by David Lipsky
What I would love to do is a profile of one of you guys who’s doin’ a profile of me. It would be way too pomo and cute, to do. But it would be very interesting. It would be the way for me to get some of the control back. Because if you wanted—within the parameters of, you can’t tell outright lies that I’ll then deny to the fact checker. But if you wanted, I mean, you’re gonna be able to shape this essentially how you want. And that to me is extremely disturbing. Because I want to be able to try and shape and manage the impression of me that’s coming across. And it might be why writers are such shitty interviews.
Really?
Or I bet they’re often incredibly upset when the thing comes out. Like Streitfeld thought I would never be his friend after the thing came out in Details. [The writer David Streitfeld]
What’s the profit then?
I’ll tell you exactly what the profit is. Little, Brown took an enormous chance doing the book. And I’m grateful, and I genuinely like Michael Pietsch, and I want the book to do well for them. I also—I’m not the Saint of Bloomington. [A phrase I used on phone; he’s remembered it.] I want them to buy my next thing. So I want, I’m playing this delicate game of, “I don’t want to be an asshole, but I also don’t give myself away.” There have been two or three things they asked me, that I just thought would be bad for me to do. And I said no to those—but bring me somethin’ else that I’ll do, that’s like borderline.
Because this—you’re not a bad guy. But this stuff is real bad for me, it makes me self-conscious. The more exposure I as a person get, the more it hurts me as a writer. But I said yes to this, so that I could in good conscience say no to a couple other things that are just way more toxic. And that’s what I get out of it. And after this, I don’t think there’s gonna be much more of this.
Why do you think of it as a kind of toxic self-consciousness—
If I could get laid out of it. If one Rolling Stone reader …
I’m sure you’ll get letters.
They’ll take seventy pictures, and a Details shot’ll come out. You’re a good-looking guy. We should have ’em photograph you, and then say you’re me. I’ll end up getting laid, you’ll end up …
[Courting me again]
There’s just been a whole bunch, and most of ’em have just been atrocious. I think. Or maybe I really look like that. That’s the nice thing. I can go to my friends around here, and I could go, “I don’t really look like that, do I?” And they’ll go, “No.” Now, whether it’s true or not …?
But the self-consciousness is helpful to you too?
It’s like everything else: It’s real good up to a certain point. But there’s this—here I am, the Dave who’s been in Rolling Stone. Now I’m learning how to write short stories—“Oh no: Are these short stories of the level of somebody who was just featured in Rolling Stone?” [This is what happened in the late ’80s: his panic.] That kind of—there’s good self-consciousness. And then there’s this toxic, paralyzing, raped-by-psychic-Bedouins self-consciousness.
Those things go away; like worries about where I am now, who I am now, whether my girlfriend last year was better for me, so was I maybe writing better then? Did those figures in my landscape help me orient myself better, organize my life better? It goes away.
But this is a rather stronger and more dangerous kind of self-consciousness. But you’re right, my brain does work that way, and I, it’s in my interest to eliminate as many possible avenues of it. And you can see, I mean, I’m not a reclusive writer, I’m not saying no to this, I’m just trying to be careful about it. And my nightmare is, I’ll get to really like it. And I’ll be one of these hideous: “Hey, yet another publication party, and here’s Dave sticking his head into the picture.” I’d rather be dead. I’d rather be dead. I just—because I don’t want to be seen that way.
Why?
Because I think that’s—well, would you want to be seen that way? Say how you’d feel about it, as a springboard. So that I’ve got a context to talk about it.
Then you’re deriving your satisfaction from talking about your work, by acting like a writer, as opposed to by writing, so paradoxically you’d probably get less done.
Yes. That’s real good. And there’s nothing more grotesque than somebody who’s going around, “I’m a writer, I’m a writer, I’m a writer.” It’s a very fine line. I don’t mind appearing in Rolling Stone, but I don’t want to appear in Rolling Stone as somebody who wants to be in Rolling Stone.
It’s the whole pomo dance, that whole kind of thing. So my worry—I don’t really have that much integrity. Because what I’m really worried is, looking like the sort of person who would appear at these parties. Now, the difference between that, and sort of being the person who doesn’t want them is unclear to me.
But I do know that to the extent that like, that I derive my self and satisfaction from the work, rather than whether Mr. Lipsky’s gonna come, and think what I have to say is important, is just—I’m gonna write better, I’m gonna be happier, I’m gonna be saner. You know what I mean? So like, why climb into the arena with this bull? Well. It’s good for Little, Brown, I owe Little, Brown something, so.
And there’s a little part of me, of course, that likes this. But that little part of me does not get to steer.
That little part can turn pretty ravenous though?
That’s my big fear. If you see me like you know as a guest on a game show in the next couple of years, we will know.
[Waitress comes: Heavy tray, big Midwestern spread.] “Four slices of sausage, one cheese, two salads, dipping sauce, and six breadsticks. Also cookies. And two Diet Cokes. When you all want your cookies, just come up and yell at me. OK?”
Good heavens. Could we have a larger table, also, please? I’m just kidding.
