That's what the fiction writer Deborah Eisenberg—who also got a cash-encrusted MacArthur today (in addition to these two awesome artists)—said in an interview with The Stranger two years ago when she was visiting Seattle. We talked for a good long while about writing ("I think that fiction has a capacity for truthfulness that, really, no other prose form has"), about how no one would ever call her a caring person ("Beneath this sort of warm and even ardent exterior beats a heart of pure Bakelite, I can tell you"), and about reality itself ("I feel that we’re actively taught not to experience reality"). Also: death anxiety, Joan Didion, 9/11, bad writing, The New Yorker, and Seattle.

Here's how our conversation began:

You've never been to Seattle before.
I have never been to Seattle before.

What do you have against us?
[Laughs] Airfare. I really go where I'm put. It’s so gorgeous, I just can't wait to get back. I'm just miserable that I have to leave early in the morning. I’ve been to Portland, and I guess I was picturing something a little more like Portland, which I adore. But I wasn't picturing anything so metropolitan.

I discovered you in an anthology of fiction from The New Yorker. But you're not published in The New Yorker anymore.
No. Uh, I…

What the hell is wrong with them?
[Laughs] That's what I want to know. See if you can get it out of them. I wasn't published there. They wouldn't accept anything of mine. And then an editor named Gwyneth Cravens came. She responded to what I do, and she published everything I gave her, including all the things that had been rejected. Then she left, and nobody else there ever liked anything of mine again. So, that's my history with The New Yorker. But I think what I'm writing these days is a little complex, actually, for magazines.

Here's how it ended:

What have you learned from teaching?
I learn, really, that I’m not a very good teacher. [Laughs] I don't know that I actually learn that much, to tell you the truth. I find it very, very anxiety-inducing.

Why?
Actually, I teach two different classes. I teach a workshop, and I think I acquit myself of that task reasonably well. But you're working very intimately with people, and you really don’t want to do something wrong. The damage you could do—it certainly is possible. So, that’s a matter for some anxiety. And then I teach a literature class. I've never studied English, never took English classes.

Really?
Yeah, really. And I really don’t know how you’re supposed to do it. And I think the students are often so puzzled by what I’m doing!

They probably think you’re a genius.
Uh, I’m not …

Maybe a mad genius.
A mad genius. That would be nice.

There's more. The whole thing is HERE.