It's an interesting issue. Like dreams, they're filled with content about daily life and about what's actually happening in society and how we're trying to work these things through. Just as in Cast in Doubt , I wanted to intervene in the whole identity politics situation, and in this book I wanted to jump into the whole question of what's too offensive to say. The challenge, the goal I had was to have the reader really consider the material separate from the offensiveness of it. To really think about what it's saying.
Jokes function like dreams and are just so pregnant.
I took a tape recorder with me and walked around the neighborhood. I went into Brownie's, a bar on Avenue A, and asked them what bands were playing on the night of June 17th, 1994. They remembered because it was the night of O.J.'s Bronco ride. I was very involved in the whole O.J. Simpson trial, as many people were, and I wanted it to be in there as well. The jokes turn Elizabeth into a sort of wild stand-up comic.