I interviewed Scott McClanahan not long after he filed his divorce papers. His new apartment sounded empty, like there were no pictures on the walls. He told me that he hadn’t left his place in two weeks and he’d lost weight. “Maybe I should get divorced more often,” he joked. I looked down at the recorder thinking that marital complications aren’t the brightest of opening topics. He then told me he felt like a chunk of coal and compared himself to the country singer Billy Joe Shaver—“Gonna be a diamond some day.”
If I was a pet, I would commit suicide
Published in Oxford American