Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri

In Bud Smith’s newest novel, Teenager—out now from Vintage—we’re taken on a ride between the deep-fried corners of America to visit some of the nation’s greatest myths. I say we, because in Smith’s work there is a special intimacy to the narrative, a quality much to the reader’s benefit. This might seem at odds with a summary of the plot: in the first hundred or so pages, there is an escape from a juvenile detention facility, a double-homicide, an extended telling of a relationship’s origin story that is both incredibly comic and tragic, a visit to Graceland, all with surreal and moving drawings by Rae Buleri, a painter and illustrator who is married to Smith. If I were summarizing another novel, I would feel I had given away too much. But the high volume of events, combined with Smith’s delightfully galvanic style, creates a sense of participation for the reader, a welcome involvement—even friendship—with Teenager’s young and troubled kids on the run.

For the interview, Smith and Buleri came over to my place in Brooklyn. My wife, Kelley, cooked us all dinner. We ate, we drank, we took to the couch with coffee. The result? A transcript that topped 12,000 words before undergoing several procedures of hyper-distillation.

Here’s one of my favorite sentences in the book: “Arizona, somewhere.” I love the symmetry of the word “Arizona” juxtaposed with the vagueness of “somewhere.” You feel the exhausting monotonous