12 or 20 (second series) questions with Patrik Sampler
Patrik Sampler is author of the novels Naked Defiance and The Ocean Container. His short-form writing has appeared in avariety of publications including TheGuardian, TheMillions, and TheScofield. Sampler devoted the better part of a postgraduatedegree to the late-career work of Abe Kobo, and was acontributing editor for early editions of the surrealist journal Peculiar Mormyrid. www.patriksampler.com
1 - How did yourfirst book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to yourprevious? How does it feel different?
Getting my first bookpublished gave me more self-assurance, and made me think some things about publishing.
My most recent novel,NakedDefiance, is less fragmentary than myprevious (and first) novel, The Ocean Container, although both novelsare digressive. I think Naked Defianceis more metafictional, maybe less lyrical, more about extremists and “idealistswho seek a richer engagement with life, but are repressed by the intrusionof internecine politics,” more about leftists turning into rightists andnot knowing the difference… I’d like to think it’s funnier.
2 - How did youcome to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?
I think I came topoetry first, then perhaps felt a loss of the kind of innocence that can makepoetry vibrant, and also thought that people like Christopher Dewdney andWilliam Wordsworth had already done a good enough job and I had nothing toadd. Fiction became a better vehicle formy ideas and I started with short fiction, thinking it would be both easier towrite and more marketable, but I was wrong and probably should have startedwriting novels sooner.
3 - How long doesit take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initiallycome quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close totheir final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?
If it’s a novel, ittakes a year or two, anyway. I take notesas I come across useable material, then the notion of a plot occurs and I seehow it can be used to hang that material together…
4 - Where does awork of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that endup combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book"from the very beginning?
Based on whichevernotes I gather, I like to get to a general framework pretty soon, then I add toit whatever else I can uncover…
5 - Are publicreadings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort ofwriter who enjoys doing readings?
If people wouldinvite me to public readings more often, I might have a chance to find out ifthey’re a part of my creative process. I’ve enjoyed some readings… basically it’s nice to chat with peopleabout writing.
6 - Do you haveany theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are youtrying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questionsare?
Theoretical concerns…I think theoretical concerns behind my writing include notions of ‘reality.’ Out there, in a number of places, is an assumptionthat with greater detail something becomes more ‘real’ — but I think Jorge LuisBorges got it right when he said that not knowing the second fact about thefirst fact is in fact closer to reality.
‘Identity’ is anotherconcern. There’s a popular notion that alabel can point to one’s deeper self, even though that’s clearly not how wordswork. An ‘identity’ can’t be our essence,and we shouldn’t want it to be. There’sa story by Abe Kobo called “The Crime of S. Karma.” In it, a man’s business card — his identity —supplants the man himself and pushes him out of relationships. We should read this as horror.
I’m reacting againstcertain kinds of received wisdom and if I’m asking any questions, they arerhetorical questions, and I should probably ask some more sincere questions….Then again, I think the job of the novel is to provide no answers… so maybe — ifit’s doing its job — the novel is part of an ever-expanding question.
Concretely, TheOcean Container concerns a political fugitive in partial solitaryconfinement, and questions the degree to which his perceptions are connected toobservations of the external world. NakedDefiance has something of a farcical mismatch between labels and the thingsto which they supposedly point, and then it’s also — superficially — a crimestory in which the facts are never revealed… which reminds me that Chekhov’s gunis another thing that interests me greatly — namely, ensuring that the gundoesn’t shoot. For example, a characterin Naked Defiance mentions that she’s pregnant early in the story, butwe never hear about it again.
7 – What do yousee the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even haveone? What do you think the role of the writer should be?
As I understand it,the role of the writer is to commodify oneself, reify fashionable notions (thenevaporate when those notions become unfashionable), and sit for pretentiouslycomposed photo portraits. As for whatthe role should be… the writer — through their writing — should delight andentertain, invoke strange feelings of our oceanic bond with the mysteries ofexistence, and touch the sublime. It’sreally that simple.
8 - Do you findthe process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?
I like working withan outside editor. I’ve had lots of excellentadvice. Sometimes I wonder if I’mwriting by committee…
9 - What is thebest piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?
That I should go to acertain place where a certain famous writer is doing a residency and givingfeedback to manuscripts submitted by the public… I don’t want to drop names,because it’s in bad taste to do so. WhatI will say is that she gave my writing a positive review, and that really didencourage me to write more.
10 - How easy hasit been for you to move between genres (fiction to non-fiction)? What do yousee as the appeal?
I think it hasn’tbeen too hard. One thing I like to do infiction is mix hardly believable scenarios with familiar details of theso-called ‘real’ world. In non-fiction,I do the same, but in different proportions. What I find hard is coming up with the right ‘gimmick’ for a non-fictionpiece, so I don’t write them nearly as often. And then the world is quite cluttered with non-fiction of the opinionvariety… Well, I guess you could say it’s equally cluttered with fiction,too. As for the appeal… I think theappeal is to have some fun.
