AD: How is the dynamic between Cigano and Narcisa universally relatable?
JS: At the risk of being accused of false modesty here, one of the few human character defects I’ve actually rarely fallen pray to so far (Laughs)… I should mention that there really are no new stories under the sun, just endless variations on recurring ancient themes… It all boils down to the good old ‘boy meets girl’ kinda stuff… and then all shit breaks loose, bla bla bla… It’s not an original concept when it comes to our mythos as a race… Because the basic themes of Narcisa are universal issues — even if the surface story is all this sex, drugs, rock n roll, violence, betrayal, anguish, etc… cuz there’s all sorts of levels of subtext there and on a deeper level, who the fuck can’t relate to these characters’ insecurities and fears and hopes and dreams and nightmares… their feelings? They are human feelings, the kind of strengths and weaknesses and all the little comedies and tragedies we all experience in our feeling world every day, the kinda shit that propels the whole fucking human experience as we all live it in our daily lives, whether we’re living extreme realities like these two particular characters, or just coming and going from the fucking office every day or whatever…
It’s really weird, but just last night I got a phone call from another recovering alcoholic who was going through a really hard time in his relationship. He called me up in the middle of the night and said he really needed to talk to me, so I got on the bike and rode over to the beach and we met up. Without going into details here, basically he told me he was living through some really extreme, gut-wrenching stuff, the kind of stuff I’ve been through a lot of myself and come out the other end of… and when I started talking to him and sharing my own experiences with him, suddenly I felt like I was talking to myself a coupla years ago, like right before I wrote this book and discovered all these things about relationship and about myself and how I tick through that whole soul-searching process… it was weird, cuz it just dawned on me that this is exactly how it works.