Ian Frazier - 1951
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I. Biography
Ian Frazier was born in 1951. He worked for many years as a writer for The New Yorker, and was very successful there,
writing many pieces for them over the course of more than a decade. His stories include Stalin's Chuckle, and the extremely famous, if rarely correctly attributed, Wile E. Coyote v. Acme Company
, which is included at the end of this document in its entirety. Most of his books have been collections of his short stories, such as Dating Your Mom.
Ian Frazier now lives in Miles City, Montana, with his wife, Jacqueline Carey, and their children, Cora and Thomas. He used to live in Brooklyn, when he wrote for the New Yorker
, but, after taking a tour of the West, and writing several books on the subject, he decided to move to Montana. II. Interview with Frazier
Frazier's greatest talent is, perhaps, his ability to say things that mean little and yet much at the same time. "I was reading Stalin's Chuckle, the last story in your new book, where
Comrade Stalin tells his secretary, 'A comic is one who says things funny, while a comedian is one who says funny things.' I wonder which category you find yourself.
Ian Frazier: Mmmm . . . probably neither. I mean, I don't even know if that's really true. …It sounds authoritative, but that's the point of what I try to do – write stuff that sounds
authoritative. If you read it more slowly, you realize it means absolutely nothing. I don't know that that means nothing, but I think about it, and then my mind breaks down thinking about it."
Frazier's tour of the West which I have previously mentioned was "a three-year, 25,000-mile serendipitous wandering (fleshed out by two years of historical research) that
[took] place in cow town museums, missile silos and the scenes of ferocious and bloody deeds." These wanderings gave him material to write the book, Great Plains—An Appreciation
. This is a book with a very definite message—" I'm afraid of people thinking, 'There's nothing out there anyway, so let's ruin it.' There's an idea of the Plains as the
middle of nowhere, something to be contemptuous of. But it's really a heroic place." Ian Frazier enjoys reading many different kinds of books, from books about Sitting Bull and Custer to books like
Lenin: A New Biography, and Lost in the Taiga. III. Works Coyote v. Acme (collection)
IV. Sources Interview Magazine, May 1996 "What is Ian Frazier?" This essay was submitted by a student of Steve Gardiner, a teacher at Billings Senior High School in Billings, Montana.
Family
Great Plains
Dating your Mom (collection)
People Weekly, Aug 7, 1989 "What's so great about the Great Plains?"
Entertainment Weekly, Jan 27, 1995 "Ian Frazier: What I'm Reading."