The Reality Break Interviews: Volume #0

by Dave Slusher

  DS: Is the book being marketed more as a mainstream book than some of your others have been?

  MB: It's the first time in my career that a book has been marketed as a mainstream novel. Nowhere on the cover or in the jacket copy will you find fantasy or science fiction. It's presented pretty much as a mainstream book. I don't think this is misleading, because the jacket copy does explain that the story has an odd element to it. It is being marketed as mainstream. I don't know how this is going to work. I hope that it works well. I'm very proud of this particular book.

  DS: You've been very successful over the course of your career writing in SF and fantasy genres. Has your success in those genres in some cases closed doors that may have been open to you—or, at least, made it a little harder to get books into the hands of people who may enjoy them but don't regularly read those genres?

  MB: I think that's true. I'm not knocking the genres themselves at all, but I do think that certain expectations arise from both the editors and the readers. If they know you primarily as a science fiction and fantasy writer that's the little pigeonhole that they mentally place you in—perhaps without in any way intending to disparage your talent. Nevertheless, putting you in a pigeonhole that might deprive some people that might ordinarily like what you have done of the chance to read you. I agree with that. It's unfortunate in some respects, in other respects I have to say that I owe my career to these fields. They were very receptive to me in the beginning when I was starting—more so than the mainstream markets. It may be that I might not have been writing as long as I have been had it not been for the fantasy and SF fields. I do think that there is a terrible tendency to suppose that a person who works in these fields can't do anything else.

  DS: In many cases, writers will have a different persona for each pigeonhole they want to write in. Was there any trepidation about using your own name?

  MB: No, not really. [laughs] I have some small reputation in the science fiction field, but almost none outside of it. Presenting this book under the name “Michael Bishop” is almost like presenting a first novel to many people, like a writer they've never experienced before but might find interesting. I never thought about using a pseudonym on it, and certainly my publisher didn't either. Had I been a bigger name in the science fiction field than I am, somebody might have thought of that. On the other hand, if I were a really big name they probably would have thought it didn't matter. I hope at this stage that people like this book enough that maybe they'll look back at some of the earlier works.

  DS: You were not born in this part of the country, but you've spent about the last 20 or 25 years living around this area.

  MB: I tell people very often that I'm a militant transplanted Southerner. I've lived here so long now that I feel like this indeed my region. I feel very comfortable here, like I've assimilated by osmosis some of the cultural characteristics and the way that people operate here, the way that people think. I think that it's an incredibly rich area. That was another thing that was very important to me in doing Brittle Innings—setting the book in the south, in Georgia, the deep south during WW II and being able to draw on that aspect of American culture, as well as baseball. That was tremendous and I loved it.

  DS: You've written about this area earlier in Catacomb Years, about Atlanta as sort of an archetypal city. Does the city of Atlanta present special possibilities for you as a writer?

  MB: I think it presents special possibilities for anyone who is familiar with the city. I think an even more characteristic novel that deals with Atlanta was Ancient of Days which came out in 1985 and looks at Atlanta in the mid-eighties, really. The book is set at the same time it was published, and it was an attempt to recreate imaginatively what Atlanta is like. It was an attempt on my part to draw on something that I knew a little about. Even though I've never lived in Atlanta proper I've certainly been up there a lot and feel comfortable there.

  DS: In your book you have a wide variety of dialects and various tones that the book is written in. Do you find it hard to present all of these different speech patterns that are similar, but each has their own qualities?

  MB: It was a very deliberate attempt on my part to get them all right, or at least as right as possible. I know that if you look at Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn at the beginning he talks about the different dialects in the book and he warns readers not to think that the characters are all trying to talk alike and not quite succeeding. That's the way I feel about Brittle Innings. I do try very hard to make the individual dialects of the characters distinguishable and accurate. That was a hard thing to do. How well I've pulled it off is not for me to say, of course, but the effort was there.

  DS: You had the portions of the book that were presented as the diary of the character of Henry Clerval—written in sort of a deliberate 19th century style. You jumped back and forth. Did you use that as a counterpoint to the style of the rest of the book?

  MB: I was hoping that readers would notice that there was a great deal of difference between the way Danny Boles presents his narrative, and he's looking back on these events from the age of 65 on things that happened when he was 17. He speaks in a rather Midwestern Oklahoma accent. The Clerval character uses the 19th century British approach. The contrast between the two is one of the things that gives the book some of its flavor. Also, it was a stylistic challenge and I enjoyed that. I wanted to see if I could pull that off as well.

  DS: Set as it was in this time and this place, it touched on some very tricky racial issues that were happening at this point in the history of the region. By bringing in the character of Henry who is so different from every character around him, did that give you an outside perspective to bring to the events?

