Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

by David Lipsky

  Sounds like it. But the indications: some months ago? Four months ago, you were saying?

  November. And then things quieted down—and then, ah, same week the Esquire thing comes out, came out, Harper’s Bazaar came out. And I thought, “Oh fuck: there’s just gonna be all this negative stuff about the hype. Those idiots for handing out those postcards.”

  [For six months prior to publication, Little, Brown had sent postcards alerting reviewers and booksellers to the upcoming novel. A card with no title; then, weeks later, a phrase like “Infinite Writer” or “Infinite Pleasure.” Then they announced, “David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest.”]

  Um, I forgot, I had to go to L.A. to do this thing about a Lynch movie. For Premiere. It’s gonna come out next fall. It’s called Lost Highway, it’s gonna be very cool.

  Lynch had his own trouble with getting famous. Twin Peaks, the Time cover.

  He’d been through a lot before then; he’d been through Dune.

  But when I was out there, I would go back to the hotel, and there’d be like four messages all the time, on the hotel machine, of various people wanting to talk to me.

  And I’d been through—I mean, I’d been through three books. I mean, one of them—like a limited edition. You know, like a $500 advance for. And I’d been through some of this, and I realized that, unless the publishing world had changed drastically, there was some sort of … So I think, I think January, when I was in L.A.

  What’s happened since January?

  [Long pause]

  You know what? I think it’s hard to describe, because—this is not going to satisfy you—it all happened sorta so fast. You know? I talked to Newsweek one week and Time the next, and there are like fifteen different people calling up, wantin’ to do articles. And if they weren’t incredibly obnoxious, I would talk to ’em. And then as you know, the fact checkers would call. And then I was trying to work on this Lynch piece, which was very hard and very long. And so I remember, starting at about mid-January, when I noticed I couldn’t be home very much. ’Cause if I was home, just the phone rang all the time. And I remember feeling kind of excited, but bein’ scared about … because I really thought, I was really ready for this not to be liked.

  I mean—have you read it? It’s reasonably hard. There are things about it that are reasonably hard. I was ready for a lot more perceptions I think like what that lady had, that Michiko Kakutani lady. [Michiko Kakutani, lead reviewer of the daily New York Times.] So I was sort of … guardedly excited, because I felt like this could either be a lot of praise, or it could also be a whole lot more public, you know, burning, basically.

  And then I didn’t read it, but Michael called and said there was a review in … uh. Oh, I met the guy at the party. The man who’s married to McGuane’s daughter. Walter Kirn. And then Charis Conn called me and said, “Walter Kirn doesn’t like anything, and he really liked this.” And then I began to go, wow. I mean, “People seem really to like this.”

  You know what he said?

  I didn’t read it. I mean, I heard. People told me a couple of things that he said, which sounded to me really stupid. (Voice blocked by cigarette) ’Cause if I was on committees, it would so piss me off that …

  [Walter Kirn, New York Magazine, 2/12: “Next year’s book awards have been decided. The plaques and citations can now be put in escrow. … The novel is that colossally disruptive. And that spectacularly good.”]

  Didn’t go out to find it?

  I went and found the Atlantic, because I was scared about Sven [Birkerts]. Look—it’s not like I’m, I’m not some Buddha. It’s just that, I’ve been through reading reviews before. They’re not for me. They always fuck me up. And I’ll read ’em. But I’ve gotta like finish this book of nonfiction for Michael by like the end of April. And when that’s done, I’m gonna go ahead and freak out about this whole thing; I just can’t do it right now.

  How’d it feel, though: “As if the book is a National Book Award winner already”?

  I applauded his taste and discernment. How’s that for a response? What do you want me to say? How would you feel? I can’t describe it; it’s indescribable. You speculate and I’ll describe.

  [Slightly mean/clever smile]

  I’d feel I’d known all along it was OK, and here was someone actually saying what I’d hoped to hear said.

