Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

by David Lipsky

  I mean, it’s more as if—Life seems to strobe on and off for me, and to barrage me with input. And that so much of my job is to impose some sort of order, or make some sort of sense of it. In a way that—maybe I’m very naïve—I imagine Leo getting up in the morning, pulling on his homemade boots, going out to chat with the serfs whom he’s freed [making clear he knows something about the texture and subject], you know. Sitting down in his silent room, overlooking some very well-tended gardens, pulling out his quill, and … in deep tranquility, recollecting emotion.

  And I don’t know about you. I just—stuff that’s like that, I enjoy reading, but it doesn’t feel true at all. I read it as a relief from what’s true. I read it as a relief from the fact that, I received five hundred thousand discrete bits of information today, of which maybe twenty-five are important. And how am I going to sort those out, you know?

  And yet you made a linear narrative, easily, out of both our days, just now. Off the top of your head. I think our brain is structured to make linear narratives, to condense and focus and separate what’s important.

  You, if this is an argument, you will win. This is an argument you will win. [Strange: competition.] I am attempting to describe for you what I mean in response to your, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  What always strikes me is the opposite: the lack of discontinuity, not the lack of continuity.

  Huh. Well you and I just disagree. Maybe the world just feels differently to us. This is all going back to something that isn’t really clear: that avant-garde stuff is hard to read. I’m not defending it, I’m saying that stuff—this is gonna get very abstract—but there’s a certain set of magical stuff that fiction can do for us. There’s maybe thirteen things, of which who even knows which ones we can talk about. But one of them has to do with the sense of, the sense of capturing, capturing what the world feels like to us, in the sort of way that I think that a reader can tell “Another sensibility like mine exists.” Something else feels this way to someone else. So that the reader feels less lonely. [“Lonely” again; interesting.]

  There’s really really shitty avant-garde, that’s coy and hard for its own sake. That I don’t think it’s a big accident that a lot of what, if you look at the history of fiction—sort of, like, if you look at the history of painting after the development of photography—that the history of fiction represents this continuing struggle to allow fiction to continue to do that magical stuff. As the texture, as the cognitive texture, of our lives changes. And as, um, as the different media by which our lives are represented change. And it’s the avant-garde or experimental stuff that has the chance to move the stuff along. And that’s what’s precious about it.

  And the reason why I’m angry at how shitty most of it is, and how much it ignores the reader, is that I think it’s very very very very precious. Because it’s the stuff that’s about what it feels like to live. Instead of being a relief from what it feels like to live.

  [Deep, reverse-belch breath]

  I don’t know about you: My life and my self doesn’t feel like anything like a unified developed character in a linear narrative to me. I may be mentally ill, maybe you’re not. But my guess is, looking at things like MTV videos or new fashions in ads, with more and more flash cuts, or the use of computer metaphors which would only be useful metaphors if the ability to do triage and tree-diagrams resonated with people’s own existence in life. That I think a lot of people feel—not overwhelmed by the amount of stuff they have to do. But overwhelmed by the number of choices they have, and by the number of discrete, different things that come at them. And the number of small … that since they’re part of numerous systems, the number of small insistent tugs on them, from a number of different systems and directions. Whether that’s qualitatively different than the way life was for let’s say our parents or our grandparents, I’m not sure. But I sorta think so. At least in some—in terms of the way it feels on your nerve endings.

  “Information sickness,” as in Ted Mooney’s book.

  Now we’re into DeLillo-ville, right? Where the bigger the system gets, the more interference there is, and all that. I’m not talking about the system, I’m talking about what it feels like to be alive. And how formal and structural stuff in avant-garde things I think can vibrate, can represent on a page, what it feels like to be alive right now. But that’s only one of the things fiction’s doing. I’m not saying it’s the only thing. I’m working hard here to try to make sense of what it is I’m saying to you. If your life makes linear sense to you, then you’re either very strange, or you might be just a neurologically healthy person—who’s automatically able to decoct, organize, do triage on the amount of stuff that’s coming at you all the time.