  MB: I think so. That was one of the ideas that I had in the back of my mind. There is one chapter where he and Danny go to a black theater in LaGrange, Georgia and actually attend the movie with a black audience. For the most part, before they go in, Henry identifies with the black audience because he knows what it is like to be discriminated against, he has some understanding about how they feel. Yet, at the same time, he finds that its very uncomfortable for him as the films that they happen to be watching progress. More as a consequence of the nature of the films than any real antipathy on the part of the audience. There was certainly that thought in the back of my mind that Henry would provide a new perspective on the whole question.

  DS: You have the character of Darius who went on to play in the Negro League. You did a lot of research into the research into the Negro League?

  MB: I'm not any kind of expert on it, but I delved into a number of books and magazine articles on the subject. One book that was particularly helpful and I wish I could remember the title now dealt almost entirely with the Kansas City Monarchs. Their schedules and how they would play split seasons and had to restrict their travel because of wartime gas rationing. It was difficult for them to put together any type of meaningful season, but they still managed to do it, despite the restrictions and despite the prejudice and despite the odds against them. That was another aspect of American culture at the time that became a very rich source of material for the book.

  DS: You touched several times on the fact that many of the greatest players of the time were prohibited from getting the glory and the acclaim that they would have deserved in a later time.

  MB: Absolutely. Nobody disputes that now. One of the things that has happened over the last few years is that black ballplayers from that era are now being recognized and admitted to the Hall of Fame. It's a minor thing to do in some respects but it has great symbolic significance and its an attempt to rectify a wrong that can never really be rectified.

  DS: Even as we speak, this is the anniversary of Henry Aaron breaking Babe Ruth's career home run record. As you say, many players are getting their acclaim retroactively.

  MB: Some of them were absolutely wonderful players. Cool Papa Bell, Satchel Paige, many others.

  DS: Let's talk a little about some of your other wo
rk. In addition to your novel and prose work you also write some poetry. Does that affect your prose style?

  MB: I must confess that it's been a while since I've written much poetry, largely because as a full-time freelance writer I'm trying to support myself and my family through my writing and poetry just doesn't make any writer very much money. You have to do it completely for love, and if you don't do it for love there's not much reason to do it. I think that the one thing that poetry does is that it concentrates your attention on your level of diction and exactly the right word choice. If you are writing poetry that you hope is any good at all, you have to be conscious of those elements. I think it's important for a prose writer to be conscious of exactly the same things. But at the same time, you don't want your prose to sound like poetry. If it does, I think you undermine the narrative aspect of the story. It's a difficult call.

  DS: In most aspects, your newest novel is diametrically opposed to your previous one, Count Geiger's Blues—especially in tone. Was this an effort to spin things around and cover the range of tones and styles?

  MB: The easy answer is yes. One thing I have attempted to do in my career from one book to the next is try something different each time. I'm sure that there are some people who would dispute that, because I've done a number of books that are anthropologically oriented in their scientific background, at least. Nevertheless, from one book to another I've tried very hard to set myself different challenges and to accomplish different things narratively. Each book should be distinct in some way or another. I would like it to be said of me when I finish my career, whenever that happens to be, that it wasn't easy to predict what kind of book I was going to write next.

  DS: Do you have a favorite amongst your own novels, or can you even pick such a thing? Is that like picking favorite children?

  MB: It's not like picking favorite children for me. I know some writers use that analogy and there is a certain degree of truth to it, but at the same time books don't have the kind of feelings that kids do. You would never tell one kid that the other kid is your favorite. [laughs] You realize with books that they are something you've created and are out there one way or another. I sometimes play favorites. Right now, I'd say my favorite book is Brittle Innings. For a long time it was Ancient of Days. I still like that one quite a bit. It was a book that didn't receive as much attention as I had hoped when it first came out. Maybe that's one of the reasons I like it.

  DS: Over the course of your career you've written some books that deal with real people. You've received criticism for this.

  MB: Are you referring to the Philip K. Dick novel where Richard Nixon figures as a character?

  DS: Yes.

  MB: My answer to that particular criticism was that the Nixon in that book is not necessarily Richard Nixon the person who is living in New York City right now. He is a construct from the particular persona that he presented to the public for a number of years as the president of the United States. That may sound like a kind of gobbledygook, but I do think that Nixon while he was president was presenting to the public one particular persona and in private had a completely different personality. I felt like he was fair game, at least, for a book that is a satire.

  DS: What are you working on now, and what is upcoming?

  MB: I have a novella called “Cri de Coeur” coming out in Asimov's Science Fiction in September [1994]. It will be the cover story. This was an attempt on my part to write the kind of story that most people don't think I can write—a story which is grounded so thoroughly in the sciences that people can accept it as being credible. I had some help on that one. I asked Geoff Landis, the winner of the Nebula Award for short story and an employee of NASA, and I had him vet a lot of the things I had done here. He was a great help to me. Nevertheless, I wanted to try a story like that. I've got two or three other things coming out as well.

  DS: Some people find it harder to write at the shorter length—you have less room to play and any error you make is magnified greatly.