  Except you also know that—you know all along when something’s really good. But there’s the other part, that, “Oh no, this makes absolutely no sense to anybody else—I’m a pretentious fuckwad. People are gonna ridicule me.”

  So it’s sort of like, um … here’s another part. You’ll like this, because this won’t make me look attractive at all. If you’re used to doing heavy-duty literary stuff—we’re talkin’ caviar for the general, that doesn’t sell all that well? Being human animals with egos, we find a way to accommodate that fact of our ego, by the following equation: If it sells really well and gets a lot of attention, it must be shit. It’s just generated by the hype machine.

  Then of course the ultimate irony is: um, if your own thing gets a lot of attention and sells really well, then the very mechanism you’ve used to shore yourself up when your stuff didn’t sell well, is now part of the Darkness Nexus when it does. And I’m still working that through. I’ve still gotta, I’m still worried that, Yeah, the book’s funny, and fairly fun to read. But it’s fun to read partly because I wanted to try to do something that was really hard and avant-garde, but that was fun enough so that it forced the reader to do the work that was required. And I think I’m worried that the fuss [his word throughout] is all about the book’s entertainment value, and that people will buy it on that.

  Buy it for that reason—which is good, because Little, Brown makes money. But then they’ll read 150 pages and get that: “Eeeew. Y’know, this isn’t what I thought at all.” And then not read it. Which, I’ll … Yeah, all right. Avant-garde, or whatever you want to call, like, experimental fiction writers, we don’t write for the money. But we’re not saints. We write to be read. You know what I mean? And the idea of, OK, the book making a lot of money but not getting read, is for me fairly cold comfort. Although I’m certainly not allergic to money. But you know what I mean? So, see me in a year. Y’know, if a year from now—like, if I have a bunch of conversations, like with this guy Silverblatt [Michael Silverblatt, host of NPR’s Bookworm], or with Vince Passaro, or with like David Gates, somebody who clearly read the book closely. Um, and a bunch of people are saying it’s good, then I’m probably gonna start feeling wholeheartedly good about the book. As it is, there’s a kind of creeping feeling of a kind of misunderstanding.

  And an amused … a kind of amused attempt to separate what’s good, what of the fuss has to do with the book, and what of the fuss has to do with the sort of enormous engine, um, started by Little, Brown. But now clearly seems to be humming in and of itself. Y’know, when somebody asked somebody in New York, had they read Martin Amis’s The Information, the person answered, “Well, not personally.” Right? That—you know.

  That’s actually an old joke. My mom heard it about students at Stanford in the ’80s. “Have you read Madame Bovary?” “Well, not personally.” What does it mean to you?

  This machine that has you out here, asking about my reaction to a phenomenon that consists largely of your being out here. Which of course won’t get said in the essay. But, I mean, it’s all very strange.

  I love this song. “Magic Bus.” The Who.

  This is one of the few songs of theirs I like. I never liked the Who very much.

  Literary heavyweights: You and them at Yaddo …

  Yeah, and me feelin’ jealous of them. And feeling like I wanted to be regarded the way they were regarded. And uh … what was our point?

  And now you’re them?

  Yeah. It’s weird, man. I can’t help you out. It doesn’t (“dudn’t”) feel like anything. It makes me glad I’m not twenty-five anymore. I feel a certain irony in—when I was twenty-five, I thi
nk I would’ve given a couple of digits off my non-use hand for this. And now: it’s nice, it’s nice. But I’ll tell you, man, I couldn’t’ve finished the book if I’d wanted this. You know what I mean? I really got into it. I don’t think I’m the most talented person on the planet, but I work really hard, you know? And part of what’s really hard is I work really hard at getting better at stuff, you know? I mean like …

  You became a better stylist?

