January 10, 2003

Today is the day to put down the bubble wrap.

Today, Zulkey.com interviews a bastion of the print and internet literary scene. Intimidating in his credentials and talent, yet genial and surprisingly tall in real life, David Barringer is now touring the e-world to promote his new book The Human Case. May we also mention that he's from Michigan, proving yet again that you can't underestimate the Midwest.

The David Barringer Interview: Just Under Twenty Questions

Your new book, The Human Case, has been garnering rave reviews. It's a book of 29 short stories. Are any of the stories especially near and dear to your heart?
"Dream," "Big Bone Lick," "Belongings," "Caring," "Medicine," "Work," "365 Inspirations," "The Throat." There are others, of course, but the ones I like the most either have some autobiographical element, like it was inspired by my son or daughter, or else try to define some aspect of the experience of being an author/artist/creator, and I don't mean in some lame deconstructionist or metafictional way but in the realm of the day-to-day work of being an individual and creating something beautiful where before there was ugliness.

Is it very different, in terms of format or inspiration, from your previous book, The Leap and Other Mistakes?
When I wrote the stories for The Leap, I was alone. Hence the title, which expresses my ambivalence about what I was doing. I had never heard of online zines, never read Sweet Fancy Moses, Opium Magazine, Dezmin's Archives, McSweeney's (mainly because three of those four didn't exist at the time), and never submitted a story to a literary journal. I had no friends who were fiction writers who lived in the area and hung out in bars or cafés or wherever artist-types lingered in the late '90's. I was writing in the basement of my suburban home, and I guess I wrote The Leap to say hello to a few readers out there, a few fellow writers. I went out and discovered ezines and zines and journals. All the stories I wrote for THC, however, I wrote not-alone. THC is a tidy collection of some of my writing from the past two years, post-The Leap. I made sure, though, not to just dump my ezine writings into a book. 17 of the 29 stories have never been published anywhere else, and I don't plan on trying to publish them. I hate it when you buy a book by an author you like, and there's no new stories. It's all stuff you've already read. So I don't do that.

How did you structure the book? Many of the stories seem to lead quite naturally into one another. For instance, "Today" is about a man who never wins, and it's followed by "Except," a story about many also-ran occasions.
Structuring The Leap, a 300-page book, was easier than structuring THC, a 100-page book, mainly because I was throwing most of what I had written at that time (humor, fiction, experimental shit) into The Leap. I was picking fruit from only one tree, so to speak, so the main task was one of order. But for THC I was picking fruit from five trees. What I didn't pick for THC is ending up in (1) two other chapbooks, (2) another 200-page fiction collection, and (3) a Zip disk (never to be heard from again). I struggled with order in THC, too, under the illusion that a reader reads straight through from first story to last, although I rarely read story collections that way. I browse, flip around. Still, I ordered the stories under the Reading-From-Beginning-to-End fallacy, and so I placed a short intro story in the beginning, then stories I thought might appeal to women ("Big Bone Lick") and men ("The Vampires") (and while you, Claire, might say, "I'm surprised you of all writers, Mr. Barringer, go in for this stereotypical men/women dichotomy," I have to say that, yes, you're right: my mother said she liked "The Vampires" best), and then some short stuff (oh, yeah, if you're a little lost here, I'm still blathering on about what order I put the stories in; if I had this much more to say, I should have written another story for chrissakes, eh?), and then it just kind of rolls on with certain feels, from the apples of traditional stories to the kiwis of prose poems to the mysteriously bright spiny fruits of whatever-it-is-I-think-I'm-doing. By far the oddest story, the one that will give readers the most trouble (or not: they might just sneer and turn the page) is the title story, "The Human Case." But that's good. I liked that title, and I thought it was general enough to encompass the diversity of my styles and subjects. And I thought the story's layered resistance to one meaning (I do know what it's about; it's not a puzzle meant to frustrate, only to please in its complexity) was a proper statement about what I try to do in collections, which is prepare a melting pot of stories and present them to the reader without much pussyfooting around. There's no Branding here, and no apologies to the Marketing folks. I figure if you're an independent writer, you should put your money where your mouth is and try not to homogenize your writing when you put a collection together, you know, avoid picking stories that are all identical in style and subject, etc. Of course, even as I say that, I'm this minute working on a novel-in-stories that is consistent in style and tone and even characters. But fuck it, it's still twisted enough to satisfy me, and that's what counts.