  You were getting this across in the book?

  I don’t know. I can tell you that’s part of it. I mean, the book’s structured a little strange, and that’s part of it. The scary thing about doing it was, structuring it that way puts a lot of demands on the reader. Is there gonna be a payoff? Is the reader gonna feel there’s a payoff? Is the reader gonna throw the book at the wall? You know? I don’t know. This stuff is tremendously—I get all excited and frustrated talkin’ about it.

  You can put the pieces together. But it requires a certain amount of—what’s the word—prestidigitation to do it. Which I would think you would find annoying.

  Like if I could articulate it, then there wouldn’t be any need to make up stories about it, you know? And I always think that, until the person comes, and then I always like the person, I want to impress them, and then I sort of try to articulate to them. (Defeated) And I guess maybe I’m learning that I just can’t anymore.

  So many thoughts whirling around at any one time, that’s what it would really feel like to be in here. It’s a nice performance—it’s nice up there on the stage. But it’s not what it feels like to be in here. Does that make any sense to you?

  More?

  What writers have is a license and also the freedom to sit—to sit, clench their fists, and make themselves be excruciatingly aware of the stuff that we’re mostly aware of only on a certain level. And that if the writer does his job right, what he basically does is remind the reader of how smart the reader is. Is to wake the reader up to stuff that the reader’s been aware of all the time. And it’s not a question of the writer having more capacity than the average person. [James Brown: “I Feel Good” in background, on the restaurant sound system.] It’s that the writer is willing I think to cut off, cut himself off from certain stuff, and develop … and just, and think really hard. Which not everybody has the luxury to do.

  But I gotta tell you, I just think to look across the room and automatically assume that somebody else is less aware than me, or that somehow their interior life is less rich, and complicated, and acutely perceived than mine, makes me not as good a writer. Because that means I’m going to be performing for a faceless audience, instead of trying to have a conversation with a person.

  And if you think that’s faux, then you think what you want. But I, um … what I’ve got is, what I’ve got is a serious fear of being a certain way. And a set I think of like, not real complicated, but convictions about why I’m continuing to do this. Why I’m gonna do this, why it’s worthwhile. Why it’s not just an exercise in basically getting my dick sucked. You know? This is the way to have Mom be proud of me, this is the way—you know what I mean? And this is a good tactic of yours, to get me a little pissed off. And then I’m gonna reveal more, I’m gonna be less guarded, but it’s sort of like …

  [He thinks—comes up with the Harper’s essays, which I told him I loved.]

  In those essays that you like in Harper’s, there’s a certain persona created, that’s a little stupider and schmuckier than I am. In person, like at these readings, I feel like my job is to be exactly as much of myself as I can be. Without looking, without making myself naked in front of people who might be mean to me. And I don’t pull an aw-shucks-regular-guy thing. It’s
true that I want very much—I treasure my regular-guyness. I’ve started to think it’s my biggest asset as a writer. Is that I’m pretty much just like everybody else. But I don’t—you know, whatever. I’m not gonna say it again. I’m not doing a faux thing with you.

  And that’s why I don’t want to do this, week after week after week. Is if I could do a faux thing, this wouldn’t be any work.

  I’m sure you’ll shrug it off. Once this phase is done, when you’re back to writing. But the faux thing: isn’t what you just said an example of the faux thing? You don’t want to take the risk, the effect, of giving the full you?

