In his new novel, “The Soul Thief,” University of Minnesota Prof. Charles Baxter mirrors and raises the stakes on his own experience as a victim of identity theft. (Special to the Star Tribune/The Minnesota Star Tribune)

Charles Baxter, novelist, University of Minnesota writing professor and longtime Midwesterner, sets his new novel, "The Soul Thief," in Buffalo, N.Y. ("the old, industrial America where things were made") and Los Angeles ("the new America where images are manufactured"). The novel -- a taut psychological thriller -- explores celebrity culture, shadow figures, identity and souls. We caught up with Baxter by phone last week while he was attending the Association of Writers & Writing Programs annual conference in New York City.

Q Why did you call this "Soul Thief" instead of "Identity Thief"?

A An identity thief is an actor who impersonates somebody else. The soul is what we are to ourselves -- it's much more private. To steal that is to steal something that's almost beyond language: the things that you love, the things that are most precious to you. So that's why I called it that; I wanted to raise the stakes.

Q Do you think it's possible to safeguard a soul?

A To the degree that privacy -- that strange word -- and the inner life are still viable, it is. To some degree these matters really are up for grabs. [With] Facebook and MySpace ... people are putting themselves out there. Someone may well come along and take what's yours.

Q One of your narrators is a story vampire -- he subsists on other people's autobiographies, their personal details. Do you think we give away too much of ourselves to TV, radio, magazines, websites and talk shows?

A I hate to sound like a Puritan, but I do. I think when you believe that everything is a marketplace and the whole point is to go public, not just the corporation but the self, you're putting yourself up for sale. Why on earth would someone go onto an afternoon talk show with their marital problems, just for starters? Why would anyone do that? I don't get that. I never have. I mean I know cognitively why people do it. In a very real way, there is something in our culture that wants to take what is most intimate to you, most precious, and publicize it.

Q You had the experience of someone impersonating you in California years ago, someone who stole your name and was giving readings in your name. Did that experience partly inspire you to write this novel?

A Yes it did. The book wouldn't exist if that hadn't happened. If any of your readers were to find that one day somebody began to imitate his or her gestures, pick up habits of speech and then in some sinister way tried to take over your life, you'd have a whiff of what I experienced.

[That said], I've always been interested in doubles and shadow selves. My second novel, "Shadow Play," has a sort of double -- Wyatt Palmer and his cousin, Cyril. When Cyril dies in that novel, Wyatt has Cyril's shadow tattooed on his arm. When we're children, the ways we think of ourselves are often based on what we see in the mirror. As we grow older, we begin to look around for people who are like ourselves, with whom we can identify. But now and then it gets stranger and odder, where you say, "This person is not like me -- this person almost is me." Out of that dramatic dynamic some of the double stories of Conrad and Dostoevsky and Patricia Highsmith arise. It's nearly always a moment of potential violence, as one of the figures tries to banish the other.

Q There are some laugh-out-loud scenes -- the crying baby on the airplane, for example, "an infant Pavarotti bellowing up to the third balcony" -- in an otherwise tension-packed novel. As a craftsman, how would you describe your use of humor?

A Counterpointed tone, counterpointed tonality. I have always felt that darkness becomes even darker when there's some humor or wit or comedy associated with it. Humor is always breaking out in my work. I can never stay serious for very long.

Q Do you believe, as one narrator says, that it is our "doom to live inside the stories of others"?

A I think some of us willingly do live inside the stories of others. There's a great hunger to live inside other people's stories. Part of that is empathy, to see your self as someone else. But sometimes it's a kind of vampire impulse. I think our culture of celebrity is a little bit like that. Every time I go to Lunds and I'm in the checkout counter and I look at People or Us [Weekly], I think, these are not my people, Us is not me. But many people read those accounts, and think, "I want to be like that person, and I want to destroy that person." We're very good at combinations of envy and destruction in celebrity culture.

Sarah T. Williams is the Star Tribune Books editor.