I can stand in a group at a party, conduct one conversation and listen to three or four others, and pick up not only sentences and thoughts but feelings and character revelations of the people involved in the other conversations. It’s like being an ace spy. Except you didn’t ask to be an ace spy. It just happened. So you live with it and try to make the most of it . . . not to let too many people know that you are this rather questionable person.
I don’t mean that writers can’t suffer as people too. It’s just that this schizo condition permeates their lives. They live and they observe their living, at one and the same time.
JNW: Why?
MATHESON: They have to; no choice. They are writers.
JNW: Are “genre” and “mainstream” writers different? How difficult would it be for a King, a Rick McCammon or Bob Bloch, to write a novel about ordinary people in ordinary circumstances—and find similar success?
MATHESON: I don’t think Stephen King, for instance, would have the least trouble writing a so-called “mainstream” novel. Why should he? He already writes about people, and does it so that the reader is utterly convinced of what is happening. It just so happens that what he wants to convince them is happening is scary and occult. But that is his choice. . . . If he wanted to write a mainstream novel, he would do it just as successfully. Why not? So would Bob Bloch; he’s come close to it many times.
A good writer writes about recognizable human beings undergoing believable circumstances. These writers do that in their work. All that requires change is subject matter. The approach would be the same.
Anyway, the word “mainstream” is a lot of crap. What makes 1984 a mainstream novel rather than a science fiction novel?
Quality? If so, a lot of so-called science fiction novels should be considered mainstream novels. A lot of fantasy novels.
JNW: Agreed, but what of placing the novels? Try this: If King, or Ray Bradbury, or you, wrote a Follet/LeCarre/Buckley/ Ludlum sort of novel—would that be easy to place and for the publisher to promote?
MATHESON: Probably harder—except in the case of Steve King or Ray Bradbury, whose fame has transcended genre qualifications. People would read what they wrote out of interest in their writing. The rest of us would have a harder time. We are “expected” to write a certain way. We chose to write that way in the beginning, and we are happier writing that way. But if we decide we are not happy writing that way, we would have a lot more trouble breaking away from it. From an initial standpoint, that is. If we wrote a classic “mainstream” novel, no one would care what our name was.
JNW: Well, when Richard Christian Matheson began writing, did he naturally move into realms of interest similar to yours? And did you discuss discipline, how hard writing can be?
MATHESON: My son Richard is not as bound by the fantasy genre as I have proven to be. He is not interested in science fiction.
JNW: As you were not.
MATHESON: I wasn’t either but I went into it because my conservative side saw all those sf magazines in the ’50’s and decided it was more feasible to write for them than for fantasy magazines.
Richard’s idea interests are broader than mine. And he has skills I never had. He has an editorial-producer skill which I will never possess. He deals with people better than I do. I have always, essentially, “hidden out.” Richard is right in the hurly-burly of television at the moment and conquering it. (.Editor’s note: The younger Matheson, whose fine short story is part of this volume, is a story editor for television’s The A-Team.) Naturally he has desires to retreat sometimes and “hide out,” like me. But he is more involved than I ever was. More capable of being involved.
As far as discipline, I think he saw how I functioned and decided it was workable. He believes, like me, that the writing counts, not the writer. In a professional sense, of course, not a human sense. He knows that if you write something and it’s good, there will be a kind reception of it. It is important to be a good human being, as well—and Richard is that, absolutely, one of the kindest young men I have ever known and that is not just the father talking. But, in TV, no matter how great a guy you are, unless you “write good,” you don’t last too long—as a writer anyway. And he and his collaborator “write real good!”
And Richard writes good in prose, too. I am very proud of his accomplishments, both human and professional. Every father should be so lucky.
JNW: Do you, sir, think there’s too much emphasis placed on the commercial prospects of a novel or story?
