Chris Bachelder not only teaches graduate school and writes novels, he also exhumes the dead. He’s written three novels, including Bear v. Shark, Lessons in Virtual Tour Photography, and his most recent U.S.! In the latter, the characters disinter the body of muckraker Upton Sinclair and bring him back to life—countless times. Bachelder plays with form and the novel turns into a wonderful melee of letters to Schwarzenegger and Reagan, talk show interviews with Sinclair assassin experts, and syllabi from Sinclair’s creative writing course where he warns students to avoid writing about “suburban malaise.” U.S.! is an endearingly humorous political novel about political novels, in a sense.
A former student of Padgett Powell, Chris received his M.F.A. from the University of Florida and currently teaches at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. We spoke about his writing and teaching, as well as the general state of the political novel in the United States. He also had a few words about the exclamation mark.

     An Interview with Chris Bachelder