new engines, but they’re propelled by the same humanity and heart that drives all of literature. It was the discovery of stories like these that first made me want to write, incidentally, and I remain enchanted by the prospect of building my own new machines.
Where should people go to learn more about you and your work?
What’s the best gift you’ve ever been given?
CB: When I turned nineteen, my parents gave me a beat-up 1984 Volkswagen Rabbit for my birthday. It was a terrible car—it jostled and shook while you drove it, the ceiling draped down onto my head unless I regularly refastened it with a staple hammer, and it was always breaking down—but I loved it.
Part of what makes it my favorite gift, though, was the way my parents gave it to me: They took me to a local restaurant for my birthday and gave me a small box with a car key inside. The car was parked in the restaurant parking lot, all registered and ready to drive. After literally jumping up and down with joy, I got in the car and drove away.
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