Profile Chris Adrian: 'kind of like Sesame Street'

摘要

"I live in Brooklyn, New York, in a neighbourhood called Clinton Hill", writer and paediatric oncologist Chris Adrian tells me. "It's kind of like Sesame Street, with a little more garbage scattered around, a little fewer giant birds wandering about." It's a typically whimsical statement, redolent of the surrealism of his novels and short stories.I'm interested in finding out more about how Adrian's work, life, and art relate to one another. Was he from a medical family? "I grew up in Maryland and Florida", he tells me. "My mother was a flight attendant-turned-homemaker, and my father was an airline pilot...I have a sister who's a veterinarian and an uncle who was an ophthalmologist, but that's it for other medical types in the family. My mother got it in her head very early in my life that I ought to be a doctor, so I was strongly encouraged in that direction, though it never felt like someone was making me try to pursue something I didn't already feel a deep affinity for."