Jackson Evarts interviews Patrick Fealey
The following interview on writing was conducted may 13, 2002, in newport, ri, at 304 broadway, beginning 3:44 pm. Upper 40s and raining..
Jackson: a lot of these questions are for the readers more than for me because I’m somewhat familiar with your writing habits. There are a lot of writers and people who want to write who might gain insight and at least motivation from hearing how a writer such as yourself works.
F: first off, I am not a writer. I am a guy who writes. I am a man, not a thing. The rest of it I agree with, that we can learn and be inspired by others who have done it or are there. I know others have helped me, to an extent, though it’s not going to get you off your ass every morning, or whenever it is you write or propose to. in the end, my view on other writers, their works and their ways, as relating to other up and coming writers, is this. if you look around for something and are not finding it, maybe you are it.
J: you mean style, the writer, like that.
F: yes. My point is do not look outward with all your confidence in what is there, because the guys you are seeing once looked out and did not see themselves among the selection. Don’t put too confidence or weight in what is out there. Of course, a hack will, but we’ll leave the hacks out of this for now, those people who read every fucking thing in existence. I’m talking about writers who are finding their way and naturally look outward for help, affirmation, about what they are doing or where they are going. There’s a good level of insecurity in any aritist and when starting out, confidence can be kind of low, too low, maybe. To the point where the writer has doubts about himself. This is good too. I’m saying that he should not have so much doubt as to be shut down. and if there is anything that is going to bury a guy in despair it’s the canon. And the rest of them. not word happy egotists like mailer, but terrors like celine . . . but getting back to your question, nobody is going to write like you and you shouldn’t attempt to write like another guy. If you are going through writers and are getting this feeling of satisfaction, that your need, depth, range, style, whatever is not being met, it’s likely that that is the thing in you which needs to come out onto paper. That you are that writer. That’s all. It’s an active approach to the problem and it makes sense, since they are your needs, being projected onto the books, which then fail you, and you go pick up another one and another one, reading and looking. When all along you are it. that said, we are talking here about maybe a dozen living people out there right now with the capability of matching or beating the resident geniuses while changing the nature of the game. Pollock, miles, nirvana, these guys are so far ahead of us writers. We’re slower. It takes time.
J: where is writing going?
F: (laughs)
J: you know some writers, some good ones.
F: yeah. Real ones. We keep a respectful distance. When you work the same turf, it’s tough to admit things. You know. the best writer I know, mike decapite out in california, he says he envies my writing ability. I told him I don’t like that word. To me, envy implies seperation, conflict, an unease. Nobody can be me. I can’t be anyone else. There are things he can do which I will never be able to do and I have gotten used to that. Nobody can be you. shit, if I could write like someone, it would be celine. See, I have had to get over the fact that I am not celine. I am also not balzac, nor am I saul bellow, which is fine with me. I consider myself one of the most fortunate guys to know these writers, these men. Both of them are men first, persons, which is more than you can say for wally lamb. I don’t want to be nasty. But if you are not a genius, you have no business wasting paper. There are plenty of geniuses around already wasting paper. Go get a job cutting down trees or inventing tougher computer keyboards.
J: would you say you’re getting more confident about what you do?
F: yes. Each day is a struggle. When you win more than you lose, you gain confidence. This writing game is played on a clock that’s set in years, not seconds or minutes. Sometimes hundreds of years. The victories have been small. Affirmations have come from people and places I respect, usually indirectly, sometimes with acceptances. The most important victories are at home, you don’t even remember them, the realizations, the words, they’’re like injections, firecrackers in your ass. Those keep you going. The outside things, they are less frequent, but you remember them better for some reason. Maybe it’s the ego. I remember one time I was introduced by a guitarist to a published novelist in a fucking oxford and the guitarist says, “this is pat. He’s a real writer.” The oxford dude stayed away from me the rest of the night. Shit like that is cool. What’s also cool is when you open up a highly lauded book, you know, national book award, pulitzer, nobel, booker, starbucks memoirist of the week, and you start reading and before you finish a paragraph you stop, close it, and think, fuck, man, I wrote better when I was 12. half the people I know, who are not writers, do better than this.
J: but it’s that also somewhat depressing, discouraging? If it’s true?
F: fuck you on the second part of your question. But yes, it is discouraging, so far as believing your work will ever get out to people to read. It’s also discouraging financially, because succeeding as a starving artist means that yes, you are alive, but you can hardly travel or buy clothes or even eat out, your health suffers, all of that. Obviously, you do not own a car and finding a girlfriend is not easy. Hi. I’m sick. I’m recovering from this and that. I have no money. I will spend half my waking time ignoring you, etc.
J: it’s your choice.
F: no. it’s not. maybe the hacks choose it. the rest of us are possessed. Call it the muse, but I think “muse” is too delicate a word for whatever I’ve got. I have a disease. I don’t have a life. I have this afflcition, which really I know is an obligation, a responsibility, a calling.