In The Leap, you included a smoldery author photo of yourself on the cover. How did this work, offering your readers a bit of eye candy in addition to your tasty stories?
Two reasons. (1) Money. Only had enough money for one photo. So the author photo became the cover photo, too. (2) The only thing the stories in The Leap have in common is me. So I'm the cover. Would I do it again, you ask? No. Once covered, twice dust-jacketed.

You're a husband and father with articles in several well-known publications and two books under your belt. What else do you have to accomplish?
I'd like to be the first writer to command $50 million a movie. I even climbed up to the roof of my house and wrote myself a personal check for $50 million, which is the amount I'm gonna sue the builder for cuz I slipped on a NEGLIGENTLY nailgunned shingle (you just know the directive to "slap those shingles up there as fast your illegally immigrated hands can slap them, Amigo, even if that means negligent nailgunning" went all the way to the executive office on this one, and that's the deep pocket, Amigo) and fell off the roof and cracked my coccyx and now I have to use voice-recognition software to compose my fiction, and, Claire, be honest, but I tell you, you can really notice a drop-off in the comprehensibility of my fiction post-negligent-shingle-slapping-proximately-causing-roof-fall-shattering-tailbone-necessitating-use-of-goddamn-terrible-voice-misrecognition-software, can't you? I mean, I just finished dictating a screenplay whose title the software "recognized" as "Joe Dirt, II: This Spade Is Rusty." I mean, shit, what the hell does that even mean? Anyway, my first movie, it's cash-money time. Bet on it.

You've published a lot in print and a lot on the web. Do you differentiate your writing for the different venues? Or do you believe that your print writing would translate well to the web, and vice versa?
It doesn't help me to ask, "Is this story for web or print?" That doesn't get me anywhere. I focus on what kinds of writing a certain forum publishes. I've been writing long enough for certain rags now that I know which of my recent stories they might like. And at this late date, with literary and academic print journals taking off their elbow-patched corduroy blazers and unbuttoning their plum-colored L.L. Bean cardigan sweaters to stroll, pale and blinking, in the sun of the online landscape, the ultimate destination of a piece of writing is far less important than the number of readers it reaches. If a story is read by 3,000 eager online readers rather than 500 grudging subscribers to a university journal, well, you do the math.

I read on your Wordriot interview that you didn't really have a positive experience trying to find an agent. What happened? How necessary do you think agents are to a burgeoning writer's career?
I think agents are un. That is, unnecessary. I say that under advisement. I just shipped off my first novel to an agent. I'm hopeful, but not deluded. Agents love to get novels that are similar to other novels that made a lot of money. The next Chocolat? The next Fight Club? The next Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay? Hell, yes, they're interested. But many fiction writers, and especially writers of short fiction, do not need or have agents because they haven't written a formula or copycat book, and an original literary work just doesn't earn enough money to spread around. It isn't a question of getting a good contract, either. You can do that work on your own. Read the online advice, buy a guidebook, call the National Writers Union or something. The bigger issues are twofold. (1) Who the hell do you know, Little Unknown Writer? Well, an agent knows people, an agent opens doors, an agent works on your behalf doing all the shit you don't want to do. That's great. BUT. (2) Projected sales. Moolah, Baby. Who is your audience? How big is it? If you've been publishing in magazines for a few years, then you might have an audience, and you're less of a risk. But, in the end, how can you and the agent convince a publisher that the risk of losing money is low and the probability of making money, for everyone concerned, is high enough to justify dumping such-and-such amount of money into marketing and promotion and comping your sorry ass to bookstore readings across the country? Good christ, I have no idea. An agent might know the lullaby a big publisher wants to hear. But if you're sending your work to small publishers, small presses, literary presses, you don't need an agent. Those folks know damn well they'll never make money off you, and they do it anyway, for love of the written word. But then again, while the small fry can afford to be snotty and righteous, they can't afford to publish more than one or two books a year. So good luck.