  MB: It's probably easier to make a short story go wrong than a novel, because you do have to be so careful and precise about the way you lay out your materials. Nevertheless, I enjoy writing short fiction quite a lot. I think one of the reasons I do is that I'm a real fan of instant gratification. It takes so long to get a novel out, whereas a short story is something you can accomplish in two or three days or a couple of weeks and you have something finished in front of you. That's a very good feeling. One of the things about writing a novel that is difficult sometimes is just getting to the end of it. While you're at work on it, you sometimes think you are never going to finish. If I can use one metaphor that William Styron used several years ago, someone asked him about writing a novel and he said that writing a novel sometimes felt like walking from Vladivostok to Madrid on your knees. I think that's the way it can feel to a writer in the process of composition. Writing a short story is a real treat.

  Poppy Z. Brite Introduction

  Poppy Brite was in on this shindig at the beginning. Not only was she one of the early folks to come on board at World Fantasy Con in 1992, but she was also one of the “Gang of Four” for that first studio interview. I honestly had not heard of her until about a month before this convention. My friend Rob Gibson loaned me a copy of Lost Souls which I read and devoured (no pun intended.) I was impressed with the strength of the imagery by this writer who was no older than I was. At WFC, I asked her about doing an interview and she gave me her card. Back then her cards had a picture of Kali on them, with one of the hands holding the head of J.R. “Bob” Dodds. She was a card-carrying member at the Church of the Subgenius at that time—I presume she still is. Some commitments you just don't turn from.

  When we actually did our first interview in the studio, she did what felt like the worst thing possible, but it turned out to be a huge favor. I had my neatly typed up list of questions. About five minutes into the thing, she reached over and took this list out of my hand. She proceeded to answer every question on the list in about a minute, with one and two word answers. I could feel the flop sweat starting to break out on my forehead and thought I might pass out. I didn't. Instead, I had to on the spot dig a little deeper and ask the question beyond the questions she had already tossed off. It wasn't particularly fun, but it was a good learning experience. The lessons I learned were

  1) always be prepared to do the interview without your notes if necessary,

  2) listen carefully to what the guest says and see what follow up questions are natural extensions of what they are saying, and

  3) hold your notes out of reach of the interviewee

  The interview collected here is not that one. This is the second one I did with her, around the time of Drawing Blood. It was conducted in the lobby of the Westin Peachtree with a handheld cassette deck. We were sitting at adjacent couches and I moved the mike back and forth between us. Unless my memory is foggy, this is the first location interview I did. Up to this point, there were either in the studio or over the phone. I would go on to do many others later. This was my first learning experience of how damn tired your arm gets when you hold it out at an angle for half an hour. Later I discovered the arcane art of propping elbows on things—for this one I toughed it out and ached for hours afterward. There are tradeoffs on these location interviews. One downer is the lack of control over the environment. At any moment, business guys could and did come by talking about the quarter's sales figures. On the other hand, they always sound less dry than interviews in a sound-proofed room. I like a little ambient noise. In this one, the lounge piano kicks into a really enthusiastic version of Phil Collins’ “In the Air Tonight” as we wind it up, which always makes me smile when I hear it. It ties the whole thing to a specific sensory detail. That's what good fiction does so why should real life be any different? Perhaps it was just the difference in my comfort level, but I think this is a much better interview than the first. I did like being able to talk to Poppy about Tom Waits and comic books and the Athens ban
d 5-8 (whom I saw play later that night, in fact.)

  I lost touch with Poppy shortly after this interview, and never contacted her again until getting permission to include it in this book. I thought about trying to arrange another interview around the time of Exquisite Corpse but I didn't. Sometimes it goes that way. Still, I never sit down to an interview without thinking about the three lessons. I owe her.

  Poppy Z. Brite

  This interview was recorded in the lobby of the Westin Peachtree hotel in Atlanta during October 1993.

  DS: You are on the publicity tour for your new book Drawing Blood...

  PZB: And also for the paperback of Lost Souls, which has just been released. I'm signing and reading from the book with author Melanie Tem, who is publicizing her new book Making Love, co-written with Nancy Holder. We'll be in 13 cities in 11 days and we'll be at the World Fantasy Convention. We'll be on TV in Toronto, and then we go home.

  DS: Kind of a whirlwind tour, then. This is your second signing today, isn't it?

  PZB: Yes, I've done three signings in the last 24 hours. I had one in New Orleans before I left town, and that went great, and then I signed in Columbus and here in Atlanta today. All of those except New Orleans were with Melanie and they've all been really good. I'm impressed so far. Tomorrow we sign in Athens, Georgia and then we fly to the west coast.

  DS: The next tour, you'll have to make sure they don't book y'all into toilets like this one. [laughs]

  PZB: [sarcastically] Yeah, this hotel is pretty awful. I've been here before and hoped I'd never have to come back. I didn't know it was the tallest hotel in America until I was reading some of the PR up in my room. It turns out it is.