J: to what?
F: I don’t know. sit around thinking about what I’m not thinking about?
J: since you mentioned muses. Writer’s block?
F: only thing I know about the muse is it doesn’t care about whether you live or not. I got blocked once that I can remember, writing a page one story on deadline. I’d gone out to interview this archaeologist, famous in her field, over in egypt, london, harvard here. The problem was by the end of the interview I was in love. I was late getting back to the office because she made me fucking dinner. So I went back and I’m sitting there and the other reporters notice I have got a sentence after half an hour. They start to laugh at me, say I’d fallen in love. I tried to ignore them, but the truth was I was out of my head. I couldn’t write because I was in love. Five years later we got together and we had occasional rendevous, a correspondance, but I fucked it up big time. I was insane at the time, legally, but I fucked it up and she has never recovered her trust. I am one of her great regrets, so she says. I just tell her, hey, most relationships end and they usually end because something is not good, so quit being so fucking self concious. It’s a fucking disaster, but my writers block went away, I mean when it comes to her. the rest of the time, it’s not a factor. If it happens, it is infrequent and I take the day off. Usually if I don’t or can’t get into it, it means I need a rest. Rest is important. I tend to write in shifts, sleep inbetween, when I am into a book.
J: so you would say writing is physically tiring, as well as mental and emotional.
F: yes, and the rub is that the emotional and mental side sneaks into your sleep and disrupts it. you are trying to rest your brain and body and the faces and words follow you into darkness.
J: that is obsessed.
F: I told you. nobody knows. Obsessed is being able to write a novel in two days. A short novel, but a good novel. I know several people who can do that, including myself. I’ve done it. I did it on scraps of paper, napkins and a notebook in this café in san francisco, que tal, on guerrero street. They thought I was nuts. It must have looked pretentious, but I had nowhere to go.
J: where’s the book?
F: I think it is stuck into the wastrels manuscript, but I think I’m pulling it out and putting it together with some other san francicso writing from that time, which was a period of two months in late ‘99. It’ll be more solid with the context, but it could stand as a novella. Thing is, it’s not something anyone could do every day, full time, unless they were cranking out romance novels or porn or other shit. Speaking of romance novels, I had to interview this girl I used to work with who published one. She was also a reporter, back in the day, a couple years older than me. I did the story. She told me about getting her agent and her contacts, etc., she knew I wrote, but she didn’t offer any names or help. Which is fine. But it’s an interesting attitude.
J: more opposition.
F: more true friendship!
J: have you considered writing porn?
F: yes.
J: it’s obvious that you could. You’d make a little money.
F: I think the only reason I haven’t is time and energy. I suppose I could devote a couple hours, say 3 to 6 am to writing porn. A lot of great writers have done it. miller, nin, and whitman’s publisher was a shady pornographer. If it wasn’t for the poems of manly love, which are beautiful, we might not have leaves of grass. Who knows. But yeah, I should look into porn. Which reminds me, I left two first editions of de sade in san francico when I split in ’99, couldn’t carry any more weight. My friend, father ryan, had to sell them because he was starving on mission street. A couple pages of the marquis are enough, but 1000 pages are a meal.
J: I already know this about you. you have no respect for books. Is that fair?
F: I respect some of what’s in them, and some of the writers. but no, I do not cling to them. they are not precious and I do not get caught up in them. I know I can find them again anyhow, it I want. I have sold books, but most of them I have given away or thrown out. I give a lot away because I’m hot on the guy. I have 3 small piles of books here, most of which I aquired in the last year. I go through cycles, I guess. A year ago I was a 33 year old writer with no books. Whether I read them or not, they go, with few exceptions.
J: such as?
F: top of my head? Villon. Rimbaud. Baudelaire. I replaced baudelaire. I let go of celine and miller, but they’ll be back. Bukowski is gone and may be back. Blake is back.
J: all poets. Predominantly romantics.
F: yeah. That’s funny. I didn’t appreciate them until later. Now I consider it the most perfect form. writing so concise, demanding.
J: novelists?
F: you’re not going to let me expound on poetry?
J: how long will we have to wait for you to become concise?
F: until the language becomes more elaborate and complex.
J: it appears language is not on your side. The novelists?
F: I already mentioned two, celine and miller. That’s all I can come up with for today.
J: somebody said to me that you seem to ‘sweat novels.’
F: (laughs) I once added up all the pages and divided it by the years and it turns out I write one finished page a day.
J: that’s all? But you’re talking to the final draft?
F: yeah. Thing is I’ve been writing for a long time, so it looks like I ‘sweat novels’ when the fact of the matter is, I’m slow as hell. I just work a lot.
J: places like this allow that.
F: the tit, my nea grant. America takes care of its artist, despite what you think.
