World’s Worst Interview: the second go-round

As already noted by my fine friends, Laura Lippman (heretofore referred to from now on as Empathy Girl) was peppered with all sorts of random questions by Victor “Lemur Lover” Gischler. And surely I can’t be the only one who wants to read her dream non-crime project, should she ever write it:

Do you ever get the itch to write a non-crime novel?  What are some of your ideas?  Tell me so I can steal them.

LL: Is plagiarism a crime? I’ve long wanted to write a novel about a professional student with a photographic memory and an unusual disability — she truly cannot tell the difference between her own ideas and what she’s read, so she’s forever getting in trouble for plagiarism. But, because she’s young and buxom, professors are always eager to bail her out. Her father, who has made a fortune running dry cleaners in San Antonio, sends her off to language school in Mexico to cool her heels after the latest incident, where she then finds her _life_ is beginning to plagiarize her favorite novels. Lolita, for example, as she finds herself on the road with the under-age son of her host family. Think Terry Southern’s “Candy,” only Candy is hyperconscious.

Although now that I’ve read it over again, the idea seems awfully noirish to me…