  I think I work harder now. I think—I don’t know what you were like. I think when I was twenty-two or twenty-three, I pretty much thought every sentence that came off my pen was great. And couldn’t stand the idea that it wasn’t. Because then you’ve disintegrated—you know, you’re either great or you’re terrible. And now I just, I think I’m just—yeah, I know this is gonna sound drippy and PC. I’m just, I’m really into the work now. I mean it’s really—and I feel good about this. Because, you know, we wanna be doing this for forty more years, you know? And so I’ve gotta find some way to enjoy this that doesn’t involve getting eaten by it, so that I’m gonna be able to go do something else. Because bein’ thirty-four, sitting alone in a room with a piece of paper is what’s real to me. This (points at table, tape, me) is nice, but this is not real. Y’know what I mean?

  [Long silence]

  Let’s be aware; we have to get up at about five. I mean I’ll talk to you all you want—I just, if I get four hours of sleep tonight, I’m gonna be in real bad shape tomorrow. I learned that the hard way.

  You’ve talked about both strands: obviously, the first strand, where you know it was really good, won out, or you wouldn’t have finished the book, right?

  No. The way to finish the book is to turn down the volume on the stuff that’s all about how other people react. You know?

  But there’s a certain halfway point where you bottom out on that stuff, and then you become like a stranger brought in by the studio to wrap things up? I’ve always seen it as, you start a project as David Lean, or Francis Coppola, but at a certain point you get yanked and you end up as the Don Bruckheimer or the Sydney Pollack they bring in to finish the picture.

  Uhh … Boy, I don’t know, you realize—

  You become the hired gun …

  I’ve worked on maybe four or five things—some short, some long—that became alive to me halfway through. And this came alive to me halfway through. And I would still hear the, “This is the best thing ever written,” and “This is the worst thing ever written.” But it’s sort of like, you know how in movies there will be a conversation, and then that conversation gets quieter, and a different conversation fades in … I don’t know, there’s some technical word for it. Just, the volume gets turned down. Now there’s been other stuff where the volume hasn’t been turned down, and I have finished it. Just, I was a hack: “God damn it, I’m going to finish this thing.”

  This thing, I got real interested in it. And I got real invested in it. And it’s one reason why the big part of me that’s pleased about all this fuss—other than, Perhaps I’ll get laid in like Akron or something—is that I’m proud of this. In a way that for instance I’m not proud of Broom of the System. Which I think shows some talent, but was in many ways a fuck-off enterprise. It was written very quickly, rewritten sloppily, sound editorial suggestions were met with a seventeen-page letter about literary theory that was really a not-very-interesting way … really a way for me to avoid doing hard work.

  And this I just, I didn’t fuck off on this, you know? I mean, this is absolutely the best I could do between like 1992 and 1995. And I also think though that if everybody’d hated it, I wouldn’t be thrilled, but I don’t think I’d be devastated, either. It’s—and that’s not about being a hack, that’s about that it got, it became alive for me.

  Maybe “hired gun” was too cynical.

  It doesn’t sound cynical to me, but the ways that I would disagree with you I’m worried would sound occult. For me it has much more to do with, I feel like people are talking to me. I feel like this thing, this is a living thing. With whom, with which I have a relationship that needs to be tended. That I feel, not—that I feel un-lonely working on it. Which (mouth full) to be honest, I mean, there’ve been a few things that I’ve felt that way about, that ended up I don’t think being all that good. Or people didn’t like ’em all that much. But, um … I just think that it hurts. I think I have a really low pain threshold. I think the I’ll-show-people, or, People-are-really-gonna-like-this—thinking that way has hurt me so bad. That, um, that when I’m thinkin’ that way, I’m not writing.

  That that’s this thinking in me that’s gotta reach this kind of fever pitch, and then break. And in order for me to even start—not to get in the groove, but to get started—I’ve gotta find some way to turn the volume of that way down. And I think I’m more afraid—it sounds to me like you have a possibly cynical, possibly just very mature acceptance of the inevitability of that, that way of thinking. Whereas my experience has been, I think in certain ways I’m just emotionally kinda delicate, and it’s just devastating to me to think that way. And I’m willing to do enormous work—and enormous emotional and psychological gymnastics—to avoid thinking that way.

  Have you since read the seventeen-page letter about Broom?