J: you just have to be mentally disturbed.
F: yes.
J: it makes sense.
****
Jackson: a lot of these questions are for the readers more than for me because I’m somewhat familiar with your writing habits. There are a lot of writers and people who want to write who might gain insight and at least motivation from hearing how a writer such as yourself works.
F: first off, I am not a writer. I am a guy who writes. I am a man, not a thing. The rest of it I agree with, that we can learn and be inspired by others who have done it or are there. I know others have helped me, to an extent, though it’s not going to get you off your ass every morning, or whenever it is you write or propose to. in the end, my view on other writers, their works and their ways, as relating to other up and coming writers, is this. if you look around for something and are not finding it, maybe you are it.
J: you mean style, the writer, like that.
F: yes. My point is do not look outward with all your confidence in what is there, because the guys you are seeing once looked out and did not see themselves among the selection. Don’t put too confidence or weight in what is out there. Of course, a hack will, but we’ll leave the hacks out of this for now, those people who read every fucking thing in existence. I’m talking about writers who are finding their way and naturally look outward for help, affirmation, about what they are doing or where they are going. There’s a good level of insecurity in any aritist and when starting out, confidence can be kind of low, too low, maybe. To the point where the writer has doubts about himself. This is good too. I’m saying that he should not have so much doubt as to be shut down. and if there is anything that is going to bury a guy in despair it’s the canon. And the rest of them. not word happy egotists like mailer, but terrors like celine . . . but getting back to your question, nobody is going to write like you and you shouldn’t attempt to write like another guy. If you are going through writers and are getting this feeling of satisfaction, that your need, depth, range, style, whatever is not being met, it’s likely that that is the thing in you which needs to come out onto paper. That you are that writer. That’s all. It’s an active approach to the problem and it makes sense, since they are your needs, being projected onto the books, which then fail you, and you go pick up another one and another one, reading and looking. When all along you are it. that said, we are talking here about maybe a dozen living people out there right now with the capability of matching or beating the resident geniuses while changing the nature of the game. Pollock, miles, nirvana, these guys are so far ahead of us writers. We’re slower. It takes time.
J: where is writing going?
F: (laughs)
J: you know some writers, some good ones.
F: yeah. Real ones. We keep a respectful distance. When you work the same turf, it’s tough to admit things. You know. the best writer I know, mike decapite out in california, he says he envies my writing ability. I told him I don’t like that word. To me, envy implies seperation, conflict, an unease. Nobody can be me. I can’t be anyone else. There are things he can do which I will never be able to do and I have gotten used to that. Nobody can be you. shit, if I could write like someone, it would be celine. See, I have had to get over the fact that I am not celine. I am also not balzac, nor am I saul bellow, which is fine with me. I consider myself one of the most fortunate guys to know these writers, these men. Both of them are men first, persons, which is more than you can say for wally lamb. I don’t want to be nasty. But if you are not a genius, you have no business wasting paper. There are plenty of geniuses around already wasting paper. Go get a job cutting down trees or inventing tougher computer keyboards.
J: would you say you’re getting more confident about what you do?
F: yes. Each day is a struggle. When you win more than you lose, you gain confidence. This writing game is played on a clock that’s set in years, not seconds or minutes. Sometimes hundreds of years. The victories have been small. Affirmations have come from people and places I respect, usually indirectly, sometimes with acceptances. The most important victories are at home, you don’t even remember them, the realizations, the words, they’’re like injections, firecrackers in your ass. Those keep you going. The outside things, they are less frequent, but you remember them better for some reason. Maybe it’s the ego. I remember one time I was introduced by a guitarist to a published novelist in a fucking oxford and the guitarist says, “this is pat. He’s a real writer.” The oxford dude stayed away from me the rest of the night. Shit like that is cool. What’s also cool is when you open up a highly lauded book, you know, national book award, pulitzer, nobel, booker, starbucks memoirist of the week, and you start reading and before you finish a paragraph you stop, close it, and think, fuck, man, I wrote better when I was 12. half the people I know, who are not writers, do better than this.
J: but it’s that also somewhat depressing, discouraging? If it’s true?
F: fuck you on the second part of your question. But yes, it is discouraging, so far as believing your work will ever get out to people to read. It’s also discouraging financially, because succeeding as a starving artist means that yes, you are alive, but you can hardly travel or buy clothes or even eat out, your health suffers, all of that. Obviously, you do not own a car and finding a girlfriend is not easy. Hi. I’m sick. I’m recovering from this and that. I have no money. I will spend half my waking time ignoring you, etc.
J: it’s your choice.
F: no. it’s not. maybe the hacks choose it. the rest of us are possessed. Call it the muse, but I think “muse” is too delicate a word for whatever I’ve got. I have a disease. I don’t have a life. I have this afflcition, which really I know is an obligation, a responsibility, a calling.