MATHESON: I don’t identify with that kind of thinking. Unfortunately, this may have held me back from more commercial success. I was astounded, some years ago, when my agent sent me a note—it was sent to all his clients—saying, in essence, “Think about that book before you write it. Do you really think it’s a saleable idea?” That was the gist of it.
I hate to think this is justified. But it probably is. I have written a lot of things that got nowhere. But then, I have always gone on the premise of writing what fascinated me at the time. That’s not commercial thinking. And I really don’t write very commercially. I don’t think I could if I tried. Once, I wrote a science fiction story with the market in mind. I managed to sell it but I still sort of cringe inside that I “thought of the
market” first. That cringe makes me an inferior professional, I guess.
But maybe a better writer.
JNW: Richard, Isaac Singer is quoted by Paris Review as saying, “I liked that a story should be a story. That there should be a beginning and an end, and there should be some feeling of what will happen at the end.” Agree?
MATHESON: Of course I agree with Singer. A story has to have a beginning, middle and end. I still have trouble with the two-act form of plays. Which did they eliminate, the middle or the end? Of course, I realize that they combined them into two acts. But why? To avoid two intermissions? It was such an ideal breakdown for a play.
JNW: What advice about full-time writing do you always give a person who has just written a novel or yarn he, or she, considers saleable?
MATHESON: I don’t think you have to give too much advice to someone who has actually written a novel. A story maybe. Just keep writing, that’s the advice. Get better by writing constantly. Keep submitting. Don’t submit and wait. Submit and write something else. Stay with it. If you have talent, you’ll make it. Simple as that. There simply are not that many good writers around. There are openings, believe me.
JNW: Ms. Oates declared, in Paris Review, her agreement with Flaubert’s remark that “we must love one another in our art as the mystics love one another in God. By honoring one another’s creation we honor something that deeply connects us all. and goes beyond us.” Your comment? And isn’t there slight distinction here, since our art is given us by God to discover and nourish?
MATHESON: I think we should compete only with what we can become; our potential. We are not in competition with other writers. At least, we shouldn’t be. We should respect what they are trying to do and hope that they respect what we are trying to do. And, certainly, I believe that creativity is more than a cellular emission from the right side of the brain. Very often, we are conduits for ideas that seem beyond us. Of course, there’s the subconscious and everything we have read and been exposed to, all our lives. So who knows where it all comes from?
But, ultimately, thought itself comes from some power beyond; I believe that. And since thought is rather essential for writing, I guess our “art” is given to us. How well we take care of what we have been given is up to us.
Richard Matheson—His Personal Views and Values
JNW: You took care of your gift beautifully, in the writing of What Dreams May Come, I think; it’s my favorite Matheson novel, possibly because of my Meddling Concerns. And you said in Twilight Zone that a friend has sought financing for a film version; correct?
MATHESON: What Dreams May Come will be filmed, with Stephen Deutsch as its producer and me as its script writer. It will be made by 20th Century Fo
x. When this will happen exactly, I know not . . .
JNW: I felt that novel was a personal religious statement, seriously delineated. Is it ever hard these days to recover the beliefs you so beautifully expressed?
MATHESON: . . . The views in WDMC are personal ones. I could never have completed the book otherwise. Even so, there were a number of times when I stopped and said to myself: “Forget it, no one is interested.” I actually put it aside and started on another project. But I couldn’t leave it unfinished, so I went back . . . I’m glad I did. As I have said, it is the most valuable thing I’ve written (to me) because it moved people and gave them comfort.
JNW: I remembered and referred to it when my father Lynn died a few years later.
MATHESON: Good, Jerry, I hope it helped. As to your previous question, though, I have no problem in recovering the conviction. The problem—if it is one—is that, as one goes on reading and thinking, the views alter. But the basic belief is unshakable. I am sure we survive death in some personal form. What the exact nature of that survival is, I am no longer as sure about. The (circumstances or events of the) moment of death seems pretty well established by eons of similar reports. What happens afterward is something else again. I may have over-simplified, in my novel. On the other hand, I did call it What Dreams May Come—and if it turns out that survival after death is just that—an individual dream after physical death, said dream ending when the next incarnation commences—what differences does it make?
