Here is a link to an interview I did with Wordybirds, a weekly radio discussion about books and ideas, hosted by Liz Humes on 97.3 FM in Richmond, VA.

http://wordybirds.org/2008/07/08/stephen-evans/

I was appearing  on a panel that night discussing writing comedy (fortunately with thoughtful and very funny people: Kelly Justice of The Fountain Bookstore, Brett Leake and Lord Carette), so some of the interview questions focused on that topic. Her questions were interesting. You'll have to judge my answers for yourself.

• A Midsummer Night's Dream
• The Tempest
• King Lear
• Henry IV (Parts 1 & 2)
• Our Town
• As You Like It
• Antony and Cleopatra
• Twelfth Night
• The Importance of Being Earnest
• A Long Days Journey into Night

Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad): I never laughed once.

Breakfast at Tiffany's (Truman Capote): Does not appear to be set in Minneapolis.

The Death of Ivan Ilyich (Leo Tolstoy): The letters in this book look funny and I'm not entirely sure it was written in English.

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (James Joyce): Has more than five words in the title.

To the Lighthouse (Virginia Woolf): Was not written by me.

So, to sum up, The Marriage of True Minds is the greatest short funny novel set in Minneapolis written by me in English with a title of not more than five words.

I became a vegetarian a dozen or more years ago not because it was more healthy or even more ethical, but because I did not want to add to the anguish in the world. I have never regretted that decision, or even seriously questioned it.

But what if every one was a vegetarian? What if overnight some switch was thrown and no one ate eat meat any longer?

Sounds great at first. But what would happen to the billions of animals raised for food around the globe? Would they starve? Would we have massive euthanasia because we couldn't afford to feed them?

And suppose it was a gradual transition, no massive change, just fewer and fewer animals slaughtered. That would certainly mean fewer and fewer animals raised. Is it really better for them never to live than to live a while?

Take away the quality of life issues: if the life was comfortable and the death painless, which would be better-some life, or none? If you had to make that same choice for yourself, or your family, which would you choose?

Animals cannot choose the life we give them. But they can't choose the life we don't give them either.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

 Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

 Or bends with the remover to remove:

O no! it is an ever-fixed mark

 That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wandering bark,

 Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.

Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

 Within his bending sickle's compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

 But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

If this be error and upon me proved,

 I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

When Carlini was convulsing Naples with laughter, a patient waited on a physician in that city, to obtain some remedy for excessive melancholy, which was rapidly consuming his life. The physician endeavored to cheer his spirits, and advised him to go to the theatre and see Carlini. He replied, "I am Carlini."

1. Meanings in fiction are probabilistic with predictable probabilities P.

2. The probability P for a meaning to occur is given by the square of the complex magnitude of an amplitude for the meaning, Q. The amplitude Q associated with a meaning is the sum of the amplitudes associated with every interpretation leading to the meaning.
 
3. The amplitude associated with a given reading is the product of the amplitudes associated with each fundamental reading of the text.