by David Lipsky
Your folks are university people?
My father teaches in the philosophy department at the U of Illinois. He mostly teaches in the medical school now.
Ethics?
Yeah—he teaches both ethics and aesthetics, but he’s moved more and more to ethics, because of his own writing. And then he got into bioethics. And now he’s actually had to testify in a couple of these, sort of, “Was it wrong to take him off life support” stuff. I don’t know, Dad’s got—Dad’s an Aristotelian, he’s got a really complicated definition of what it is to be a live human being. Basically, I think he gets asked to testify and they never ask him again because his answers are so complicated that they don’t have any effect on a jury.
But my mother teaches at a school called Parkland College, which is a two-year—like it’s a community, it’s a community college. Which is different from a JC.
[Food arrives.]
Put in any of my educational rants you want.
[I’ve got the burger deluxe: cheese slab, crunchy lettuce, block-cut fries. David stares.]
I’m not even going to start on the idea of eating a hamburger at 7:00 in the morning. The idea is you eat eggs, which are kind of a latent form, as your body itself is awakening. It makes a lot of sense. Because you are the food, and you’re supposed to eat stuff that is nice to you.
I guess following life cycle stuff too: eggs in morning, meat at night. Birth to death.
And then you eat basically partial—and by the end you eat basically partially decomposed creatures, so …
Environment in house? Lots of reading?
Yeah. My parents—I have all these weird early memories. I remember my parents reading Ulysses out loud to each other in bed, in this really cool way, holding hands and both lovin’ something really fiercely.
And I remember me being five and Amy being three, and Dad reading Moby-Dick to us (Laughs)—the unexpurgated Moby-Dick. Before—I think halfway through Mom pulled him aside and explained to him that, um, little kids were not apt to find, you know, “Cetology” all that interesting. Um, so they were—but I think by the end, Amy was exempted. And I did it just as this kind of “Dad I love you, I’m gonna sit here and listen.” My father’s got a beautiful, like, reading voice, and I would like to listen to him just read the Montgomery Ward catalog or something.
Humoring him?
I was aware—it’s weird, it’s the same syndrome I notice in these radio interviews. That these guys’ voices are so pretty, it dudn’t matter what they’re saying: I’ll listen to their voices instead of … And I remember really liking to listen to Dad’s voice. But I remember, I remember because there was some sort of deal about Amy, Amy got exempted from it, and was I gonna be exempted or not? And I remember kind of trying to win Dad’s favor, by saying, “No, Dad, I want to hear it.” When in fact of course I didn’t at all.
Remember a lot of it?
I remember being hellaciously bored. And I remember picking the lint out of my navel with a pen, while Dad was doing it, and Dad saying that was the equivalent of picking your nose. I mean, I was five.
[We talk about slide-thing box—we find the name: View-Master.]
I was a little too old for that to have quite the hypnotic charm …
You grew up where? Your father does what? And they had you late? So they had you young? [Asking me the questions back; doesn’t want me, as the interviewer, to believe he has a swelled head …]
[My dad: Seventies advertising world, BBDO, Madison Avenue. Right Guard, Pepsi, the “Pepsi Generation” songs.]
He ran the Pepsi account? He wrote all those songs? He just kind of rode herd? “You’ve got a lot to live?” Those were good ones.
That thing with the puppies—
And if you turn the sound off it looks like he’s being attacked by the puppies.
Yes! My dad pitched the ad: “Let’s have a boy just being raped by puppies.”
It’s actually an effective advertising thing, because I think Pepsi really doesn’t taste as good as Coke. There’s a nasty, chemical component to the taste. And the fact that it competes with Coke is entirely a testament to its advertising.
Airplane hangar taste, wonderful.
Yeah—it tastes like it was made with a kid’s chemistry set or something.
When read?
I was like you—I read—I’ve read a huge amount. I mean, I remember reading all the Hardy Boys books by the time I was like seven. But I also watched hellacious amounts of television.