JNW: What, indeed?
MATHESON: Dreams seem totally real to us when they are taking place. The survival experience would seem just as real even if it were only a dream. And, being a dream, it would, of course, vary from person to person. But the basic conviction is set in my mind. We came from some higher place, and, via incarnational steps, are trying to get back to that place. Or maybe most of us are not trying, that may be the problem on Earth. But we should try. It’s a return trip worth taking—and, I believe, an inevitable one.
JNW: Don’t some of your views, integrated, less fully-formed than they became, show up at times in your yarns and TZ scripts?
MATHESON: I’m sure that traces of all these existing or impending beliefs show up in my work through the years. Certainly the notion that there is more going on around us than nuts-and-bolts reality is a constant in my work. How each Twilight Zone I wrote reveals these things and to what extent, I don’t know . . .
I have had a number of essays written about the psychological background of my work. “Paranoia” seems to be a favorite word. Daniel Riche, in an essay in a French collection of my stories, started by saying, “The key word is anxiety.” This was probably more true then than it is now though I am not without anxieties to this day. The odd thing is that I have this schizophrenic type of philosophy.
JNW: In what way?
MATHESON: Regarding my overall view of the universe, the meaning of life, etc., I have a belief system which, for me, anyway, is comforting and keeps my mind at peace. About the world we live in (however), the anxieties remain. To bring it down to its simplest level, I am not afraid of dying but I don’t want that death to be painful or lingering or anything that would make it less than agreeable. Just this morning, I told my father-in-law that my choice would be to die in my sleep at the age of 85. I’m sure it is a wish that everyone would have if they thought about it. Conditions that prevail in the world make this possibility somewhat less than certain. Even young people—even children, for God’s sake!—do not foresee long, comfortable lives for themselves anymore. That is one of the deepest horrors of our time.
JNW: I’ve thought for quite awhile that “afterdeath” is both a nagging question and passion-laden, ongoing curiosity to many writers of fantasy and the occult. Yet it is rarely faced directly. Richard, is this because of timidity; childhood awe; respect; fear? What?
MATHESON: The Bible—I suppose, Jesus—said that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. Seems perfectly true. Even at funerals, people avoid the topic. They turn themselves off. Why? Simple. They are afraid of thinking about it. Mortality is frightening to them. Even religions confront it only in the vaguest terms. Most people do not confront it at all. Except occasionally, when a book like Dr. Moody’s comes out and becomes a best seller for a little while. It’s always there, though. Check the National Enquirer and the other tabloids; New Evidence That Proves We Survive Death! is a headline (seen weekly) on the check-out lines of your neighborhood supermarket. Everyone wants to believe it. And, interestingly enough, a poll by Gallup Jr. proves that about 70% of the population state that they do believe it. I hope that’s true. I suspect that a lot of their belief is wishful thinking.
Stephen Deutsch, my producer and friend, and 20th Century Fox—and I, of course—are hopeful that we can do something to disseminate a little positive thinking on the subject through the filming of my novel.
JNW: But I sense embarrassment in many people when death, or an afterlife, is broached—do you?
MATHESON: Writers, by and large, want to feel as though they are the sophisticates of the thinking world, the true intellectuals—and in a very real way, they are. But that means you don’t stick out your neck on subjects which might give you a faceful of scorn or a diatribe in the eye; someone looking at you with a smirking smile, and saying, “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
JNW: That happened to me two weeks ago in Chicago when I replied, “Yes, I believe in God.”
MATHESON: Most writers dread this. I don’t dread it anymore. I don’t care. I don’t ever try to convince anyone of anything. No way to do that. I said that every person’s pilgrimage to truth must, eventually, be a personal one. I present my ideas to the public in as entertaining a way as possible; period. I will not then take on a defensive posture and wait to deflect the blows. If you don’t want to see or read what I write, don’t. You’ve got a lot of company.
