An Interview with Douglas Robinson

Douglas Robinson is a novelist, translator, and translation scholar, not necessarily in that order. He has taught, lived, and written in the US, Finland, Russia, Spain, Hong Kong, and Mainland China, where he currently spends seven to eight months out of every year. Insecticide is his third published novel; the second was also an Atmosphere Press book, a “pseudotranslation” of J. I. Vatanen’s “memoir,” The Last Days of Maiju Lassila (2022). Robinson’s first novel was written in English but first published in Finnish: Pentinpeijaiset, which plays on Finnegans Wake (“Pentti’s Wake”).

Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?

I vacillated between “Insecticide” and “Bug Spray” for a long time. I decided “Insecticide” sounded more (humorously) dignified.

How did it feel when you first saw your book cover? Or when you first held your book in your hands?

The cover is my favorite book cover ever! I absolutely love it! And I’ve published over thirty scholarly books, so working with a designer to come up with a good cover is not a new or unique experience for me!

Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?

I have always loved writing—academic books, plays, novels, translations. As for influenced, yes, there have been many: postmodern novels by Robert Coover (especially, of course, The Public Burning—Coover’s Eisenhower is one inspiration for my Dogsbody Harriman, and his Nixon is the main inspiration for mine, though I bet Coover is kicking himself for not imagining Nixon catching and eating flies), John Barth (The Sot-Weed Factor and Giles Goat-Boy), Thomas Pynchon (especially Gravity’s Rainbow), and Kurt Vonnegut (especially Slaughterhouse 5), Oh, and of course the comic science fiction of Jonathan Lethem, Douglas Adams, Terry Pratchett, Connie Willis, and the like.

What other professions have you worked in? What’s something about you that your readers wouldn’t know?

I’ve been a professor of English and Translation Studies for decades, but have also worked as a lifeguard, a green-chain puller in a sawmill, and the guy who fed the digital instructions into the cutting machines in a steel mill.

What was the most rewarding/meaningful part of publishing your book?

Hard to identify just one, because the whole experience with Atmosphere Press was absolutely wonderful!

If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?

Frank Zappa’s “Montana,” Camper Van Beethoven’s “Where the Hell is Bill,” Arlo Guthrie’s “The Motorcycle Song,” etc.

How do you envision your perfect reader?

Loves absurd humor with a warped political punch to it.

Are you a writer, too? Submit your manuscript to Atmosphere Press.