A friend of mine and I had this joke, that various things are pomo-erotic.
That part of the brain can prove to be ravenous?
You’ve had experience with it?
No. But I know it can be.
You know what I’m talking about. At one point you were in grad school, one of the many hopefuls, and now you’ve had a couple of books published, and it awakens that part of you. And you can’t kill that part of you. But you can reach some sort of détente with it. Where you, where it doesn’t run you. And I’ve seen people that I think it runs, and it’s just, it eats you alive. Who would want to be that way?
But many less-talented people than you get lots of attention. Which can be a little painful. Now you’re getting it, and you’re very good and you deserve it. This is an example of the system working.
I’m not sure I—I don’t think, I don’t think I’ve had that thought in the last few years. I mean, I’ve got my weird neuroses. Like I’m totally—I had this huge inferiority complex where William Vollmann’s concerned. Because he and I’s first books came out at the same time. And I even once read a Madison Smartt Bell essay, where he used me, and my “slender output,” and the inferiority of it, to talk about, you know, how great Vollmann is. And so I go around, “Oh no, Vollmann’s had another one out, now he’s got like five to my one.” I go around with that stuff. But I think, I’m trying to think of any example that …
Bell himself is an outpourer.
I think just: I haven’t read a lot of the new stuff that’s come out over the last few years. Like Steve Erickson, and Tours of the Black Clock—it’s really fucking good. I thought Bret Ellis’s first book, I thought it was very, very powerful. American Psycho—I thought he was really ill-served by his agent and publisher even letting him publish it, and those are the only two things of his that I read. But that’s, I think this is another danger: you get lavishly rewarded for that first book, and it’s gonna be very difficult for him ever to do anything else. I mean there’s gonna be part of you that just wants to do that over and over and over again, so you continue to get the food pellets of praise. It’s one more way that all this stuff is toxic.
Same risk for you?
Sure.
Because whatever I do, the next thing will be very different from this. And if it gets reamed, then I’ll think: “Oh no. Maybe Infinite Jest II.” In which case, somebody needs to come and just put a bullet in my head. To be merciful.
David Leavitt noose quote: Reviewers will use my first book as a noose to hang my second.
I think it often is. Although the nice thing about having written an essentially shitty first book is that I’m exempt from that problem. There were a lot of people who really liked Broom of the System, but unfortunately they’re all about eleven.
[He laughs, then a little composing wince.]
Never that grinding feeling of watching someone who’s not talented succeeding?
[I’m trying to give the waitress a tip, which she is in the process of failing to understand and trying to hand back.]
(To waitress) He’s attempting to tip you. Here. He wants to do it. It makes him happy.
(To me) You’re not supposed to tip here, you get them in trouble. Here is this—this may piss you off or strike you as disingenuous. I don’t think I’m all that unusual. I don’t think in terms of “more talented” or “less talented.” There’s a kind of stuff that I vibrate sympathetically with, and a kind of stuff that I don’t. And I’ve seen a couple of books come out, that there was a whole lot of fuss about, I picked ’em up and read ’em. And I mean like literary, I don’t mean shit. You know, where you can see the gears working—and I just thought, “Man, there might be somethin’ here, but I just don’t get it. This is just not my cup of tea.”
And then I really—I think the envy stuff just so burned me, that it’s just, idn’t there anymore.
How did it burn?
All the time that I wasn’t doing any publishable stuff, and I watched other people—you know, like, all of a sudden there was the new brat pack. You know, this lady Donna Tartt came? You know? And I read Secret History. And I thought it was, you know, it was pretty good. But feeling that, “Oh shit, now me and all these guys are displaced. And now there’s just a new crop.” And realizing how disposable, and that terrible … that terrible sense of, “I had something and now I don’t and somebody else has got it instead.” And then it’s just—talk about …
[A cliffhanger; David stops.
The waitress has returned with my tip after all. David retains his thought.]
—just talk about a kind of mind-set that can get ravenous and that can tear you up. And I just—you know, I went through some of that. And I just, it’s weird: I just don’t wanna send any blood supply to that part of my brain anymore. Not because I’m this great person. But I just—then I’m really unhappy and I’m not doing any work.
Plus, the research on this thing. I’m serious, it took me out of the loop. I don’t even know 90 percent of what’s been published. I didn’t even know Jayne Anne Phillips had a new book, like I told you. Until this escort in Chicago told me. I just missed like four years of this. And I’m not sorry not to be part of that world anymore. I just—there’s nothing but envy, and sort of puffery, and all that stuff in it. And it’s not like I’m above it. It’s just that it—the amount that it hurts me, outweighs whatever good feelings it gives me.
Hemingway tapeworm quote: “Literary New York is like a bottle of tapeworms all trying to feed off each other.”