11 - What kind ofwriting routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does atypical day (for you) begin?
I like to write earlyin the morning, partly because there’s no other time in the day, partly becauseI like it. I start by eating breakfast(the same one I have every day), stretching, listening to some classical music…Then I sit at the computer and drink a mug of undiluted espresso, and afterabout an hour I’m quite warmed up, mentally, and then I can go for maybeanother hour, maybe two, and that’s about all I can handle. That’s how I like to write, but I can’t do ittoo often, due to everything else…
12 - When yourwriting gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a betterword) inspiration?
If my writing getsstalled, I don’t get too worried because most of my ideas happenaccidentally. I think just being out inthe world… Well, cycling is my usual mode of transportation, sometimes I getideas when I’m on my bicycle.
13 - Whatfragrance reminds you of home?
Baked mackerel.
14 - David W.McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other formsthat influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?
Nature is a biginfluence. Music is another biginfluence. Those two things appear quitea bit in my writing. The geometricabstractions of Wassily Kandinsky and his Concerning the Spiritual in Arthave influenced me greatly, as have the films of Andrei Tarkovsky – Stalkerand Mirror, in particular. It wasa kind of ecstasy reading his Sculpting in Time.
15 - What otherwriters or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside ofyour work?
Years ago,discovering Abe Kobo was a big impetus. There’s never been a novel quite like Secret Rendezvous. It starts with a man — a kind of running shoesalesman — and the arrival of an ambulance at his home. The paramedics are there to take his wife tothe hospital. She’s not feeling unwell,nor has she called for an ambulance, but they both figure she should go,anyway. After all, if an ambulance showsup, there must be a good reason… And that’s the most ‘normal’ part of thebook. I don’t think we’re allowed inCanada to mention what else happens in that novel. Suffice it to say, it showed me the noveldidn’t have to be just the same old, same old. As for other novels, Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of anIsland is similarly uninhibited, but far more commercial. W. G. Sebald’s Austerlitz and The Rings of Saturn made a big impression on me, as did Renee Gladman’s EventFactory. I read Anna Kavan’s Icenot too long ago, and it’s been on my mind ever since. I like Italo Calvino quite a bit.
16 - What wouldyou like to do that you haven't yet done?
Earn some decentmoney.
17 - If you couldpick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, whatdo you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?
I think of the writing process asbeing a lot like carving. I could seemyself working with wood, maybe as a carpenter. I like plants, so farming might also be nice, except I like to go to theseaside in the summer… Maybe I could work in ahaberdasher, or maybe like a... a chapeau shop, or something...
18 - What made youwrite, as opposed to doing something else?
I didn’t make itanywhere near getting onto a professional team for the Tour de France, so Igave up attempting that, started playing bass guitar, joined a few bands. I had aspirations to make some of thoseweird, athletic basslines like the ones Derek Forbes of Simple Minds made a fewyears on either side of 1982. Any bandsI was in didn’t quite get off the ground, though, so I turned to writing. Well, I had been writing all along, just nottoo seriously.
19 - What was thelast great book you read? What was the last great film?
We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin, iscertainly a great book, and I’ve just finished reading it again for about thefifth time. It’s often credited as the‘inspiration’ for George Orwell’s 1984, but the truth is that he justbrazenly ripped it off — which isn’t to diminish the value of 1984,because it does a few important things differently. Mostly, however, it’s directly analogous to We,except that We is a lot funnier. No one is being tortured into believing that two plus two equalsfive. Rather, toward the end of thenovel the government sends people door-to-door, basically, encouraging everyoneto get a lobotomy.
As for the mostrecent great film I’ve seen, it’s Kawa no Nagarewa Baiorin no Oto, directed by SasakiShoichiro. It’s a studied exercise in disobeyingthe Chekov’s gun principle, and a very understatedly weird film because it wasmade for TV and looks like it might be a kind of documentary — except that it’snot. Every few years I watch this filmto refresh my memory… I find it mesmerizing.
20 - What are youcurrently working on?
I’m tidying up thefirst part of a two-part novel, about a man with no personality who is on ajourney to the edge of the Earth. Alongthe way he stops at various decadent cities overtaken by primordialistcults. At each hotel he receives anoverwrought letter, in a poor imitation of the style of Anaïs Nin, by an estrangedlover he might not in fact know. Thesecond part of the novel, which I’m just getting started on, is a familymemoir.
I’ve also startedoutlining a novel about a disenchanted government worker who spends his meagresavings on a used Mazda Bongo camper van and goes on a road trip to sabotagesymbols of consumerism during the day while writing reviews of fake novels atnight. These fake novel reviews foretellthe story: he’s kidnapped by a militant transhumanist, a dialectic ensues, he managesto escape, then regresses to a childhood state of oceanic connection with thenatural world… or a kind of pantheistic rapture. There’s more to it than I’ve let on here, butall the pieces will fit together.