  Oh sure. It talks about how the entire book is a conversation between Wittgenstein and Derrida, and presence versus absence. I mean, Gerry [Gerry Howard, Broom’s editor] didn’t want the book to end there. We have a cast of characters who are afraid their names don’t denote, word and referent are united in absence, which means Derrida … you know what? It’s a brilliant little theoretical document, unfortunately it resulted in a shitty and dissatisfying ending, right?

  And in fact it was a very cynical argument, because there was a part of me—this was a year and a half after I wrote it, and I knew that that ending, there was good stuff about it, but it was way too clever. It was all about the head, you know? And Gerry kept saying to me, “Kid, you’ve got no idea.” Like, “We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if you hadn’t created this woman named Lenore who seems halfway appealing and alive.” And I couldn’t hear. I just couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear it. I was in … Dave Land.

  I had four hundred thousand pages of continental philosophy and lit theory in my head. And by God, I was going to use it to prove to him that I was smarter than he was. And so, as a result, for the rest of my life, I will walk around … You know, I will see that book occasionally at signings. And I will realize I was arrogant, and missed a chance to make that book better. And hopefully I won’t do it again. It’s why I will not run lit-crit on my own stuff. And don’t even want to talk about it.

  My tastes in reading lately have been way more realistic, because most experimental stuff is hellaciously unfun to read.

  Because ideas are primary? And then the writing goes bad?

  I’m not sure if it’s poorly written: It requires an amount of work on the part of the reader that’s grotesquely disproportionate to its payoff. And it seems—when I am a reader of that kind of stuff, and I’m talking like heavy-duty experimental stuff, some of which I have to read just because I do various stuff with experimental press. I feel like I am as a reader like a small child, and adults are having a conversation over my head; that this is really a book being written for other writers, theorists, and critics. And that any of that kind of stomach magic of, “God damn, it’s fun to read. I’d rather read right now than eat,” has been totally lost.

  So this was really one of the reasons I’m thrilled about the fuss about the book. Is: in this I wanted to do something that is real experimental and very strange, but it’s also fun. And that was also of course really scary. Because I thought maybe that couldn’t be done—or that it would come off just as a hellacious flop. But I’m sort of proud of it, because I think it was kind of a right-headed and brave thing to do. And I think, I think there’s a reason why a lot of avant-garde stuff gets neglected: I think that a lot of it deserves to be. Same w
ith a lot of poetry. That’s written for other people that write poetry, and not for people that read. I don’t know. That’s kind of a whole rant.

  I agree. Lorrie Moore works for readers, not just writers. Martin Amis …

  But there’s also, there’s ways that experimental and avant-garde stuff can capture and talk about the way the world feels on our nerve endings, in a way that conventional realistic stuff can’t.

  I disagree. I’m a realism fan. You agree?

  It imposes an order and sense and ease of interpretation on experience that’s never there in real life. I’m talking about the stuff, you know, what’s hard or looks structurally strange—or formally weird—I mean some of that stuff can be very cool.

  But Tolstoy’s books come closer to the way life feels than anybody, and those books couldn’t be more conventional.

  Yeah, but life now is completely different than the way it was then. Does your life approach anything like a linear narrative? I’m talking about the way it feels, how our nervous system feels.

  [Long pause]

  You mean like TV life and computer life?

  Some of it has to do with TV and fiction. You watch many videos? MTV videos? Lot of flash cuts in ’em. A lot of shit that looks incongruous but ends up having kind of a dream association with each other. I don’t know about you, but that’s sort of—I mean, Jesus. Um, you flew here. You drove down. Probably while you’re driving down you’re also doing work on another piece. You’re lugging your computer. You come, you talk to me. You and I have our little conversation. Then I need to go do my class and am thinking about that, then you’re thinking about the phone. Then you and I go to the class. God knows what you’re doing in the class. Now we’re here. Now you’re in a good mood ’cause you’ve mailed this thing off, that because of your relationship with these various other webs and commitments—