Looking underneath the skin

By Ranga Chandrarathne

A word is not a crystal, transparent and unchanged; it is the skin of a living thought and may vary greatly in colour and content according to the circumstances and time in which it is used. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

In these final segments of the interview, American postmodern writer Pablo D Stair explores letters beyond the skin of diverse genres. Literary genres are diverse and different and there are fictions where diverse literary genres are fused together with a thread of narrative which is essentially demanded by the plot. That thread which fuses diverse literary genres may be literary techniques or mode of narrative. What is important, however, is to look underneath the skin to taste the fruit of literature.

In this exclusive interview to Montage, American author Pablo D’ Stair discuses diverse author, literary genres and his encounter with their distinctly different creations.

Qustion :Veering very much away from the tones and moods that a work like Sanitarium Mel Bosworth’s Grease Stains, Kismet, and Maternal Wisdom sets a different context of emotions altogether. What is the response and reader base like when it comes to these sort of works?

Answer: Everyone loves Bosworth—haha! But rightfully so. Interesting textual history of this book is that it was published elsewhere, but for some reason dropped, then I (within a week) swooped in to put it back out. To my surprise, a little.

I read the published copy from the other press, and early into it found the meta-literary aspect of it something that made me cautious (straight up meta-literary work is usually not my cup of tea) but the earnestness, the unself-consciousness, was a knockout.

But, other than bland praise, I think what Bosworth somehow did with the novel was to write something more revealing than he meant it to be—I know that sounds ethereal, but it’s the quality that I responded to. Every page has a sense of unabashed, even embarrassing—almost pointless—revelation of self, often through prose bordering on the absurd, but there is something to the voice that seems like it doesn’t know how transparent it is. It’s alluring.

And it’s not like other stuff in the Indie scene, doesn’t seem to be at all concerned with normal trajectories, so I find it hard to answer about the reader base of “these sorts of works”. There’s a high water mark when a work is not any “sort of work”—not everything aims not to be, for example something genre based but very literary knows it will still have a genre-based audience, in some measure solicited it—and Bosworth’s little book hits that.

I’d say a lot of things in the Scene want to hit that, want to be aloft, unfettered, but they don’t get there, they fumble and/or get bogged down on the weight of their self-consciousness.

I’m not looking to slag off other works, in particular, so I won’t, but Grease Stains is a rare little beauty, it’s something there’s no need to talk about afterwards, just one of those books you close, are glad you read, you move on with things (people do write long gushes about it, but I think these are more residues of the novel than anything it matters to pay attention to).

Jesus, look at that, bring up Bosworth and nothing controversial or combative from me. What to make of that?

Q: Our Machinery by Thais Miller is futuristic horror. I suppose I am right to suggest it as such. We do not yet have any writers in Sri Lanka writing in English who have developed novels of that nature. Compared to a work of Sult or Bosworth how do you view this novel in terms of its content and the readers it envisions?

A: In many ways—good ways—Miller’s work is the polar opposite of Sult (and kind of off to the side of Bosworth). Yes, dystopian, sci-fi based horror (intellectual horror, idea horror)—but while Sult almost disdains audience (almost) and certainly writes against it, Miller’s is a novel with an obvious and openly shared core morality, a subtext built of actual hopes of engaging with readers.

That is, hers is not a novel exploring the intricacies of genre for the art’s sake and that alone and it is not one that introduces almost nihilistic scenario for their own sake—Miller actually wants to use genre to make specific statements about tangible contemporary life.

In a lot of ways, it continually shocks me that I published it (in a good way) because it’s so youthful (she was 18 years old when it was written) and built of the youthful tendency to intellectualise solution through fantasia.

More than anything, though, it is an intense character study, made all the more so by the largely second-person narrative style. And this style I think fits what I took to be Miller’s desire for an extremely, immediately participatory audience, an audience she seems to hope would not treat her abstractions as abstractions but more as a call to arms against what literally they see out their windows.

I don’t imagine it’s the sort of book she hoped would find itself traveling around insular, lit-clique circles being talked about on the merits of its prose and all of that, it’s a very serious novel that wants to be taken seriously—and I think, for whatever it amounts to, it certainly has been, in that it was included in the reading curriculum of a major University course, among other things.

Our Machinery is something that doesn’t want to be read by other writers, not other fully formed writers, anyway, not something made into an artifact of the craft—again, interesting to me that I published it, it’s something that wants to be (and probably deserves to me) more than I could ever have given it a chance of being based on my artistic/publishing philosophies.

