Inspired by her relationship with murderer Robert Weeks, Rose Marie Kinder spun real life into elegant fiction. A noted story collection author, Kinder’s debut novel about the life of a genteel serial killer Arthur Blume unraveling. The author and I chatted about Arthur Blume - a man who loved his Victorian furniture and meditations on the animal kingdom - a quiet man who had committed monstrous crimes. We discussed the great serial killers, Othello, heavy-handed Gothic’s and how to avoid their narrative pitfalls, the consideration of time, compartmentalizing it, Faulkner as an influence, the predatory-prey relationship between mother and offspring in the animal kingdom, Arthur’s mother who we first meet as a wild creature - part Medusa, very much Medea, and his relationships with two key characters: Nada, the 70ish aspiring poet who is a sweet, maternal figure, and Grace, his pill-popping colleague and lover.

Click here to listen to our chat and enter the mind of a serial killer and the author who created him.

We’re off next week (your host will be shamelessly promoting her forthcoming memoir at NAIBA), however, join us on Oct. 21 as we chat with John Burnham Schwartz, author of Reservation Road

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 7th, 2007 at 4:36 pm and is filed under WR Recap, Fiction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.