JNW: But you—and I confess, it’s true for me, as well—consider reports of dying persons in tunnels of light, being retrieved by long-dead kinsmen or religious figures, quite persuasive?
MATHESON: This evidence is the strongest for survival. It doesn’t tell anything about what happens afterward but it certainly indicates a commonality of experience at the point of death and for some little time after. The rub is that these people have to “come back” and tell us about it. The ones who don’t come back could tell us a lot more.
Here again, I don’t care to argue with people who insist that this experience is hallucination, brought on by a number of causes: drugs, fear, re-living the birth experience, etc. I used to carry around some slips of paper on which I had counterarguments to the hallucination theory. I even had it all memorized, once, when I was going to appear on Good Morning, America.
By God, I was primed for that appearance! My mind was alive with information. So I went on the program and a very chatty heart doctor talked so much that, suddenly, our appearance was at an end and I had said about 2% of what was flying around in my skull. I couldn’t believe it. I have gotten over it by now and the heart doctor went on to write a book on the subject, so he’s on our side. But, boy, I had a lot to say that morning, America, and I never said it! Now I am not interested in saying it. Not in the role of torch bearer, anyway.
JNW: The reflective Ms. Oates has suggested that it doesn’t matter greatly “what states of mind or emotion we are in” when we write, if it’s actually transcendental, a “rise out of’ customary moods. I know that holds true for my own work, quite often.
MATHESON: I think it is as simple as this: by constant writing—daily, that is—we keep open a channel to whatever source supplies us with all that stuff that comes out of our pencils or typewriters or processors which we look at afterward and think, “Did I write that?” What that source is, we must leave to discussion. Much of it is subconscious, of course. I think it goes further than that, but that is my personal view—and that of many other writers, too.
However, since this constant effort toward keepi
ng the channels open is what counts, the state of mind in which one begins . . . on any individual day matters not at all, as Ms. Oates states. And, of course, as you have indicated, we are all escape artists. Reality obviously oppresses writers. Otherwise, why do they keep attempting to re-form it? Freud said that. I say it, too!
Did you know that he also said, near the end of his life, that if he had his druthers, he would devote his life to parapsychology?
JNW: No, I didn’t. That’s fascinating. I think that the mightier the mind, the wider the gap in simple apprehensions lesser people automatically achieve—some kind of compensatory blindness.
MATHESON: Jung, of course, was always at least semi-involved in the world of parapsychology and mysticism. (I always preferred Jung.)
JNW: So did I, until recently, when I’ve become aware of Abraham Maslow’s gigantic contributions. Both Maslow and his friend Colin Wilson mention the “peak experience,” when work really flows. Do you have peaks, and valleys?
MATHESON: There are clearly times of the month when things flow faster—and that is not a bad pun, although the Moon may be behind both phenomena. I have noticed, beyond equivocation, that, at times during the month, the words come easy, the ideas come easy. At other times, you work just as hard and dross comes out. We are obviously . . . “tidal” creatures . . . a part of a living entity; what exists around us. Sometimes we are in harmony with it, sometimes not. That is man’s problem, I think, as I have said. Mankind is basically out of harmony with life itself.
JNW: You believed, in 1981, that horror had “played itself out for now.” What about cycles in art?
MATHESON: I find it remarkable—and somewhat distressing—that some “cycles” seem to have died out entirely. The western cycle in films, for instance. The swashbuckler cycle . . . Where did they go? Almost literally, none are made. They were popular forms. (Now) the form of horror films—and horror literature, I suppose—is altering, too. Why this is so, I don’t know. Maybe the true horrors in our world are just too immense for horror fiction to permit us a vicarious escape from the real scary stuff, the chief of which is the ability of man to split atoms at will.
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