Q: Miller’s Revenge by Robert Johnson gives the reader insights of prison violence and the culture and life of those who are in a way the society’s ostracized. Surely it is a critique of ‘the system’. How do you view such works in terms of a publisher? What segments of the readerships does it connect with?

A: Robert Johnson is the real thing—literally. His work (unlike mine or typical Indie folk) is based on a lifetime of participation and study of the U.S. Legal and Prison systems—an attorney and professor with more non-fiction credentials than fiction.

I came across him by chance when I published an abbreviated version of the novel is one of my early journals.

Miller’s Revenge is so fascinating to me, because unlike even my own philosophy-centered noir work, his is not only philosophical, but concrete—mine off in the rhetorical ether, more felt than anything.

Largely, Miller’s Revenge is a work of non-fiction (or might as well be). The ins-and-outs of the prison system and how it affects (and fails) the individuals within it (prisoner or not) is not the imaginings or even the impersonal research of an author. What Johnson does is wrap the thin cloth of genre around a bulk of actuality—the denseness, the hopelessness, these are the heart; the somewhat familiar procedural voice, that’s there to make something palatable.

In fact, I think it’s further statement of the novel that this voice is so apparently unbelonging to the content of the novel, that the events that take place do so with little to no connection to the narrator—he is less a detective than a witness, and this is presented blatantly in the fact that he uncovers nothing, but rather has world after world revealed to him.

Nothing, nothing of the action of the book is due to the direct influence of the narrator, nor could it be, nor will it ever be and that is part of the abject and real horror of it—even in reality we can do little but stand witness to the “civilized atrocities” Johnson depicts. It’s a book about removal, about helplessness, about the inverted state of morality and how, for the most part, people can do little but be contented and ignore.

Readership? Christ, I don’t know. I just don’t know. My hope is that it would connect indelibly and alter-ingly to anyone who held it, but I don’t know that I have faith enough in the world to believe that it would—don’t know that I have faith enough in myself, even, to let it do anything but quiet me.

Q: Your publishing company produces non-fiction as well. The Predicate dialogues with authors is one such publication.

How has your publications fostered more literary interaction in the Indie lit scene in US? Do you see such dialoguing, interactions spreading wider to incorporate more readerships and writers from other parts of the world as your activities continue?

A: I would love that.

Predicate is my passion project—sometimes to the point that I kind of wish I’d never done anything but write my own stuff and do predicate. Dialogue—real dialogue, not Q&A sessions, not speaking about X with agenda Y, but just dialogue about and as literature is something I just cannot get enough of.

Funny thing, I’d for some reason figured it was something everyone would be so keen on reading—10 thousand to 50 thousand word conversations between writers…not so much.

But that’s irrelevant—the important thing is that it is there, read or not, likely to be read or not.

And as for expanding to writers/artists from different parts of the world, this would just redouble the pertinent, imperative quality of the thing.

So often, I think art being introduced to the US or from the US goes through artificial filter after artificial filter, oftentimes I wonder if the essence, the core of the artistic voice, the communicative voice is lost, sacrificed to push a particular artifact, a particular work along to people.

There’s something about dialogue about art—which is art in itself—that I think surpasses even the artworks in importance. With Predicate, I try to get a dialogue that cannot have agenda, that is just two minds wrapping around each other, no concern over what is being expressed, a commingling of idea to better understand Idea as abstract.

Q: In terms of expanding beyond national borders, do you think independent publishers could better interact to develop more efficient and impactful schemes of networking that could offer better opportunities to writers who have no stake in the mainstream?

A: Honestly, I think the first step for a writer who does not have a stake (or interest) in the mainstream, who wants to write work without any sort of commoditised consideration tied to it is to find some way to have their work received outside of their home country.

I mean US artistic writers should abandon the US ship and writers from other countries should send their work elsewhere (even to the States, though I’d try everywhere else first).

There is an unavoidable reality of commerce in keeping things local—it’s only natural—but send something elsewhere and it immediately become exactly what it is—no context, no agenda, simply an artwork to be experienced, an expression.

As far as independent publishing goes, I think the very heart of it is in getting away—being truly independent, untethered, placed into a context where none of the immediate surrounding concerns of “one’s hometown”, so to speak, can touch the work, where anything that could have subconsciously influenced the writer (and so the direct/local reader) is effaced by distance and culture, leaving a communicative art that has nothing but Art to get across—nothing socio-political, nothing fad-oriented, nothing topical.

All art should be foreign and art, publishing, literature will never truly be independent until it embraces that intrinsic, necessary “outsiderness” until it truly admits to how miniscule it is and what a vast, vast, vast world it’s a little spec of.

Art should embrace its invisibility, its intangibility and the artist should be more the outsider from their own work than from anything else.