Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (6 page)

I think I said “exhibitionist, also.”

But exhibitionist too?

Yeah.

Meaning?

Well, I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the extent that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I’m hanging out with
you
, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not, because I’m too worried about whether you like me. It’s stressful and unpleasant or whatever. And I have elements of that shyness in me.

And yet at the same time, I mean it’s sort of like the agoraphobic kleptomaniacs. At the same time, I think that most people—and stop me if you disagree, because I’m talking to somebody who’s in the trade—somebody who’s writing, has part of their motivation to sort of I think impress themselves and their consciousness on others. There’s an
unbelievable
arrogance about even trying to write something—much less, you know, expecting that someone else will pay money to read it. So that you end up with this, uh … I think exhibitionists who
aren’t
shy end up being performers. End up plying their trade in the direct presence of other people.

[He looks under the table, where I’m jiggling my leg.] You’re a nervous fellow, aren’t you? [I stop.] And exhibitionists who
are
shy find various other ways to do it. I would imagine that maybe film directors, it’s the same way; although film directors have to deal very closely with a whole team of other people as they’re making a movie, so. Partly though, I’m talkin’ out of my ass, because what I’m talking about is me. And maybe five or six other writers I know real well. You know?

[He also means, I think, the story he did this year, about David Lynch.]

There’s that John Updike quote: “Shyness, and a savage desire to hold another soul in thrall …”

But there’s also, the shyness feeds into some of the stuff that you need as a fiction writer. Like: Part of the shyness for me is, it’s very easy for me to play this game of, What do
you
want? What will the effect of this be on you? You know? It’s this kind of mental chess. Which in personal intercourse? Makes things very difficult. But in
writing
, when I think a lot of what you’re doing—there are very few innocent sentences in writing. You’ve gotta know not just how it looks and sounds to you. But you’ve gotta be able plausibly to project what an alien consciousness will make of it. So that there’s a kind of split consciousness that I think makes it difficult to deal with people in the real world. For a writer. But that actually comes in handy.

And one of the reasons why I think when I’m working really hard, that I’m not around people much, isn’t that I don’t have time. It’s just that, it’s more like a machine that you turn on and off. And I, the idea of sitting here and being completely wrapped up in what piece will result, what your impression of me is, how I can manage that, would be so exhausting that I just don’t want to do it. That’s what’s kind of weird—is this process of being interviewed kicks that machine. Except, now I don’t have control over it, right? Now I’ve gotta manage it, and trust that you, that you—when writing the piece—that you are concerned about how it’s gonna come off to the people who are then gonna manage it as well. So the
three
are actually kind of interestingly—there’s writing, there’s innocent interaction with other people, and then there’s this interviewing stuff.

What I would
love
to do is a profile of one of
you
guys who’s doin’ a profile of me. It would be
way
too pomo and cute, to do. But it would be very interesting. It would be the way for me to get some of the control back. Because if you
wanted
—within the parameters of, you can’t tell outright lies that I’ll then deny to the fact checker. But if you wanted, I mean, you’re gonna be able to shape this essentially
how you want. And that to me is
extremely
disturbing. Because
I
want to be able to try and shape and manage the impression of me that’s coming across. And it might be why writers are such shitty interviews.

Really?

Or I bet they’re often incredibly upset when the thing comes out. Like Streitfeld thought I would never be his friend after the thing came out in
Details
. [The writer David Streitfeld]

What’s the profit then?

I’ll tell you exactly what the profit is. Little, Brown took an enormous chance doing the book. And I’m grateful, and I genuinely like Michael Pietsch, and I want the book to do well for them. I
also—
I’m not the Saint of Bloomington. [A phrase I used on phone; he’s remembered it.] I want them to buy my next thing. So I want, I’m playing this delicate game of, “I don’t want to be an asshole, but I also don’t give myself away.” There have been two or three things they asked me, that I just thought would be bad for me to do. And I said no to those—but bring me somethin’ else that I’ll do, that’s like borderline.

Because this—you’re not a bad guy. But this stuff is real bad for me, it makes me self-conscious. The more exposure I as a person get, the more it hurts me as a writer. But I said yes to this, so that I could in good conscience say no to a couple other things that are just way more toxic. And that’s what I get out of it. And after this, I don’t think there’s gonna be much more of this.

Why do you think of it as a kind of toxic self-consciousness—

If I could get laid out of it. If one
Rolling Stone
reader …

I’m sure you’ll get letters
.

They’ll take seventy pictures, and a
Details
shot’ll come out.
You’re
a good-looking guy. We should have ’em photograph you, and then say you’re me. I’ll end up getting laid, you’ll end up …

[Courting me again]

There’s just been a whole bunch, and most of ’em have just been atrocious.
I
think. Or maybe I really look like that. That’s the nice thing. I can go to my friends around here, and I could go, “I don’t really look like that, do I?” And they’ll go, “No.” Now, whether it’s true or not …?

But the self-consciousness is helpful to you too?

It’s like everything else: It’s real good up to a certain point. But there’s this—here I am, the Dave who’s been in
Rolling Stone
. Now I’m learning how to write short stories—“Oh no: Are
these
short stories of the level of somebody who was just featured in
Rolling Stone?”
[This is what happened in the late ’80s: his panic.]
That
kind of—there’s good self-consciousness. And then there’s this toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.

Those things go away; like worries about where I am now, who I am now, whether my girlfriend last year was better for me, so was I maybe
writing
better then? Did those figures in my landscape help me orient myself better, organize my life better? It goes away
.

