by David Lipsky
STUDENT 1: Done being famous yet?
DAVE: (Blush smile) Two more minutes.
KID FROM BACK, SUDDENLY: I knew him well, Horatio—a man of Infinite Jest …
DAVE: OK, you’re allowed one reference.
Quick chatter about his media appearances. It’s exciting; a piece of their private life—this room and class—has gone suddenly public.
STUDENT 2, FEMALE: I love the way the Trib described your office.
STUDENT 3, FEMALE: Did you wind up, like, next to Dick Vitale and Hillary Clinton?
Dave says he got real nervous on the flights, kept picturing grave etc., from tour.
STUDENT 4: Just put pepperoni and mushrooms on my Tombstone. (A take-out, grocery pizza sort of joke.)
DAVE: The words “pop quiz” is what’s good about that.
They talk about his magazine photos. Dave blushes more.
DAVE: I didn’t think, I didn’t think—you can see my smiling maw. I thought, “Really? Is that me?”
Dave fishes out a Styrofoam cup after pawing through two wastebaskets, for someplace to put his chewing tobacco. Is also drinking a Diet Pepsi.
Class begins with a jump from celebrity into the supernormal, the administrative.
DAVE: Office hours next week. Bring light reading material, if you have to wait in the hallway.
Begins work on student stories.
DAVE: (Offering Very Sensible advice. Lots of jobs for fiction, you have to keep track of twelve different things—characters, plot, sound, speed.) But the job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.
He paces around the classroom. Happy, energetic. At one point, thinking, he even drops into a quick knee bend. Class laughs; they really like him.
DAVE: I know—I get real excited, and now I’m squatting.
First story: by pretty student with a Rosanna Arquette mouth. Dave on story, always using TV: “I submit, it’s kinda like a Sam and Diane thing. Or When Harry Met Sally.”
Classroom fluorescents flicker on and off, quiet flashes. Dave glances up.
Another story he likes: it’s very open, but needs to be controlled. “This is just a head kinda vomiting at us …”
Less likable story: “This is just a campus romance story. And to the average civilian, I’ve gotta tell you, this is not that interesting …”
Now at desk. Craning up and down when discussion and story get him excited.
The student being workshopped is a punkish guy: mohawk, silver-and-yellow collar.
DAVE: It’s really hard to create a narrator who’s alive. Take it from me.
STUDENTS: How?
Dave’s advice is a kind of comedy, and makes them laugh.
DAVE: To have the narrator be funny and smart, have him say funny, smart things some of the time.
He makes a flub, says quickly, “Brain fart.”
He stops for a second. Holds steady. “Excuse me, I’m about to burp.”
His delivery is darting and graceful: the Astaire quality of good teaching.
On the campus romance story. “The great dread of creative writing professors: ‘Their eyes met over the keg …’”
The key to writing is learning to differentiate private interest from public entertainment. One aid is, you’re supposed to get less self-interested as you age. But, “I think I am more self-absorbed at thirty-four than twenty-three. Because if it’s interesting to me, I automatically imagine it’s interesting to you. I could spend a half hour telling you about my trip to the store, but that might not be as interesting to you as it is to me.”
Reminds the class, as it breaks. Notebooks closing, bookbags rising from floor to desktop. Ruckle noises, kids standing. The week’s two lessons.
DAVE: Never—don’t go there: “Their eyes met across the keg …” And “What’s interesting to me may not be to you.”
Still in good, buzzed-up mood after. Brings me a water to drink.
DAVE: Where would you be without me?
I hope it’s not that same tobacco-Styrofoam cup.
• • •
ISU HALLWAY
TALKING TO COLLEAGUES AFTER CLASS
“Was it a success?” [Colleagues ask about Infinite Jest tour.]
No vegetables were thrown, so I consider it a success.
I just made enough money to live off it for a couple of years, so that’s good.
• • •
WE HEAD FOR CAR
I’m always going back and fucking with stuff. [Wrote two full novel drafts longhand] I did the last draft of the book on a computer, just because I needed it for the notes, I needed to be able to switch back and forth.