  I don’t know whether you’re a very nice man or not. No—it’s very clear that you don’t believe a word of what I’ve said. And you think that’s part of the faux thing, in which case …

  What I mean is that a lot of stuff that I thought were weaknesses of mine turned out to be strengths. [Restaurant playlist: Lady Marmalade, “Voulez-vous Coucher.” I do, in fact, end up staying at Chez Wallace.] And one of them is that I am not, I’m not a particularly exceptional person. I think I’m a really good reader, and I’ve got a good ear. And I’m willing to work really really hard. But I’m more or less a regular person. And this was Streitfeld’s whole thing: “Are you normal, are you normal, are you normal?” To the extent that I think of myself as different from other people, then I’m not gonna be having a conversation with the reader. And so, the normal regular stuff is real precious to me. And maybe I am going around, like, “I am normal: Look, look! I am normal.” But I’m doing it for myself. And uh, I’m not—I don’t have the brain cells left to play any kind of game with you or do any kind of faux thing.

  • • •

  NEXT MORNING

  WE’RE PACKING TO FLY TO CHICAGO

  AND FROM THERE TO MINNEAPOLIS

  IT’S DAVID’S LAST READING: THE END OF THE TOUR

  IT’S ABOUT 6 A.M. I’M A WRECK. IT FEELS LIKE I’VE CLIMBED OUT

  OF A STRANGER’S TRUNK IN A PARKING LOT BY THE AIRPORT

  [When I tell him I wake up without coffee but with cigarettes, he laughs.]

  Brothers of the lung.

  [Offers half his morning pastry]

  My Pop-Tart es su Pop-Tart.

  [Fortress of Solitude, trophy-case feel in guest room. All his books piled up together …

  Call to Rolling Stone, while David in the shower: alcohol problem rumors] “The feeling is, ‘It wouldn’t surprise anybody …’ Everybody thought the heroin thing. Gerry Howard was a little bit proud of his ‘writers with problems’ coterie. He sort of likes that sort of thing. He would be more than forthcoming with a little bit of massaging to give you whatever you needed. Bury it in other questions …

  “For example, ‘How was editing him; what do you think of his success; hey, what about the dope?’ He’s very forthcoming, perhaps to the point of making mistakes with his honesty. Tread lightly.”

  • • •

  BLOOMINGTON-NORMAL AIRPORT

  ICEBOUND: THE WHOLE AIRPORT FROZEN, LIKE A RUNNER STUCK ON FIRST BASE, WHILE MANAGERS AND PITCHERS CONFER AT THE MOUND

  WE’RE WAITING TO HEAR IF OUR FLIGHT’S BEEN CANCELLED DRIVE TO CHICAGO

  All I could think is that whenever the flight is late, it means there’s stuff I don’t have to do.

  [Again: Trying to show how much he doesn’t like publicity. Except if he isn’t a genius, there’s no good reason to read the novel. You don’t open a one-thousand-page book because you’ve heard the author’s a nice guy. You read it—once you prop the thing open at all—because you understand the author is brilliant. He’s grabbed the wrong lesson: The people who seem to adore the press the way, say, Pooh loves a honey jar, look foolish; but the people who seem to hate it also risk foolishness too, because the reader knows how good press must feel, like having the prettiest girl in school drop you a smile. Like having the whole country rub against your toes and twist between your ankles.]

  It’s iced over.

  I think there’s stuff they can spray on the runway, some foamy stuff.

  [A guy in a jumpsuit whose nametag says “Mark” walks by. “You guys should be more worried about the wing.”

  Everywhere we’ve gone, restaurants, 7-Elevens, if someone asks, “You two together?” David has said, “Yes, but not on a date.” With the American Eagle desk in Bloomington, he says it again.]

  “Not on a date”—you’ve said that with every waitress, ticket counter clerk, etc. Midwest more homophobic …?

  It comes off as a joke, but it also communicates that, like—I don’t know, I’ve got a fair number of gay friends here. Who’ve had some terrible stuff happen to them, and have just …

  Haven’t seen any black people in town.

  They all live on the west side of town, next to the Purina plant, in housing projects.

  Politics?

  Educated Republicans: the racism here is very quiet, very systematic.

  [We’re sitting in airport lounge, waiting for flight to be announced or scrubbed.]

