
So this book The Ask is out today, and you should get to the bookstore to pick it up. I'm sorry, what was that you said? You're broke? O yeah, you're broke. That's right, I forgot: Everyone's broke. Not an excuse, I will guide you.
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Sam: I do right now. I'm sitting in a cramped 7/11 internet cafe in Melbourne, Australia because the local library wouldn't let me use their WiFi. "Australia for Australians," the librarian said. Or at least I thought I heard her say it. You know, anybody can go into the New York Public Library and get wireless internet. Anybody can go. Jews, Chinese, anybody.That's why I like America too. OK, in your new novel, the narrator, Milo, reminds me quite a bit of Miner from Home Land. The mention of the band Spacklefinger is the most glaring bridge between the two men (books) that I can pick out, but how, if at all, are Milo and Miner connected?
America should be proud of its "likable" traits. As to your second question, I guess they are connected by me, primarily. Their voices are somewhat different, but as to their exterior circumstances, you could probably place them near each other on an evolutionary, or de-evolutionary, chart. Homo Fuck-uppus, Bewildered Man, etc. Now I'm feeling shitty about the Australia-bashing. It's a wonderful place. My wife's family lives here. A koala bit my daughter on the hand. That's true.
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No, this was always a novel. Right now I'm working on a book of stories. They were always two separate projects. Though my last novel did come of out of a short story.Oh, nice. Looking forward to another story collection. What's your take on the short story versus the novel? Does writing a short story kill you any less than writing a novel?
I find short stories and novels equally demoralizing to write most of the time, though the advantage with a story is you probably won't throw away years of your life on it. As I mentioned, I'm returning to short stories now after three novels and it's exciting to work in that form again, or maybe I mean forms, as I don't think there's one single definition of a short story, except maybe Poe's notion that it should be read in one sitting. But a certain kind of speed and compression and hard swerving that works well in a few or a few dozen pages, I'm liking that again.You studied with Gordon Lish at one point, I think. What's your take on all the shit he gets? And the praise? What about the Raymond Carver thing?
I never understood all the vitriol. His stints at Esquire and Knopf were before my time, but I gather he pissed some people off. Hurt some feelings. Oh, well. He also published many of the great writers of the last 30 years. He was an incredibly wise and rigorous and generous teacher. That's how I've known him. Lish's edits made those Carver stories. Only a moron or somebody with a financial interest wouldn't agree to that. I guess there isn't much
more to say on the subject. There might be an interesting essay to write about the need to preserve a certain tedious idea of Carver in the public mind, but that's probably all been covered by now as well.
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There's definitely something to what you're saying. At least with regard to the stories in Venus Drive. They were a bit more solemn, in some cases. I don't think they were darker but I think their terseness made them feel that way. It's not a conscious thing. I think maybe in the novels I have room to riff and when I riff I tend toward bleak comedy rather than just bleak bleakness. But there is obviously less room in the stories to break out that way. Some of my newer short pieces have been different.Maybe my favorite line in The Ask is, "Text me some coke!" Fucking died laughing at that. So, lots of drugs in your books. I will not ask you if you do them or what kind, when writing or not, even though I would love to, but what if I just said the word DRUGS. What would you say?
I'd say, "Sam. Nice to meet you. Is Drugs your nickname?" The truth is, whatever has already failed to make me stronger, will probably kill me at this point.When and where do you write? Do you have certain, disciplined writing hours or is it when and wherever it comes to you?
I like to consider every hour an hour of discipline. Because I've been bad. Truly, though, I have two kids and no office so I generally go to the library. If I'm writing something long it's probably summer and I'm going every day for several hours.
