David Simon Doesn't Care for Your Lawn Furniture

In the new issue of The Believer, Nick Hornby interviews David Simon, creator of The Wire, the best drama on television. The interview's a bit tedious, because it was done by e-mail, and very brief questions from Hornby are met with long blocks of text from Simon. The best interviews have rhythm, and this one has none. But I got a kick out of the very opening, where Simon has some choice words for parts of his audience (choicest words manipulated to keep with the blog's policy of reasonable decorum; complaints can be sent to the editor, but they will likely be ignored):

NICK HORNBY: Every time I think, Man, I’d love to write for The Wire, I quickly realize that I wouldn’t know my True dats from my narcos. Did you know all that before you started? Do you get input from those who might be more familiar with the idiom?

DAVID SIMON: My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: f*** the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. F*** him. F*** him to hell.