J: to what?
F: I don’t know. sit around thinking about what I’m not thinking about?
J: since you mentioned muses. Writer’s block?
F: only thing I know about the muse is it doesn’t care about whether you live or not. I got blocked once that I can remember, writing a page one story on deadline. I’d gone out to interview this archaeologist, famous in her field, over in egypt, london, harvard here. The problem was by the end of the interview I was in love. I was late getting back to the office because she made me fucking dinner. So I went back and I’m sitting there and the other reporters notice I have got a sentence after half an hour. They start to laugh at me, say I’d fallen in love. I tried to ignore them, but the truth was I was out of my head. I couldn’t write because I was in love. Five years later we got together and we had occasional rendevous, a correspondance, but I fucked it up big time. I was insane at the time, legally, but I fucked it up and she has never recovered her trust. I am one of her great regrets, so she says. I just tell her, hey, most relationships end and they usually end because something is not good, so quit being so fucking self concious. It’s a fucking disaster, but my writers block went away, I mean when it comes to her. the rest of the time, it’s not a factor. If it happens, it is infrequent and I take the day off. Usually if I don’t or can’t get into it, it means I need a rest. Rest is important. I tend to write in shifts, sleep inbetween, when I am into a book.
J: so you would say writing is physically tiring, as well as mental and emotional.
F: yes, and the rub is that the emotional and mental side sneaks into your sleep and disrupts it. you are trying to rest your brain and body and the faces and words follow you into darkness.
J: that is obsessed.
F: I told you. nobody knows. Obsessed is being able to write a novel in two days. A short novel, but a good novel. I know several people who can do that, including myself. I’ve done it. I did it on scraps of paper, napkins and a notebook in this café in san francisco, que tal, on guerrero street. They thought I was nuts. It must have looked pretentious, but I had nowhere to go.
J: where’s the book?
F: I think it is stuck into the wastrels manuscript, but I think I’m pulling it out and putting it together with some other san francicso writing from that time, which was a period of two months in late ‘99. It’ll be more solid with the context, but it could stand as a novella. Thing is, it’s not something anyone could do every day, full time, unless they were cranking out romance novels or porn or other shit. Speaking of romance novels, I had to interview this girl I used to work with who published one. She was also a reporter, back in the day, a couple years older than me. I did the story. She told me about getting her agent and her contacts, etc., she knew I wrote, but she didn’t offer any names or help. Which is fine. But it’s an interesting attitude.
J: more opposition.
F: more true friendship!
J: have you considered writing porn?
F: yes.
J: it’s obvious that you could. You’d make a little money.
F: I think the only reason I haven’t is time and energy. I suppose I could devote a couple hours, say 3 to 6 am to writing porn. A lot of great writers have done it. miller, nin, and whitman’s publisher was a shady pornographer. If it wasn’t for the poems of manly love, which are beautiful, we might not have leaves of grass. Who knows. But yeah, I should look into porn. Which reminds me, I left two first editions of de sade in san francico when I split in ’99, couldn’t carry any more weight. My friend, father ryan, had to sell them because he was starving on mission street. A couple pages of the marquis are enough, but 1000 pages are a meal.
J: I already know this about you. you have no respect for books. Is that fair?
F: I respect some of what’s in them, and some of the writers. but no, I do not cling to them. they are not precious and I do not get caught up in them. I know I can find them again anyhow, it I want. I have sold books, but most of them I have given away or thrown out. I give a lot away because I’m hot on the guy. I have 3 small piles of books here, most of which I aquired in the last year. I go through cycles, I guess. A year ago I was a 33 year old writer with no books. Whether I read them or not, they go, with few exceptions.
J: such as?
F: top of my head? Villon. Rimbaud. Baudelaire. I replaced baudelaire. I let go of celine and miller, but they’ll be back. Bukowski is gone and may be back. Blake is back.
J: all poets. Predominantly romantics.
F: yeah. That’s funny. I didn’t appreciate them until later. Now I consider it the most perfect form. writing so concise, demanding.
J: novelists?
F: you’re not going to let me expound on poetry?
J: how long will we have to wait for you to become concise?
F: until the language becomes more elaborate and complex.
J: it appears language is not on your side. The novelists?
F: I already mentioned two, celine and miller. That’s all I can come up with for today.
J: somebody said to me that you seem to ‘sweat novels.’
F: (laughs) I once added up all the pages and divided it by the years and it turns out I write one finished page a day.
J: that’s all? But you’re talking to the final draft?
F: yeah. Thing is I’ve been writing for a long time, so it looks like I ‘sweat novels’ when the fact of the matter is, I’m slow as hell. I just work a lot.
J: places like this allow that.
F: the tit, my nea grant. America takes care of its artist, despite what you think.
J: you just have to be mentally disturbed.
F: yes.
J: it makes sense.
****
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