Brad Listi: MySpace's Most Dedicated Blogger About to Publish Second Work of Fiction

"Attention. Deficit. Disorder." explores the psychological consequences of abortion from a male perspective. What inspired this story arc?

It started with me wondering how I would handle the situation if I ever had to deal with it in my own life, and particularly at that age-early twenties, right out of college, no real job, no direction and so forth. It's also rooted in my complicated feelings about the ethics of abortion, and the empathy I tend to feel for people on both sides of the line, and the confusion and passion that the whole thing tends to stir up.

The book's title seems to be an apt description for your particular style of writing: skipping from topic to topic, vacillating between fictional characters and non-fictional characters, from adventure to adventure.

I'm not exactly sure if the style you refer to in A.D.D. is my style in any kind of official sense, but one thing I can tell you with a reasonable degree of certainty is this: style and content were determined intuitively and often by accident, and many of the quirks and interjections and non-sequiturs and things of that nature that appear in the book are there because they happened organically, and often in an odd, spontaneous instant.

Throughout the story, Wayne seems to have difficulty engaging people and experiences. At Burning Man he says, "The excitement seemed to have a manufactured edge to it" (p.314) and "Aversion to being naked was a strangely depressing thing to realize. It made you realize how uncomfortable you were with yourself" (p. 304). Where do you think this painful self-awareness comes from?

I think it comes from DNA. And experience. And probably Saatchi & Saatchi.

Wayne's Cuban odyssey is particularly memorable. He befriends a young hooker and together they visit the site of Hemingway's farm. Do you admit to a low-grade obsession with Ernest Hemingway?

Sure, of course. Hemingway was one of my earliest heroes, just like he is for so many writers, and particularly young male writers. When you're fifteen and confused by your inclination to be introspective, Hemingway gives you permission to go ahead with it.