“To break from the heavy lifting of writing moderately vulgar dark comedies, first I will turn to Rimbaud’s Une Saison en enfer for some light reading. Then I will wander outside to see if there are any important public gatherings. If there are no gatherings, I return to the house and head downstairs to the basement where I will spend a few minutes adding to my bottle cap collage of the Nuremberg Trial. For lunch, I boil one egg and eat it on dry bread. This is a crucial moment in the writing day, for it is now that I remember the jar of orange marmalade in the refrigerator. If I forgo the marmalade, I will immediately return to my desk, put away the Rimbaud and continue writing the moderately vulgar dark comedy. If I give into the marmalade, I will not only not return to the comedy, I will not write another sentence all day; rather I will drift between a greedy ecstasy and a brooding malaise, dreaming of utopian countries in the shape of rectangles—unless, of course, the mail comes.”
—Jessica Anthony, author of The Convalescent (McSweeney’s Books, 2009)