Yeah: Or great white sharks fighting over a bathtub, you know? There’s so little—the amount of celebrity and money we’re talkin’ about is on the scale of like true entertainment so small. And the formidable intellect marshaled by these egos fighting over this small section of the pie, it’s just … yeah, it seems kind of absurd. But I’ll tell ya, I was in New York when the Esquire thing came out. [I think he means the 1987 Literary Cosmos thing: a map, with him on the horizon as one of the “approaching comets.” No, he means one of the book’s few mixed reviews, from Esquire’s literary editor Will Blythe.] And it hit that part of me, that writer-vanity part of me. And I was right in that: It’s like, I wanna go see him, how dare he? All that, like—whereas when I’m here, it’s just more like, “Huh, what an interesting storm, going on outside my window. I’m sure glad I’m inside.”
How long a part of that world?
I don’t know … I went through Tucson. Then I went to Yaddo. I was at Yaddo twice. And I would go to New York, and give these readings, go to these parties. There were some of these writer-guys at Yaddo with me when I was there. And they were like five years older than me, and they were like big superstars, and I was like …
[Jay McInerney, Lorrie Moore, and others]
So you were at Yaddo with some literary heavyweights and you fell into that sort of casino mind-set?
[Turns off tape: He’s careful.]
Sometimes at parties. It was more just, you know, you’re a student, you’re a writing student. You’re young, you are by definition immature. And you have these ideas about why people are in the game, what they want. And most of the ideas degenerate into—devolve into—this idea of how other people are gonna regard you. So you look to these people who are well regarded, and regard them as having made it and all this kind of stuff. And I don’t know if Rolling Stone readers are interested, it’s just—most bright people, something happens in your late twenties, where you realize that this other, that how other people regard you does not have enough calories in it, to keep you from blowing your brains out. That you’ve got to find, make some other détente.
[This is his friend Mark Costello’s vision of what happened to David. Mark was curious, from the beginning, to see how David would make out in the field; he lived this part—the positioning and business politics—this version of the literary life with David. David, starting out, called it the “publishing episcopacy;” a world of bishops and competing dioceses.
His friend Jon Franzen sees a different novel: a David who tried for adulthood and had trouble getting there.
Writers can be especially awful, about measuring each other and about touching fame. There’s a famous New York story about a movie made of a very well-known—Pulitzer Prize, etc.—novelist’s book. Halfway through the shoot, from location, the novelist’s agent receives a call. An assistant answers instead. The novelist immediately says, “You know X?”—insert famous actress’s name here—“I banged her.” Writers eye and measure the celebrity world and don’t know how to deal with the portion that falls to them; because what they’re selling is not their features, physique, or their charm; it’s more personal, it’s their brain, their them, and so they get as anxious about that as a starlet would about nose or waistline. How do I husband this thing that’s earning me praise and money? How do I protect and expand it? And what is it people like about me anyway?]
And I am weak enough, and easily enough plunged into these little worlds, that it’s just real good for me that I’m not part of it anymore.
Easier to say that now, though? With Infinite Jest in magazines and on covers of book reviews? With your readings jammed?
I would like to think you’re wrong. Here’s what I was ready for: I am proud of this book. I worked really hard on it. I was pretty sure that it would fall stillborn from the presses. But that within three or four years—like Girl sells better now than when it first came out. I thought, hopefully it would sell well enough so that at least Little, Brown could think, “All right, we’re eventually gonna get our money back,” so that they would buy my next thing. In all earnestness I say to you, that was my expectation, that’s what I was ready for.
When did counterindications come?
When Vogue and the fashion magazines …
[The tape side runs out.]
… trust the idea of people who read Vogue and Elle and Harper’s Bazaar buying four-and-a-half-pound fairly difficult pieces of work. Y’know, when they said Newsweek wanted to send a photographer, I think I began to get the idea that there was—I thought maybe Little, Brown had just …
My first thought was fear. ’Cause I thought, “Wow, they’ve really kicked up the hype engine. And this means I
’m gonna get smeared. And shittily reviewed, at a much more public level than I would have before.” So it sort of accumulated.
[Simple thing: everyone sees him differently. Bonnie Nadell, his agent, as a sensitive person she was protecting. Franzen, as a friendly rival and fellow whiz who would maybe benefit from a little simultaneous social translation. As long as he persuaded enough people of those different aspects of himself—sort of sending them out on missions—they would protect him on any grounds that needed defense. Done persistently enough, there’d be protection from everything.]
Michael Pietsch’s presentation. He went to his sales force, at their conference, and said, “This is why we publish books.”
I wasn’t there. I know he really liked it. And I know he really read it hard, because he helped me—I mean, that book is partly him. A lot of the cuts are where he convinced me of the cuts. But also, editors and agents jack up their level of effusiveness when they talk with you, to such an extent that it becomes very difficult to read the precise shade of their enthusiasm. What’s being presented for you and what they really feel.
I’m not an idiot. I mean, I knew for them to do this, this long, it really cuts their profit margin, ’cause paper’s so expensive, etc., etc. That they had to really like it. And partly that feels good, and partly makes it feel, I mean, I got fairly lucky. I know this sounds very political. But I think as a house, these guys are—you can find houses where people really love books. And you can find houses where they’ve got a really good hype machine. But to find one that’s got a combination of the two, and that also really happens to like your book?—it seems to me I got fairly lucky.