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Portland scribbler Jon Raymond may be best known for two recent movies adapted from his pithy stories: “Old Joy” (2006) and the upcoming “Wendy and Lucy,” both directed by Kelly Reichardt.

But Raymond’s novel book of short strange, “Livability” (Bloomsbury, 260 pp., $15) shows him to be more varied in his range and talents than the two movies would suggest

I had the risk to talk by him about work earlier this week:

Q: You take on and portray the contemporary urban Northwest in ways I haven’t encountered before. Were you consciously trying to correct a literary statue of our region that still seems to consist largely of mountains and fir trees?

A: Yes, absolutely. I was trying to represent a fairly middle-class world, different from, saying, a Kesey-ish world of tragic lumberjacks, or a Carver-ish world of beery bingo parlors and broken cars and such. And definitely a world without salmon or fly-fishing. I might say it’s smaller quantity a correction than an update, though. I wanted to depict lives more like those that my friends and family are living.

Q: That prompts me to seek about the collection’s title, “Livability,” which seems a fragment ironic. Portland, like Seattle, comes near the top of the bill whenever cities are indexed for their “livability.” Yet considerably a few characters in your book mess up badly. Were you trying to caution readers that living somewhere “livable” doesn’t mean your life will go the mode of dealing you hoped?

A: Yes! I’ve always found the word “livability” hilarious. I mean, is that really what we’re shooting for in the present life? Mere livability? I always conceit the point of life was a thing richer than that. Something full of great tragedy or comedy, change of fortune, ecstasy, that kind of thing. But no, contemporary urban theorists look satisfied with the merely livable, which always sounds to me like the purely survivable, the not so bad. Livability has always struck me being of the class who a consolation estimate. I wanted to at least trouble that word a little. I wanted to inject it with if not some romance, at least some darker currents.

Q: Two stories, “The Wind” and “New Shoes,” move some of the chiefly profitably portraits of children I’ve read in a long during the time that. Are you drawing from childhood memories? Are you a parent? Does your writing bringing you into contact with children, for specify as a teacher?

A: “The Wind” draws on childhood memories, for sure. As with that character, I was forced to fight a kid in my neighborhood, and as through that novel, the older kids who organized the fight only had one pair of boxing gloves, which meant we only got one glove apiece. I was younger, so I got the left undivided. And I lost. As far as parenthood goes, I have a stigma new kid, a 9-month-old daughter named Eliza. She’s not old enough to oral intercourse yet, though, thus she’s not much help at what life it comes to research.

Q: You look a little too young in your jacket photo to be writing about middle-age burnout in spite of the reason that persuasively as you cozen. I’m thinking of “The Suckling Pig,” a very tough story about bankrupt time from birth to death design. “The Coast,” in all parts of a widower trying to balance grief with his stilly vital impulse toward life, has a homogeneous authenticity from a different fish-hook. So I be possible to’t help asking: How old are you? Are these experiences you’re anticipating? Or do they somehow reflect what you’ve been through?

A: I’m 37. So, you know, old enough to have experienced my share of disappointment, shame, horniness, belated satisfaction, etc. At smallest sufficiency to sympathize with others’ like experiences, I hope.

Q: Each story in the book covers very different ground — friendship, parenthood, love affairs, divorce, widowhood, lives gone facing the rails. Each seems to have a moral quandary it addresses, too. What are the germs of these stories? Do you be of the quandary first? Or does the process start more intuitively, with the narrative’session focus emerging gradually?

A: I was hoping the stories would add up to a little more than the sum of their parts, so I was drawn to characters and situations that covered similar geographical territory, but divergent of ethics, socio-economic, and cultural territory. The germs of the stories came from all over the station, though. I stole a goodly amount from friends and family and tried to keep an observe upon the body political moods. In more sense, I do think of these characters as all part of the same common, neighbors in the interval that, saw, the characters in Sherwood Anderson’session “Winesburg, Ohio” are neighbors. In that regular course, they are all facing similar questions about what exactly their duties are to each other, what they owe each other being of the kind which people sharing time in the same place.

Q: You’ve been a magazine editor at Plazm, a film-set adjuvant to Todd Haynes (for “Far From Heaven”), a film-script co-writer and the author of brace books. Which is the career you most aspired to from the start? Which is your day job? Was your entry into film-making a charmed hazard? Does the father’s uneasiness about his film project in “New Shoes” reflect your have ambitions, or was it a product of something you witnessed?

A: Writing fiction is the “piece of work” I prove by experiment to endure at the center of things. The movie stuff has been a wonderful hazard, though not entirely bizarre, either, as I own done some work in film control, and even directed a ridiculous, cable-access item back in my 20s. As far as paying the bills, though, I’ve had the pleasure of falling into each queer series of freelance jobs over the years, in the strength in advertising, or para-advertising capacities. I also practise teaching from time to time and review books and aptness. So far it’s worked out all right, but long-term survival remains kind of mysterious to me. The father’sitting artistic/monetary anxiety in “New Shoes” is definitely something I report to, and something I think a lot of other artists probably would, too.

Q: I liked your comment in your interview with The Oregonian attached the short story being “the more proper template for a movie.” It’s pained me, for the sake of instance, to examine Henry James’ great novels shrunk to a two-hour span when James has likewise many fine stories and novellas that would suit film adaptation hostile in addition comfortably. Are there are any writers whose novels have been adapted, perhaps inadequately, for film, whose short stories or novellas remain untapped but might by far more movie-suited candidates, in your opinion?

A: For some reason the only thing coming to mind is the idea of like Spike Jonze adapting more George Saunders stories. I’d like to examine that. Otherwise, though, I can’t really think of anything off hand. Alice Munro? I caught some of that Sarah Polley movie on a plane [”Away From Her”], and it didn’t be directed that amazing to me. Charlie D’Ambrosio’session stories? I bet someone could do it. Some inconvenient part of me wants to assume Ben Marcus or Donald Barthelme. But in captain-general, its nice rare that I read something and long for I could see it in the same proportion that a film.

Q: I’ve noticed some name changes in your world. For instance, you’ve changed from “Jonathan” to “Jon” between your debut novel, “The Half-Life,” and your new book, “Livability.” And the name of the protagonist in “Train Choir” [adapted as far as concerns film as “Wendy and Lucy”] got changed from Verna to Wendy. Any particular reason?

A: My mom calls me Jonathan, so I felt like I should go with that for the first novel. But then at more point I realized that everyone calls me Jon, and it seemed almost misleading. As for Verna and Wendy, I consign to oblivion exactly why the names changed. Kelly liked Wendy and I liked Verna, and ago we each have our respective domains we the one and the other got to have our direction of motion.

Q: Last question: “Words and Things” includes the first allusion I’ve come across in contemporary fiction to Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin’s “Careful!” — one of my favorites. What other movies might be likely to make cameo appearances in your work?

A: That is some seriously observant reading forward your part. The simply other movie respect that I can think of is in “New Shoes,” the main characters’ screenplay, described as “‘Animal House’ meets ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.’” That movie doesn’t exist, but more friends and I did actually compose that screenplay a couple years ago.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com