The Definitive Interview (Part 1)

(Excerpt from the novel angrynastyhostile, to be published by Deep Kiss Press)

So how would you define this?
This what?
This novel.
Why must it be defined?
You know how people are.
How’s that?
They like things to be defined, spelled
out…
Spoonfed?
Now you’re being…
What, cynical?
Some might say that.
But not you…
I’m a journalist, I…
You’re unbiased.
Well, yes, I… I try to be fair and balanced.
(laughs) So why don’t you define it then?
But isn’t that one of the things you rail against?
What?
People who are unqualified to judge
passing judgment?
(as an aside) More like passing gas...
I heard that...
(laughs) Mea culpa.
So, if you had to offer a definition…
I already did.
I didn’t catch it.
See what I mean! All right, how ‘bout this… an “involuted-nouveau-roman-postmodern-fabulated-
anti-meta-novel”.
Say that three times fast!
But it’s ridiculous, I mean…
What?
It’s like jazz, what jazz is supposed to be. A mode of expression that’s wide-open, unlimited… before Kenny G and a million “Autumn Leaves” copy bands got a hold of it! It’s the same with the novel.
Before Stephen King and the mega-bestseller got a hold of it.
Well, yeah.
So you’ve called it a “manifesto”,
a “declaration”…
Do you know Coltrane’s “Meditations”album?
John Coltrane?
What they tried to do in that… (shakes head) they wanted to take music to a place where music-as-we-know-it didn’t exist. (pauses) But that’s where it exists most fully, do you understand?
I think so. It’s like a Zen thing.
I want to write a novel in which all
other novels are possible. Where there’s nothing to limit you.
Except the definitions.
(laughs) Exactly!
Or the marketplace.
Well yes, there’s always that…
So you want a literary “free-for-all”, is that it?
Freedom with responsibility.
That sounds good, but is it possible?
What do you mean?
I mean, it can so easily become
artistic anarchy, like that
painting of the crucifix smeared
with human feces. Or that artist who
put his own shit in a Mason jar and exhibited it as art.
Doo-Doo as opposed to Dada…
(laughs) So this brings us back to how we define art…
More definitions...
Otherwise we’ll have everyone
shitting in Mason jars and calling
themselves artists!
We already have that! (pauses) It’s a… (pause)
Conundrum?
Yes.
But you discussed this at length in Blood of the Sun, the question of internalized standards and authenticity. And if we no longer have this, then…
What? We need the “art police”?
Well, if there are no more internal standards then they must be external, right? Otherwise…
But there must be something more than just extremes.
Extremes?
Like Finnegans Wake and Doprah’s
Book Club…
But wouldn’t you say this book of yours
was more on the Finnegans Wake side
than that of Doprah’s Book Club?
I’m saying why can’t a single novel contain elements of both? And everything in-between? Like the SKDB... If a novel is about life then by definition it’s about everything, or it could be. So why do we try to limit it?
Through definitions…
Yes, and money’s another definition.
So we…
Throw away the lights! The definitions!
What’s that?
Wallace Stevens… And say of what you see in the dark that it is this or that it is that, but do not use the rotted names…
That’s nice.
(laughs) Nice, yeah. I mean, it’s not like these ideas are brand new…
Ideas?
About expanding the novel, exploding form and style,
abandoning conventions.
Literary conventions…
Yes, like plot, characterization, the protagonist…
Yes, but you have all of those in this book, in Gobbledygook.
You have a self-described hero... Characterization, especially
in chapters five and six. You have plot. I mean you have the hero at the podium, right? And the book is one big digression
of all the things that run through his mind at that moment, so in that sense it has an over-arching structure. It’s definitely postmodern.
I prefer post-postmodern. (laughs) Or retro-postmodern.
It’s metafiction and fabulation.
Is that a compliment or an insult? (smiles)
You just don’t like any definitions...
Coltrane didn’t like the word “jazz” but that’s the section where you find his albums. I mean think of Interstellar Space…
Interstellar Space?
It’s a later album of his. It’s just him and this drummer, him improvising to free rhythm. No chords, no keys, no tonal center. It was taking music to that other level, where the definitions no longer apply.
So why do we always seem to take the easy way out?
Ya gotta put food on the table, right? I mean, did you ever apply for a grant? Talk about when paradigms collide!
What do you mean?
The nexus where the artist and the non-artist meet! The impenetrable morass, the swamp, the labyrinth.
So it’s convoluted?
(laughs) The thing is, that the rich for some reason want to align themselves with what they think of as art and artists, to validate their lives or something, to give it meaning beyond money. I don’t know. I mean, who can understand the rich, right? (laughs) Maybe it’s just a tax write-off. (smiles) But the problem is, that instead of them learning the language of the artist they force the artist to speak their language. I mean, here’s an example… If I admire a painting it might inspire me to paint myself, right? To become a painter and see if I had what it took. So I’d go out and buy a set of paints and brushes, canvases, an easel maybe. You know, the works. And then I’d see what I could do, which of course implies a long hard process of honing ones craft until it becomes art, until the art and the craft are linked, until they play off of each other. Not to mention the
soul-searching required in order to get to that deep place where art lives. I mean we’re talking about a life’s work here, being an artist.
Or a writer… or a musician…
I mean any creative artist. But the rich, what do they do? They like a painting by Van Gogh, right, so do they buy the paint set and learn how to paint themselves, to seek what the artist sought? No, they buy the painting for 50 million and hide it in a safe in their mansion. And meanwhile the Van Goghs out there now can barely make rent and when they try to apply for a grant they decide that it’s easier to cut off one of their ears!
(smiles) But I notice you have both of your ears.
Latex foam rubber.
(laughs) So how do you want to be known?
What did they say… Know thyself? That’s how I want to be known.
So how do you want to be remembered?
Do you think Van Gogh gives a shit that his paintings sell for 50 million now? I mean when you’re dead you’re dead. (laughs) You don’t need to eat anymore. You’re eaten.
So who do you like better, the dead or the living?
I like the reality of the dead.
And the reality of the living?
I’m still trying to figure that out.