He once said

Now that his new novel, the Wodehouse-inspired WAKE UP, SIR! will be in stores imminently, it’s hard to find a place that isn’t featuring an interview with the Jonathan Ames. But Sarah Stodola, the editor-in-chief of Me Three, finds a new angle–she takes quotes and topics from previous interviews and asks Ames to clarify the points further:

You once said (of your son): He hasn’t read my work. I don’t think he is much interested in me as a writer. He’s more interested in me as a dad.

SS: I think this is common. Vonnegut’s daughter doesn’t read his work. Hitchens’ kids don’t read his work. Do you think perhaps this is something that will interest your son later in life, when he wants to understand his father better?

JA: I don’t think so. I don’t think he’ll want to understand me better; he already knows me or knows enough. His goal, like all people’s goals, is to understand himself. Maybe to understand himself, he might read my books some day … But there’s something weird about it. It’s a gut intuitive feeling: he doesn’t need to read my books to know me. And he wouldn’t be able to read them as other people might. He’d be getting a glimpse of me that strangers get — that could be alienating. Why get that weird glimpse? Why peek at me through a window when he’s allowed in the house?

I think this is a great idea and hope Me Three (or someone else) turns it into a series. (link stolen from Booksquare, which is fast becoming one of my regular litblog haunts.)