Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors

by Larry McCaffery

What resources are left for fiction in an era in which reading and writing seem increasingly irrelevant, obsolete, or debased? How have such concepts as "realism", "narrative", even "fiction" itself evolved since the first wave of postmodernism thirty years ago? How are writers responding to the challenges posed by the explosion of electronic media and the implosion of readers' attention spans? And how can fiction writers remain innovative when even the most radical features previously associated with the avant-garde routinely show up in mainstream television ads and music videos? In Some Other Frequency, Larry McCaffery dances on the sharp edge of contemporary American fiction to ask these and other questions of fourteen of today's most interesting fiction writers. McCaffery converses with the young, recklessly daring, and furiously productive William Vollmann and with Marianne Hauser, who published her first novel nearly sixty years ago ... with Native American trickster novelist Gerald Vizenor and "guerrilla writer" Harold Jaffe (whose literary technique is to "plant a bomb, sneak away") ... with stark minimalist Lydia Davis and text-and-collage artist Derek Pell ... with muscular pop icon Mark Leyner and proto-punk diva Kathy Acker. They are a diverse lot, shaped by very different literary and personal influences, and addressing divergent readerships. All, however, are among the most brilliant and radically innovative authors currently writing, and all jump off the page in McCaffery's intimate, finely tuned, and wide-ranging interviews. McCaffery's subjects talk about the nature of postmodernism and the crisis of representation, the ambiguities of contemporary life and the lure ofliterature. In his paradigm-busting introduction, McCaffery finds himself at odds with pessimistic announcements proclaiming the "death of the author" and the marginalization of language-based communication in general and fiction in particular. Judging from the examples of these interviews, the literary landscape of America is populated by an extraordinary vibrant group of authors publishing formally daring and thematically diverse fiction, though mostly outside the "official channels" of major commercial presses.

344 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1996

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Larry McCaffery is about as good as it gets when it's a question of the literary interview. And his work in general is about the best place to start if it's a question of surveying Usofa-ian fiction of the post(and post-post)modern variety (ie, the inventive stuff that started to pour out upon an unsuspecting public somewhere around the early sixties or so approximately). If you have interest in (and you are not required to hold such an interest) what kinds of fiction/poetry/art get written when the artist's main question is something like, What the hell is this thing called fiction/poetry/art? What can it do? Let's push it and find out. On the other hand, if you like authors of more traditional non-inquisitive modes, that's fine too and Larry talks to some of them as well. There's just so much....

This volume was published in 1996. The range of the interviewees is enormous. Let's see who's here ::

Kathy Acker -- needs no introduction. She's a RockStar!

David Antin -- This guy's schtick is literally talking, as in performance. Not sure how this becomes in the reading. But keep your ears out for more.

Lydia Davis -- another rockStar, but maybe too Top 40 for me.

Kenneth Gangemi -- BURIED. Olt looks like the thing.

Marianne Hauser BURIED -- I'll wanna-read her Prince Ishmael and The Talking Room.

Lyn Hejinian -- Her My Life has 1,683 Ratings · 58 Reviews ;; which I think gives just a little hope for literary justice. I've not read it yet. It's a Classic, Canonical.

Harold Jaffe -- BURIED. Read whatever you can find, probably.

Robert Kelly -- BURIED. I dunno ; you tell me.

Richard Kostelanetz -- Looks pretty BURIED. And he seems to have written a shitton.

Mark Leyner -- MuthaFookinROOKstar. This is the end of intelligent writing right here. There is no point in the universe further from SUCKY than Mark Leyner. If you've not fellated each and every one of his books yet you probably know how utterly terribly awful you should feel about yourself and should start investing RIGHT NOW in signed 1st/1st's of all of his utterly terribly incredible books. Hop hop!

Clarence Major -- Another BURIED Canonical (happens-to-be African)American author. I've not read him yet but this is like the second interview or something I've read with him and he is at the TOP of my tbr/I-wanna-$$$$.

Derek Pell -- BURIED pataphysician. You'll want to read his Assassination Rhapsody in debriefing from DeLillo's Kennedy novel perhaps.

Gerald Vizenor -- nearly BURIED. Put him on your nativeAmerican reading lists ; also on some kind of chinese reading list. Read his Griever among other things.

William Fucking-T Vollmann -- 'nuff said.

As you can see, you've not heard of many of these folks. I've read something from just Acker Leyner and WTV. What you should do is write this list of names on a scrap of paper and place that scrap of paper alongside some object that you always have with you when you visit The Village Bookshop so that when you are there at The Village Bookshop you can check for the books by these Lovely People. You'll be surprised how few you find. (don't forget to check the Small Press and Poetry shelvings).

But it doesn't stop here. McCaffery has three other volumes of interviews with authors equally innovative and experiment and avant garde and inquisitive (that's what we should use to 'label' this kind of fiction "inquisitive fiction" because what fundamentally characterizes this kind of fiction (or art in general) is that it inquires into the (very) conditions and possibilities (this is very kantian) of its existence and essence and nature and things of this sort--What is fiction? What can fiction do? Etc? -- the other kind of fiction either finds the answers to these questions already lying around or doesn't know these questions even exist. This kind of thing.)

Anything Can Happen: Interviews with Contemporary American Novelists (this is the beginning of The BURIED Book Club)
Alive and Writing: Interviews with American Authors of the 1980s
Some Other Frequency: Interviews with Innovative American Authors (that's this one)
Across the Wounded Galaxies: Interviews with Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers (I haven't read this yet but I simply MUST.)

and adjuncting that LIST ::
The New Fiction: Interviews with Innovative American Writers
Divergent Trajectories: Interviews with Innovative Fiction Writers

Here's a video of a talk Larry gave recently about what it is he does. Please watch ::
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6F6vr...

I mean, if you are serious about finding books through Utterly Other Means. I just read Pessl's second book so believe me when I tell I know what I'm talking about when I say that the good stuff gets BURIED under mountains of shit.

Best of reading to you!!