Jonathan Carroll

As a side-post to the last one, I started re-reading Jonathan Carroll's Land of Laughs again the other day, when I realised that the aforementioned novella was going to similar places as that wonderful book. Just to make sure that no fictional toes were stepped on.
And I'd forgotten just how brilliant that book was. Of course, most of Carroll's books are wonderful, uncategorizable flights of fictional genius, but Land of Laughs was most people's point of entry into his world, and it remains one of his absolute best and the template for much of his work: a smart, funny, likable narrator, a sparklingly perfect woman and a romance that unfolds, and then things get weird. Dogs talk in their sleep weird.
Of late, I started to fall out of love with Carroll's books purely for the reason that the madness seems to start too early in his recent stuff; in the early books he took his time with the romance and introducing a normal world and then turned it upside down. I've tried to read White Apples and The Wooden Sea several times and just can't get into them (although I'll doubtless try again).
To that end, I've embedded this audio interview with Carroll from the Barnes and Noble website, as it's an excellent interview. I had the good fortune to meet Carroll a good ten or twelve years ago now in - of all places - Swansea. I was with Rog Peyton for a horror convention, and Rog knowing Carroll, I was introduced to him. I've never met another writer who seemed to have such an aura about them; even other authors were falling over themselves to introduce themself and looking sort of awestruck.
He arrived with a beautiful woman that Rog didn't seem to think was his wife. He wafted about the halls, giving off the whiff of an old Hollywood star; in short we were all under the influence of the magic of his books - he brought it with him somehow.
On the Sunday afternoon I took my chance to talk with him. We were in a crowded room and although our eyes didn't meet across it, no one else seemed to be able to summon up the nerve to talk with him. So I did. And we talked. And talked. And talked. During that hour of one to one, he told me about his father, Sidney Carroll, about his writing habits, about Vienna, and about his lunches with Harrison Ford and Oliver Stone (who'd both intended to make movies of his books). I in turn felt impelled to tell him about the time I was reading Bones of the Moon; it was deep in the middle of a very harsh British winter; I had taken the bus home in the snow from work with about a hundred pages of Bones to read. About a mile from my house, the bus finally gave up amongst the drifts of snow, just as I'd finished. Anyone who's ever read the book will tell you what an emotionally affecting ending that book has and I was in tears. I had to surreptitiously wipe my eyes before we all disembarked and started the trek on foot. He was enormously pleased to hear the story.
When I looked around after an hour, I realised that a lot of people had that look of why am I not talking to Carroll? I probably wouldn't be able to do it now, so I'm glad I got the chance. It's good when your heroes are more than you expect.
Here's the link...