Stephen Metcalf is critic-at-large at Slate and is working on a book about the 1980s. Before hosting the live edition of the Slate Culture Podcast, he admitted in the Zócalo green room that he abandoned Twitter out of fear that he was going to force it to regress as a form of human expression, and that he once sold Time-Life books over the phone.
Q. How many pairs of shoes do you own?
A. Some theories hold that I own only two pairs going by how many are usable. Another theory goes that I own about 111 based on how many mismatched shoe-like objects there are in my closet at any given moment.
Q. What’s your favorite 1980s movie?
A. The Bill Forsyth comedy Local Hero.
Q. How do you like your eggs?
A. Easy and often, baby.
Q. Where do you go to be alone?
A. Everywhere.
Q. What item would you like to bid for on eBay?
A. I’d really like a Guild hollow body ES-I think 35? The kind Kurt Wagner plays in Lambchop. Either that, or maybe Kurt Wagner himself.
Q. Why did you stop updating your Twitter feed?
A. I really found that [Slate’s] John Dickerson and Dana Stevens had made it an art form, and I was only going to force it to regress as a means of human expression if I used it.
Q. What do you proselytize for?
A. A really great short novel by Nabokov that nobody reads called Pnin. I think it’s the third-greatest book of the last hundred years.
Q. Loose change: a nuisance or an asset?
A. A nuisance.
Q. What’s the strangest job you’ve ever worked?
A. I sold Time-Life books by telephone back in the 1980s.
*Photo by Aaron Salcido.