Your books are available on Amazon. Do you think it's unprofessional to pen positive reviews of your own writing, or just good marketing?
I really don't think at this late stage in American marketing, mass media, and consumerism that there is a speed bump of ethical restraint in anybody's boulevard, do you?

It's not uncommon to be friends with your editors. Would you say it's easier, or more difficult when submitting stories to the editors you know?
Easier. That's the game, isn't? Contacts. Networking. Knowing people. And if you don't consider it "a game," then consider it Life. In Life, you make friends. Friendship is a hazard most folks are willing to risk.

I was awarded the unique opportunity to see you don a long blonde wig and a sparkly t-shirt that says "Naughty" on it. Can you illuminate our readers with the story behind this scene?
I performed one of my humor pieces, "Enlightenment of a Teen Pop Star," at last fall's Motor City shindig hosted by the smart-mouth tykes at Haypenny.com. A friend of mine accompanied on guitar. I wore a big black wig and white robe for the guru questions, during which my buddy plucked enchanting meditative sitar-like chords. I switched to a blond wig and "Naughty" T-shirt while I read the teen-pop-diva responses, during which my buddy triggered the drum machine and twanged some funky pop "Oops, I Did It Again" melody. The funny part was it took time to switch wigs, and the audience kept thinking I was done and so would applaud. Then I'd come back and start reading again and finish to applause. But, again, I wasn't done. And it was taking a long time to switch wigs because it was dark and I was fussing around back there trying to get it just right and when I was done with one part, I turned from the mic and threw the wig down and grabbed the other wig and struggled to find the tag in the back, these wigs had a lot of damn hair, they were kind of expensive, and I'd just bought them that day. The black wig was enormous, it was for some hairy character in Harry Potter, and it came with a beard, which made it really tough to put on and then talk into the microphone because hair kept getting in my mouth and snagging in the microphone and I looked like Slash wearing six French poodles on his head and I didn't have the shit memorized, so I had to try and read off the paper and yet speak in my guru voice or my teen-pop-star voice, both of which definitely wavered as time went on. I should have removed the wig and placed it in a position that would have made it easier for me to find the front and back of it and not fuck around when I needed to switch and put it back on again, except during my fucking around my guitarist friend was playing, and he's darn good (Bill Solomonson, front man for Slew Foot), so everyone enjoyed his playing anyway, and then when I was finally done the applause was good but kind of spent, like I was the insatiable partner in this sexual coupling and they'd got theirs forty minutes ago and I was really taking a long time, and I'm sure they were like, "Finally, shit, I'm sore. Get me a cigarette, will ya?"

What writers influence you most?
Only the dead ones. They remind me to write faster.

What writers annoy you the most, or are most overrated, in your opinion?
Well, you know, what a terrible challenge for a writer to decide whether to answer a question like this. On the one hand, I'm tempted not to enter this fray: biting the hand that feeds you, dissing a fellow struggling artist, shoveling shit over a wall you can't be sure who it's gonna hit, etc. On the other hand, I think, "What kind of false self-serving politesse motivates me here?" I mean, why the hell shouldn't I have a critical opinion? There's too much niceness in the literary world anyway, and crudeness doesn't count as antidote, it's phony, too, because it's ironic or sarcastic, not sincerely meant except as a volley in the P.R. game, the rules of which everyone knows, two of which are: (a) there's no such thing as bad publicity and (b) if something causes a polarity of opinion it must be the work of an innovative genius, so let's buy the Ahead Of His Time and Ahead of Her Time towel set for all our literary lavatories! So what the hay, I'll try to answer. First, as a writer. The answer is they all annoy me. They all annoy me because when I start reading something, I as Mr. Writer can only think, "Shit, this sucks, I feel like writing, that's it, fuck this book, I'm going to write, where's my notebook?" I really have to concentrate lately to achieve some zen-like Buddhist selflessness just to get through an entire book. I check out dozens at a time from the library, but hell if I actually get through them all, I mean, I'm not a masochist, and I don't have that much time to meditate myself into a One-World-of-Oblivion unconscious consciousness before every page-and is it me, Claire, or are so many recent fiction collections so overpackaged that you read the first story, the one that got published in The New Yorker or Harper's or Atlantic Monthly or Zoetrope, and that's it, Claire, I mean, the rest of the pieces are just like that one, and I start to feel sorry for the author, poor kid, cuz you just know he/she had to sit there and take it when the publisher said, "Look, we only want ones like this one, we can't use your other stories, they're too-too, you know, too-too something, they're over there"-tapping on far left side of desk-"and not enough right here"-palming flatly, almost caressing, the middle center of the desk-"you see what I mean, right, I mean you understand the game plan, yes, got the station tuned in, right, I mean, we're playing the same video game, heh heh, aren't we, Sport?" So that's my reaction to the work of other writers from my perspective as I, myself, a writer. Second, as a reader. Well, hell, that's pretty much the same me, ain't it?