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Open City was really great with Venus Drive, and subsequent work. I consider them family. Not sure about trends. There are some damn good journals out there. I've noticed that some younger writers are really being brave, trying out new things, and I think they may sense that a lot of big publishing is shitting the bed anyway, that getting out of the mindset that there is a nice living to made writing serious fiction is the important first step. Then you are free. I think the internet has been great for new fiction. That's been the big change. People are still writing stories and novels and a few are great and some are good and most aren't very good at all. I guess what's different is that you could go through your awkward stage in private. Back when I was figuring out how to write the internet existed but not like today. We'd have the same conversations that people have online now, rants about the more established writers we revered and hated, and we made a lot of stupid pronouncements about the state of literature and how it's all shit except for so-and-so and what's-her-name and, of course, us, but the only witnesses were a few people and a sofa and some beer cans. Or you might show somebody a story you wrote, but there was no posting it on a blog. So there was no real record of when you were a dumb, scared, angry baby who didn't know how to write yet. And for me, at least, that's a blessing. Anyway, I don't know if you can say people are doing any one thing in particular. We might be post-trends, a little. It's similar to clothing. I see groups of people hanging out and one person has a huge Mohawk and a Negative Approach t-shirt and another is in disco gear and another is doing some kind of Olivia-Newton John in Xanadu number and somebody else is Brad Davis in Querelle and here come the banker and the lumberjack and it's all fine, there are no warring philosophies here. Everybody is finally only judged on their ability to fulfill their goals. She's into Richard Yates, he adores Mary Robison, his friend loves Joseph McElroy, the other guy writes like Alice Munro. The Barthelme, Sebald, Bolano, and Denis Johnson contingents will be over in a minute. The launch party starts in an hour. I'm all for it. The camps are stupid. They mattered once but they are stupid now. You can't do without realism and you also can't do without the advances of certain formalists, metafictionists, post-modernists, either. They are all just techniques. If you ignore one or the other completely you're bogged down in some very old mire. The only onus on the writer is to be fucking outstanding. To be undeniable. I think a lot of good journals would take a similar view.
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I think you publish many of my favorite contemporary writers in the Tyrant. (I actually double-brushed the dirt off my shoulders when I read this.) I just read Wake in Fright by Kenneth Cook. It's an Australian novel from 1961. I wouldn't call it a stylistic masterpiece but it's pretty great existentialist pulp, tight and crazy. There's some brutal man-versus-kangaroo action, and the crushing of a human soul via the pincer grip of heat and beer. Coetzee called it "a true dark classic of Australian literature." I just know that when I finished I felt as though I'd been on three-day bender and had taken part in horrific acts I could not remember. Which is a feeling you may or may not want from a book.Can you give me your definition of swerve? I can't figure out what that has ever meant.
"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday…"Lorin Stein, your editor at FSG, aside from being maybe the nicest guy on the planet, has some pretty good taste. Did a lot of big edits happen?
I don't know about this nicest-guy-on-the-planet malarkey, but I'll agree with the part about his taste, though I guess I'm biased. He didn't come at me with an ax, no. That's not Lorin's style. It was more like a textbook prison shanking -- a little jab in the side and the next thing I'm in the dirt, bleeding out. Lorin is a great editor. We had long conversations (and sometimes sharp debate) about certain elements of the novel, and he had some wonderful line suggestions, but he also knew when to draw back and let me go at things the way I need to.
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Whenever I've found myself telling somebody to never do something, it's usually to remind myself not to do it again. But half the time I'm wrong. I should do it again. Still, Stanley Elkin "just talking" is always going to be meaningful.Okay, you have this thing you do that I always notice and fucking love it. Here are three examples from three different books.From The Ask: "It was an expensive and strangely obscure institution, named for its syphilitic Whig founder, but we often called it, with what we considered a certain panache, the Mediocre University at New York City. By we, I mean Horace and I. By often, I mean once."From Home Land: (which I don't have at hand) there is a similar thing where Gary picks his nose and you question the reader about whether Gary wipes his boogers on his shorts or on his curtains. Gary doesn't have curtains.From Venus Drive: "Some nights I picture myself naked, covered in napalm, running down the street. But then it's not napalm. It's apple butter. And it's not a street. It's my mother."
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Maybe it's that dang swerve.Salinger died the other day. Were you a fan? Anything you'd like to say about him? Do you have any inside scoop on his possible writings since he withdrew from the publishing world?
