This Interview with a Brat Pack Author is Going Stunningly Well

I swear, this is the last time I take a freelance assignment like this.

Q. Your book, “Triggering,” is a bunch of essays about America. You’re better known for the ‘transgressive’ novels you wrote during the 1980s. Why suddenly tackle political nonfiction?

I don’t know. I woke up one afternoon and realized I wasn’t feeling very chill, that I hadn’t felt chill since, well, probably 2008. I thought maybe I should examine that feeling.

Q. Really? That’s it?

Plus I had another book on my contract. My last one, “American Bacchanal,” didn’t sell that well. When did people want to stop reading about Wall Street partying?

Q. Around 2008.

Why? What happened then?

Q. Um. [Papers shuffle.] This book, “Triggering,” it’s all over the place. In one chapter, you’re saying that the Far Right needs to YouTube better. In the next, you lament the fact that young people care more about brunch than Democracy. What’s your guiding political philosophy here?

Most of the sentences in the book are four words or less, and each of those words is four letters or less. Many of those words are also in all-caps. You guess why? I’m trying to get…