Mather Schneider On Books And Writing

For my latest author interview, I reached out to Mather Schneider.

Our exchange, which has been edited lightly, is below.

You published “6 to 6” in 2020. Would you tell me a little bit about it?

“6 to 6” is a compilation of cab driving stories and sketches that I wrote during the 15 years I drove a cab in Tucson, Arizona. 6am to 6pm was my usual shift.

All of the stories are 90 percent true, with only slight additions and alterations from my withered imagination, usually to try to make the stories more dramatic, funny or literary. If the things in the stories did not happen to me personally, they were heard secondhand from other cab drivers. I never had sex in the cab or delivered a baby, but I met some interesting people, most of them suffering from something, and many of them complete whackos. The book is about work, the terrible waste of life that such long hours of work can be, and it is also a broader picture of modern American society and how so much of it is sickness and insanity.

How long did it take you to write? Do you have a writing routine?

It was 15 years in the making, until I quit that job. I did not sit down to write a book about cab driving. I kept notes and wrote on the weekends only. Hundreds of poems and stories came from that time…