I don't know if you can be a fan or not a fan at this point. You just grant him his Ur-status. I have no information about his later writings. We mostly just talked sports.Alright, this should be enough for now, but just for kicks I'm going to end it with the most played and lame question I can think of: You know the last question that James Lipton asks on Inside The Actors Studio? I'm going to reword it for you: If a Valhalla exists, what would you like to hear Saint Troll say when you arrive at the Mother of Pearl turnstiles?
"Welcome to Valhalla, Sam. You've been a very fierce Scandinavian warrior but now it's time to relax. James Lipton is here. And so is Drugs. You can join them at the pool."Sam gave us a chapter from The Ask for the next issue of Tyrant and I am generously, oh-so-untyrannically, letting Vice have it. They've been so good to me, why shouldn't I? Anyway, no need for an intro to this. It's just more proof of how great and fun this book is. The chapter does well on its own, but you're going to want to buy the whole thing after reading it, trust me. Click on page 2 to get started.
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One night in the House of Drinking and Smoking we were victims of what I would later call a home invasion. I didn't know the term then. I think I learned it later, from a rap song, or a movie based loosely on a newspaper columnist's fear of a rap song. Probably they thought we'd be out, which was funny, because we were never out. This night, though, we had turned in early. Eve of a test week, I think. Given the soporifics in our systems, I'm still surprised we ever woke up, or that Maurice Gunderson did, to the sound, he said later, of his dresser drawer sliding open. His shriek roused the rest of us, though by then they, the invaders, had dragged Maurice from his bed, commenced what Billy Raskov would by morning term a "total fucking rampage." One of them banged a baseball bat on the walls and they all barked and shouted, flushed us from our smoky caves, herded us into the main room, where we sat in our underwear among the ashtrays and beer bottles that littered the glass coffee table we'd bought at the Salvation Army.The invaders seemed quite familiar with the modality of the roust, knew the best ways to terrorize, corral. Later we learned at least one of them had been in the non-salvation army.They wore ski masks, but we could tell by their hands that one was black and two were white. We could tell by their accents they were local. The largest invader, the apparent leader, the bat guy, as I later dubbed him, drifted about the room with his Easton aluminum, tapped our shoulders, our knees, lightly, with humorless threat, while the others drew the shades. I shivered on the sofa in my boxer shorts. Christmas break was not far off and the house was always cold. Constance and Charles Goldfarb sat beside me and through my grogginess I felt my arm brush Constance's warm shoulder. Two things occurred to me simultaneously: that she must have been in bed with Charles, and that I missed her. Then the bat guy smashed his bat on the coffee table. Maurice Gunderson squealed from his camp chair.
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Vermont, "hooey," or what Claudia might have deemed a crock of absolute shit.Still, a final tally, a statistical breakdown of this moment, did exist.Future Apocalypse Guru: Smidgen of composure, ineffective diplomacy, intractable whininess.Artistic Provocateur: Ineffectual response to threat, admirable behavior under physical duress, unseemly and gratuitous assault on downed invader.Larkish Frankfurtian: Frightened retreat into walls of self.Marxist Feminist Who Fucked: Initial paralysis, subsequent display of courage.Semi-Brain-Damaged Crystal Tweaker: Valiant and focused response to threat.Ruling-Class Brat: Remarkable bravery and tactical leadership in face of threat.Home Invaders: Bold initiative, bad intel, poor battle management.Painting's New Savior: Utter cowardice, experienced as bodily paralysis in conjunction with what he would later describe, in an effort to steer the conversation away from actual events, a "bizarre floating sensation."But no matter my conversational machinations, I knew the truth. Nobody ever mentioned it, of course. It meant not much. Physical bravery probably held the same value in our milieu as skill at parallel parking: a useful quirk. But the box score stayed in my wallet, or the wallet of my heart, so to speak, a smeared and origamied scrap to remind me how little I resembled the man I figured for the secret chief of my several selves.