• • •
DINNER
MONICAL’S PIZZA
BLOOMINGTON
You can smoke in here? I can see the ashtrays. [The restaurant soundtrack, right now: Huey Lewis, “Heart of Rock n’ Roll.” Dave: “‘I Want a New Drug’ was more or less an anthem for me in the 1980s.”]
I think towns under like a hundred thousand are the only places you can smoke anymore.
I wrote Broom of the System when I was very young. I mean, the first draft of that was my college thesis. There are parts of it that I think are good. But it’s—I wince. Even at signings, when people bring it up to sign. I think that, “if it wasn’t for that brief, It’s-trendy-to-be-young thing …” You’re probably a little too young to have benefited from it, ’cause that was really like the mid-’80s.
The paperbacks?
And they did just enough hardcovers that they could say …
Post Jay McInerney.
Yeah … It seems to me rather an odd thing to bring out again, that—because it was a totally different kind of fiction.
Nice to watch you blossom from what was initially a marketing thing.
Yeah. Nice.
You’re the most talked-about writer in the country.
[Embarrassing to hear myself talk that way.]
There’s an important distinction between—I’ve actually gotten a lot saner about this. Some of this stuff is nice. But I also realize this is a big, difficult book. Whether the book is really any good, nobody’s gonna know for a couple of years. So a lot of this stuff, it’s nice, I would like to get laid out of it a couple of times, which has not in fact happened.
I didn’t get laid on this tour. The thing about fame is interesting, although I would have liked to get laid on the tour and I did not.
Rock stars, sports stars do; I don’t think Updike, Roth, or Barth do.
Only in Rolling Stone would I not worry about this. Just because I know that, the whole thing’s going to be jaunty. But um, there’s gotta be some—because it’s clear that, like, people come up, they kinda slither up during readings or whatever. But it seems like, what I want is not to have to take any action. I don’t want to have to say, “Would you like to come back to the hotel?” I want them to say, “I am coming back to the hotel. Where is your hotel?” None of ’em do that.
Happens to Aerosmith. But maybe not to Abba Eban.
Shyness and arrogance often go hand in hand, I think. It’s more just, I can’t stand to look like I’m actively trading on this sexually. Even though of course that’s—I would be happy to do that.
Betrayal of your work self to do that?
Uhhhh, Let’s see …
Did you think this would happen?
No, but I had this fantasy. I had all these fantasies about … It’s so weird, ’cause most of the fame stuff dudn’t matter to me. But I really did think, “Maybe I could get laid on this tour.” Um, yeah. It would be a betrayal of the work self and you’re right. In retrospect, it was lucky that I didn’t. Basically, it just would have made me be lonely. Because it wouldn’t have had anything to do with me, it would have just been … [That word, “lonely,” which he’ll use a lot]
Except if they’re responding to your work, and the work is so personal, a kind of refined you, then trading on it is
actually simply another way of meeting you …
Well, I agree with that too. I think this piece will be really good if it’s mostly you. You talk all you want, man. You can’t get me in trouble.
I think I’m the worst interviewer of all time. How do you learn to do this stuff? Because even I, I can clearly see there are certain strategies.
Not really. My strategy here is getting facts about you. Your tour: two weeks? Three weeks?
The funny thing is, of course, I saw on the schedule, “You will have this escort. Who will pick you up.” And of course, when I hear escort, I think, I imagine like a geisha. Who will take you to the interview, then walk on your back and fuck your eyeballs out. And of course these escorts turn out to be burly Irishmen. You know, in their forties. Who like basically tell you the whole life story of the interviewer before you go there. So the whole thing is a little amusing.
I had two, both of them over fifty. There’s a lady in Boston who I sort of wanted to adopt me. Very cool. Boston born and bred. You have to click that little thing up. [I’m having a rough time with the lighter.] Nice to meet someone else who has trouble with those.
So what’s the piece about? You keep saying, “This isn’t what the piece is about.” What is the piece about? What does Jann want?
[Very aware of this, of trying to understand and shift how I will approach him. Like his feints about tour sex above; like the chess, seeing how I respond, move by move.]