  A town with a lot of university action. Like I said, there’s small towns around here—you can drive through small towns thirty miles from here, and see guys in the corner with three fingers sticking out of their hip pocket. Guys that stand there like this.

  [Shows me: pinky and thumb pocketed, three fingers extended over the denim.]

  I had to have this explained to me when I first came here. You know what this is? It’s KKK.

  Really?

  Yeah. It’s weird—it’s like the earliest gang symbol in America. They’re not skinheads, and they would think skinheads are freaks, and part of the whole problem. They’re quiet, multigenerational, you know, grand wizards and poobahs and all that kind of stuff.

  [Old Midwestern town, with glossary of mall stores every town has …]

  This is an unusual town, because it’s always been one of the richest towns in Illinois. Now there’s a lot of State Farm here. A lot of railroad money before. Enormous tax base. Really rich. A weird kind of Mafia-ish thing. In a weird way, State Farm is to this town what Albert Finney played in Miller’s Crossing. State Farm is the Irish gang boss. It’s only I think slightly less subtle than having the mayor and the police chief sitting in his office getting yelled at by him.

  Albert Finney chasing guys with a Tommy gun: “The old man’s still an expert with a Thompson.”

  [After a moment of silence, he corrects my line.]

  Yeah—it’s even more over the top than that: “He’s still a Mozart, he’s still an artist with the Thompson …”

  Too early to talk?

  At a certain point, we have to go back and find out when our flight is.

  Can you tell me a little about your background?

  I grew up—I was born in Ithaca, New York, 1962. My father was in grad school at Cornell. Moved to Urbana—which is twin cities with Champaign—in 1964. Lived there. Went to elementary, junior high, and high school there. I went to Amherst College—I took a year off, so I started Amherst in 1980, started in the class of ’84, got out of Amherst in ’85, went to grad school that fall. And sort of did the peripatetic writer.

  Published first book first year of Arizona?

  How did that work? No—because I was still rewriting it part of the first semester. I think it got bought early spring of ’86, so it came out midyear of ’87. I didn’t know what it meant to publish something. It got bought that first year. They were gonna kick me out … (Muses, smiles) Yeah. They just thought I was crazy.

  [Smoking here, too: smoking everywhere in Illinois.]

  I mean, in a way I made a stupid choice: They are a highly, incredibly hard-ass realist school. I was doing very abstract stuff back then, most of which was really bad. But it was just funny, ’cause it’s also a really careerist place. And they had to go from almost kicking me out, to this sort of tight-smiled, “we’re proud of you,” you know, “that you’re a U of A man.” It was—I felt kinda embarrassed for them.

  They tout you now?


  I don’t think they tout their alumni. Robert Boswell—he’s a really nice guy. They invite him back a lot, throw publication parties for his books at the U of A.

  They don’t like me, and I think a good part of it was my fault. I think I was kind of a prick. I was just unteachable. I mean, I did what I did, and I got a lot tougher about ignoring criticism, but there was a certain amount they told me that was really kind of plausible, but I just wasn’t in any kind of head to hear it. So I don’t think I was actively unpleasant in class. But I think I had that sort of look of, you know, “If there were any justice in the world, I’d be teaching this class, and you’d be taking it.” You know—that look that makes you want to slap students. I go back every once in a while because my sister lives in Tucson. I think I’ve seen—I gave a reading in like ’89 or something.

  Arizona is the only place—it’s the first place I’ve ever lived, that I truly absolutely loved. Like geographically. The warmth and the—oh, have you ever been there? It’s an interesting town, you can live there on practically nothing, because all the houses have carriage houses behind them that people rent out for like $150 a month. And it’s a great—it’s kind of, it’s like a town preplanned for Bohemia, almost. And there’s a whole lot, there’s a really cool like leftist cultural world. Because a lot of grad students just end up teaching part-time at the U of A and living there for like ten, twenty years. And it’s just really gorgeous.