But this is a rather stronger and more dangerous kind of self-consciousness. But you’re right, my brain does work that way, and I, it’s in my interest to eliminate as many possible avenues of it. And you can see, I mean, I’m not a reclusive writer, I’m not saying no to this, I’m just trying to be careful about it. And my nightmare is, I’ll get to really like it. And I’ll be one of these hideous: “Hey, yet another publication party, and here’s
Dave
sticking his head into the picture.” I’d rather be dead. I’d rather be dead. I just—because I don’t want to be
seen
that way.

Why?

Because I think that’s—well, would you want to be seen that way? Say how you’d feel about it, as a springboard. So that I’ve got a context to talk about it.

Then you’re deriving your satisfaction from talking about your work, by acting like a writer, as opposed to by writing, so paradoxically you’d probably get less done
.

Yes. That’s real good. And there’s nothing more grotesque than somebody who’s going around, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer.” It’s a very fine line. I don’t mind appearing in
Rolling Stone
, but I don’t want to appear in
Rolling Stone
as somebody who
wants
to be in
Rolling Stone
.

It’s the whole pomo dance, that whole kind of thing. So my worry—I don’t really have that much integrity. Because what I’m really worried is,
looking
like the sort of person who would appear at these parties. Now, the difference between that, and sort of
being
the person who doesn’t want them is unclear to me.

But I
do
know that to the extent that like, that I derive my self and satisfaction from the work, rather than whether Mr. Lipsky’s gonna come, and think what I have to say is important, is just—I’m gonna write better, I’m gonna be happier, I’m gonna be saner. You know what I mean? So like, why climb into the arena with this bull? Well. It’s good for Little, Brown, I owe Little, Brown something, so.

And there’s a little part of me, of course, that likes this. But that little part of me does not get to steer.

That little part can turn pretty ravenous though?

That’s my big fear. If you see me like you know as a guest on a game show in the next couple of years, we will know.

[Waitress comes: Heavy tray, big Midwestern spread.] “Four slices of
sausage
, one
cheese
, two salads, dipping sauce, and six breadsticks. Also cookies. And two Diet Cokes. When you all want your cookies, just come up and yell at me. OK?”

Good heavens. Could we have a larger table, also, please? I’m just kidding.

A friend of mine and I had this joke, that various things are pomo-erotic.

That part of the brain can prove to be ravenous?

You’ve had experience with it?

No. But I know it can be
.

You know what I’m talking about. At one point you were in grad school, one of the many hopefuls, and now you’ve had a couple of books published, and it awakens that part of you. And you can’t kill that part of you. But you
can
reach some sort of détente with it. Where you, where it doesn’t run you. And I’ve seen people that I think it runs, and it’s just, it eats you alive. Who would want to be that way?

But many less-talented people than you get lots of attention. Which can be a little painful. Now you’re getting it, and you’re very good and you deserve it. This is an example of the system working
.

I’m not sure I—I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve had that thought in the last few years. I mean, I’ve got my weird neuroses. Like I’m totally—I had this huge inferiority complex where William Vollmann’s concerned. Because he and I’s first books came out at the same time. And I even once read a Madison Smartt Bell essay, where he used me, and my
“slender
output,” and the inferiority of it, to talk about, you know, how great Vollmann is. And so I go around, “Oh no, Vollmann’s had another one out, now he’s got like five to my one.” I go around with that stuff. But I think, I’m trying to think of any example that …

Bell himself is an outpourer
.

I think just: I haven’t read a lot of the new stuff that’s come out over the last few years. Like Steve Erickson, and
Tours of the Black Clock—
it’s really fucking good. I thought Bret Ellis’s first book, I thought it was very, very powerful.
American Psycho
—I thought he was really ill-served by his agent and publisher even letting him publish it, and those are the only two things of his that I read. But that’s, I think this is another danger: you get lavishly rewarded for that first book, and it’s gonna be very difficult for him ever to do anything else. I mean there’s gonna be part of you that just wants to do that over and over and over again, so you continue to get the food pellets of praise. It’s one more way that all this stuff is toxic.

Same risk for you?

Sure. Because whatever I do, the next thing will be very different from this. And if it gets
reamed
, then I’ll think: “Oh no. Maybe
Infinite Jest II.”
In which case, somebody needs to come and just put a bullet in my head. To be merciful.

David Leavitt noose quote: Reviewers will use my first book as a noose to hang my second
.

I think it often is. Although the nice thing about having written an essentially shitty first book is that I’m exempt from that problem. There were a lot of people who really liked
Broom of the System
, but unfortunately they’re all about eleven.

[He laughs, then a little composing wince.]

Never that grinding feeling of watching someone who’s not talented succeeding?

[I’m trying to give the waitress a tip, which she is in the process of failing to understand and trying to hand back.]

(To waitress) He’s attempting to tip you. Here. He wants to do it. It makes him happy.

(To me) You’re not supposed to tip here, you get them in trouble. Here is this—this may piss you off or strike you as disingenuous. I don’t think I’m all that unusual. I don’t think in terms of “more talented” or “less talented.” There’s a kind of stuff that I vibrate sympathetically with, and a kind of stuff that I don’t. And I’ve seen a couple of books come out, that there was a whole lot of fuss about, I picked ’em up and read ’em. And I mean like literary, I don’t mean
shit
. You know, where you can see the gears working—and I just thought, “Man, there might be somethin’ here, but I just don’t get it. This is just not my cup of tea.”

And then I really—I think the envy stuff just so
burned
me, that it’s just, idn’t there anymore.

How did it burn?

All the time that I wasn’t doing any publishable stuff, and I watched other people—you know, like, all of a sudden there was the new brat pack. You know, this lady Donna Tartt came? You know? And I read
Secret History
. And I thought it was, you know, it was pretty good. But feeling that, “Oh shit, now me and all these guys are displaced. And now there’s just a new crop.” And realizing how disposable, and that terrible … that terrible sense of, “I had something and now I don’t and somebody else has got it instead.” And then it’s just—talk about …