Is there any idea for a story that you've had in your head but not been able to translate well into words?
All of them.

Never mind being a writer. Which publications and sites do you most enjoy as a reader?
Harper's, except the fiction, which is just weird or dated, isn't it? I mean, lately it's Oates or Updike or Boyle. It's the Eighties again. Hell, it's the Seventies. The New Yorker, mainly for its international journalism especially with the war and terrorism and Islam and Middle East stuff going on. I skip the New York-centric pieces. I try to be a tolerant reader and read some of those articles, and I know why they're there, I mean, it's The New Yorker, hello, but I just can't summon the stamina to complete a ten-thousand-word profile of some low-level Manhattan culturecrat. Call me Midwestern. I also read The New Republic (didn't renew my subscription recently; only so many trips to the TNR buffet that an intelligent person can stomach), Print Magazine (I do graphic art and layout and steal ideas from this mag), and a bunch of other and sundry publications. Plus, it takes me hours to get through my daily online reading. News, humor, fiction. I try to keep up.

You initially embarked upon a career in law. Have you ever included what you learned in any of your stories? Do you see yourself ever returning to the field in some form?
I do write about lawyers and legal issues now and then. Sometimes I can't help thinking about legal stuff, but I have to say the best part of law school and being a lawyer is it has provided me access to a way of thinking, and that's cliché, you hear that from everyone in law school, but it's true, there is a reasonable way of argumentation, of thinking about a policy or issue or law or even a family disagreement that law school hammered into my head, and I keep this way of thinking in a little box, and I refer to it now and then and sometimes I leave the box open, and you'll notice how sometimes my fictions or essays proceed with ultra-precise language, precision-guided grammar and heat-seeking sentence structure, and that's how you'll know the box is open and, look out, I'm thinking hard here, I'm even a wee bit uptight. But I'm a more tolerant, understanding, even-tempered person because of that lawyerly way of engaging the world, which actually, in its incarnation in me, expresses itself first and foremost as an empathy for others, a restraint of judgment before the facts are in, a not-jumping-to-conclusions before I have a chance to imagine the story from the other person's point of view. And that's a very handy mentality for a writer, any writer.

I have friends who believe that the only way to really make a name for yourself as a writer is to produce a novel. What are your thoughts on this, especially as a writer as a short story writer?
I wrote a novel first, stories later, and I'm working now on a novel-stories hybrid thingie. But your question is about making a name for yourself, which is really about making your name known to others. To make a name for yourself? I say, "Do it, don't wait for anyone else, do your thing." To make your name known to others? I say, "Good luck, Chief Joseph, you will write no more forever because the answer is there's no secret recipe for doing that and you'll drive yourself Crazy Horse trying to find it." I wrote a novel, and an agent told me to write stories. I've written stories, and editors tell me to write a novel. All I really want is to write, to keep writing, and to publish a book now and then. Whether that even requires making one's name known to others is a question that can't be answered, especially by selves who haven't made their own names yet.

Does not bringing his daughter a donut a bad father make?
No less than joining some wacko cult and genetically engineering a donut-daughter hybrid. "Oh, God, it's still dark out. What time is it?" "Time to make the donut-daughter hybrids!"

Did you make any New Year's Resolutions? Do you believe in that? Have you ever kept any?
No. No. Yes. I just started yoga yesterday. Down, Dog!

How does it feel to be the 38th person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Like I waited in line an awfully long time for a half pound of havarti.