What’s it like to suddenly—you remember that Childe Harold line from Byron? “Woke up to find myself famous”?
Is that true? Yeah. Except the pub date was two and a half weeks ago. The book takes at least two months to read well. So therefore, whatever famousness is about, the hype is famous. You’re not here because of me, you’re here because of all this buzz about the book. I mean, you as an emissary of Rolling Stone. So I think I would be very naïve to feel any kind of Byron-like gratification—if two years from now, I’ve got people who like have read the thing three times, who come up and say, “This thing’s really fucking good,” then I’ll swell up. I would like to get laid offa this. The shallow stuff. I would like to get laid off it. It doesn’t (“dudn’t”) seem to be happening. Which just indicates to me that, you know, it’s not really all that real.
[He has sized me up as a guy who likes “laying”: shy, quick smile at finding this explanation to hide behind, further hiding it behind cigarette.
I now know he did this sort of thing as his approach, and I can see it here, his trying to guess what people wanted, what I wanted. That’s who he is too: trying to read people. To be left alone, to nudge them away on the trip back through the living room, from work room to private room.]
What about money?
The stuff I said to you while we were playing chess? I got no problem making money. I went through this time in my twenties of feeling, feeling a pressure and expectation far in excess of anything the real world could place on you. Taking money for something up front brings that pressure back. And I don’t want it. There’s a real—I really enjoy a sense of play when I’m doin’ it. And um, the nice thing about teaching is that, I feel like teaching is my livelihood. And this I do—and it’s found money if I get any money for it.
And that’s not ’cause I’m this great guy, who thinks money is the root of all evil. It’s just: I’m now thirty-four. And I’ve discovered there are mind-sets that cause me incredible pain, and there are mind-sets that cause me less pain. And I just, um, it may be true that I could get a lot of money if I took an advance now. And I will eat my liver out, if it turns out that this was the chance to do it, and I’m now gonna miss it. But if I do it, I am buying myself a pack of trouble. That I just—and that pain, that pain, I fear that pain more than I want the money. And that’s why I’m not gonna take an advance.
[Here’s how I will come to think of this: he voyaged out, trying to protect himself, to become what was necessary short-term, to get his aim long-term, which was not to be affected. And it’s the motor, tension, and reward in his work: the not-being-affected, not being sootily touched. It’s the sensitive-person story, though to play it now you have to be willing to show a little dirty, a little porny (“I would like to get laid offa this”) side too. The whole thing about trying to regulate himself, to produce a temporary self he could be comfortable and function in. Very squeezed parameters, somehow.]
Still: there’s foreign sales, different markets, etc.
Foreign sales: I think I got $2,000 for Girl in Japanese.
It’ll be very different in this case. Don’t play innocent with me.
I play a certain number of games. I will not play faux innocent with you, and I’m not. The stuff that I do, um, I’m used to, um, not making a whole lot of money on. If I make a whole lot of money on the foreign sales of this, I’ll be pleased. Nobody’s given me that indication yet.
Film sale? Probably unfilmable …
Which maybe will make it rather easier to take money for it. Knowing that I will never have to see the artifact itself. Unless it’s like one of these forty-eight-hour Warholian, bring-a-catheter-to-the-theater experimental things. But of course you wouldn’t get any money for that, either. No, I would take that money and run for the hills. Because no, that dudn’t cost me anything inside.
[A reformed person: trained himself out of most standard hungers. As it turns out, the film rights are sold about six months later.]
Agent—Bonnie—will want you to: Cooler heads will prevail.
It’ll be interesting to see whether you’re right or not. I’m not gonna sit here and say—you’re trying to goad me into some vow, “I will never ever ever ever.” And then I’ll look like a dick if I do. But I would be pretty surprised.
[This remains chess: as if I’m trying to trick him into castling prematurely.]
I’m not trying to goad you into anything …
If they said, “Here’s this advance, you now have the rest of the your life, we don’t care if we ever get this book,” I would take it. I’m not gonna take it on a deadline.
But if?
We’ll see.
Five years?
We’ll see.
NPR: On the show, you said you saw yourself as “A combination of being incredibly shy, and being an egomaniac, too”?
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.