Jonathan Evison on hitting bottom and becoming a writer [video]

Bestselling novelist Jonathan Evison dropped by our video booth at the L.A. Times Festival of Books to talk with L.A. Times columnist Robin Abcarian about “The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving,� his novel that has just been released in paperback.

The book is about a middle-aged man whose life has bottomed out and who takes a night course in caregiving -- “he learns to insert catheters and avoid liability,� Evison explains, showing some of the book’s wry humor. The protagonist finds himself taking care of a profane teenage boy with muscular dystrophy. Evison likes to think of the story as the New Yorker described it, “a secular saint’s journey.�

VIDEO: AUTHOR INTERVIEWS FROM FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

Evison is a California native with a fondness for L.A. literature. “John Fante sealed my fate as a hopeless young alcoholic misfit,� he admits. “I discovered John Fante when I was 17 years old -- strangely not through Charles Bukowski, but through William Saroyan, who was his drinking buddy.�

For more on Evison’s inluences, failures and successes, click on the video above.

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