Obviously, these are tense political times. How has your tale of domestic terror been received?
I'm often asked that question at readings. So far no one has said they were offended by the book, and no one has been inspired by David Felsenstein [the book's protagonist] to commit terrorism. I don't think I'll ever know what the effect is; it's a small book.

When did you write the book?
I finished it in 1996, and I started in '94 or '95. It started in real time [November 5, 1994], but then I fell behind. I was working at the University of Chicago Press as a manuscript editor of The American Journal of Human Genetics. I was editing text that I didn't understand, text that was written for specialists. I was responsible for changing square brackets to parentheses, or if they went to three decimals and our style was two, I'd fix that. Was there a particular case of domestic terrorism that occurred in 1994 or earlier that inspired you to write this book? There were two things that had occurred. One was the Unabomber. Before I came to work at the Press, he bombed the editor of the journal I was working on. Not in Chicago, but in Berkeley, I believe. He lost his fingertips when he opened a letter from the Unabomber.

Did you fear that another such package might come through the mail to you?
I suppose it occurred to me, but it seemed so random. It didn't keep me from going to work or anything. The second event was when a guy named Clifford Draper walked into the Salt Lake City Public Library with a bomb on him, or at least he said he had a bomb. And there were Tibetan Buddhist monks there performing a ritual, but he wasn't there for them. He was sort of a Libertarian, and he wanted Utah to revoke its motorcycle helmet laws. Draper took hostages, but one of the hostages was a S.W.A.T. officer who called "everybody down" and shot Clifford Draper dead. And that was that.

Can you really use a curling iron as a detonating device?
Yeah, that's what he did. The idea behind the dead-man switch is that as long as the two elements are separate, the circuit is broken. But if you release it, the two elements come together and the circuits complete, like a battery or something. I got the idea from Clifford Draper, who had a curling iron. There's a graphic of a detonating device in the book that is not a curling iron. I got that from The Anarchists' Cookbook, which resurfaces in the news every few years. It was written by William Powell, and my copy was published by Barricade Books in 1971. The introduction has quotes from Nixon, Agnew, and New York Mayor Jon Lindsay.

Which aspects of your personality do you share with David Felsenstein?
Before I began writing the book I'd been spending a lot of time in the library, just sort of fishing around for things. I'm not sure when it came to me that the notes were headed toward this novel, but that made it a lot more exciting. So I had this character in mind, and I felt like I was reading over his shoulder, and he was reading over mine. I would find things that I might not necessarily have looked for but that David Felsenstein would look for. He went to grad school, and I went to grad school. He's Jewish, and I'm Jewish. So we share some things, but I do not have a violent personality or temper or anything like that.

Do you footnote as painstakingly as David?
It was a habit from grad school, and I still write down quotes in my own diary, but now I sometimes leave out the page number and the exact reference. For example, earlier today I was rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude, and I copied the last sentence into my journal because it has the phrase "one hundred years of solitude" in it, and I didn't even bother to footnote it. It's so obvious.

Do you have a real interest in Dada?
I love reading those histories. Marcel Duchamp is one of the great artists; so many things have come from him. I love their willingness to do crazy things and court destruction and anarchy. Was there a Dada artist in particular who committed violent acts and viewed them as art? Jean Tinguely came later, but he blew things up, like TNT in the desert, and he did something at the Museum of Modern Art in the '80s with a machine, motors, and whirring parts. It was supposed to be a chain-reaction device, but it caught fire a few seconds after it started, and the fire department had to come and put it out.

The book contains several beautiful quotes about libraries. Are you a big fan of libraries?
Yeah, definitely. I've always gone to libraries. I think I have fewer books in my home than most writers. I don't have any better memory than anyone else, but I like the concept of allowing the book to go back where it came from.

Was it frustrating getting this book into print?
It was beyond frustrating. I finished it in '95 or '96, and I was sending out little parts trying to get them into journals. And then it lay dormant in '98 and '99 and 2000. Then my agent, Rob Preskill, was pitching something else to City Lights, and they said, "What else do you have?"

Obviously, since Sept. 11, 2001, terrorism has become such a huge focus. When was the decision made to publish Instant Karma?
Elaine Katzenberger is my editor at City Lights. For several days after Sept. 11, everyone was contacting their friends in New York to make sure they were still there. So I heard from her, and I confirmed to her I was still alive, but then there was no further communication for a period of months, and I didn't know if it was insensitive to bring it up. So I let it lie for a while before writing her a letter explaining that the book was more about the love of libraries than about terrorism. And if the book contains an element of terrorism, there's a whole body of literature about terrorism, and we'd hate to see that disappear. I don't think she ever considered not publishing it, but she was concerned about the timing.

What can be learned by reading your story of David Felsenstein?
I don't have any insights into certain kinds of terrorists' personalities, but that sort of loner, Unabomber-style, domestic terrorist may be being overlooked these days. It's certainly an ongoing threat. Someone brought to my attention that the FBI is now subpoenaing library records, which seems like a gross violation of privacy. Let me say it this way—if you saw a record of what David Felsenstein checked out of the library, you'd have no inkling of an idea what he was planning, so that's a futile gesture.

So are you saying that David could be any of us?
Most librarians I've talked to have a couple of guys—and they do tend to be men—who put away the stacks after everyone leaves. Sometimes it's obvious that they're researching UFOs or do-it-yourself lawsuits, but for most of them it's just a random selection of books every day.

I found myself sympathizing with David. I liked the gentle, flirtacious way he was with Eve and Mrs. Bryars. Are you concerned that some readers will be charmed into forgetting that David is a terrorist with an evil plan?
He definitely has an evil plan, but I'm not sure that he's actually a terrorist. In the story, you're going along with David all the way until the end, and then there's a sort of U-turn. If he actually does blow up the library, how can we possibly read notes he's written in this book? The book would be gone. It's all in his diary; not only is it a work of fiction written by me, but it's a subjective document written by him, and the untrustworthy narrator is one of the oldest tricks in the book. But getting back to the question I was dodging, some people sympathized with the Unabomber; some things in his manifesto seemed to make sense, especially for people who were already paranoid about technology or computers. Maybe they had some sort of romantic notion of him alone in his cabin, struggling with these issues. But even those who sympathized with him on a human level abhorred the murders he committed.