My references are getting more and more dated—the shows I’m referring to, pretty soon the kids are not going to know them. Although now with cable …
I read a lot, but I didn’t have particularly sophisticated tastes. I mean I read like Hardy Boys and Tom Swift. And Dad was really into science fiction, and I remember Dad trying to feed me Edgar Rice Burroughs, the Martian stuff. And I think I wasn’t as into it as he was. I remember really liking Tolkien. But what would usually happen is Dad would read something, and if I would like it, he’d give it to me. And like let me read it. I mean, I read fairly early, but wasn’t a precocious reader.
Parents and TV?
They would watch at night. It’s weird, because I realize I had advantages my students didn’t. Like, before dinner, um, there was just this weird hour, late in the afternoon, when, you know, dinner was more or less simmering. And there’d be music on, and they’d be reading, and we’d be reading. We’d all sit around the living room, and we’d each be reading our own thing. And every once in a while, we’d talk about what we were reading. And I for a long time, I think, thought all families were like that. And didn’t realize that …
When did you?
When I was at school, and met—there were a lot of kids at Amherst, I met a lot of people who were fiercely smart, like great test-takers. Who were really talented at like science or something, but you realize that they (a) didn’t read, and (b) didn’t like to particularly. That it wasn’t something they dug a lot.
Encouraged to in the house, though?
It was probably the same for you. Overtly, no. It was just what you did. I remember I liked to more than Amy did. I remember Amy liked to draw and play with things, and partially play with the phones. And I would much prefer being by myself with a book. And that Mom and Dad were basically, “Oh cool, look: David and Amy are different.” They were really ’60s parents, and I don’t think—there was if anything a conscious attempt to not give overt direction. Although of course you end up becoming yourself.
Did they want you to be a writer or no?
Oh no, I was gonna be—the big thing I was when I was little was a really serious jock. You know, I played like citywide football as a little kid, I was really big and strong as a little kid.
And then for four or five years, I was seriously gonna be a pro tennis player. And it was like my great dream. Reading was this kind of fun, weird thing that I did on the side. I mean, I had no artistic ambition.
Harper’s piece, “Tennis and Trigonometry.”
It’s pretty good—but Harper’s changed it a lot. It’s real different than what the original is. The original was about math. He made it this really neat essay about failure. I’m really bad at saving stuff. I’m just poorly organized.
Pee-Wee—Pop Warner?
Pop Warner is slightly older—that’s nationally. Here, there’s a weird thing called Gray-Y, which was done through the YMCA. You could say Pee-Wee and it wouldn’t be far off. But I was really good. I mean, when I was a little kid I was really good. And then I got to junior high, and there were like two other guys in the city who were better quarterbacks than I was. [Even then very competitive: knows the exact number.] And people started hitting each other a lot harder, and I discovered that I didn’t really love to hit people. That was a huge disappointment. And then I discovered tennis when I was twelve, and then I got totally addicted to that.
But too late for pro?
It turned out later I think that I started too late. It a
lso turned out, I just didn’t quite have the goods. I mean, I could have been, I think, a good college player if I started earlier. And I never—one thing about me and Michael Joyce [the tennis star] this summer, and seeing these guys up close, is they’re playing an entirely different game. I mean, it’s like what you and I were doing last night versus serious, devoted chess players.
Did hanging around Joyce confirm your guesses about tennis?
He’d had some media coaching, clearly—he gave me level one of the thirteen levels, the thirteen levels of consciousness that would be going on. I think the best nonfiction I’ve ever done that I could not get published anywhere, is a long review of Tracy Austin’s book that talks about—that’s all about what kind of mentality would be required to go, like, “OK, I really need to get this point. So I’m gonna focus and bear down and not get distracted.” And to be able to do that, and whether that’s a kind of genius or a kind of stupidity. And which one. And why it results in such execrable writing.
It’d be cool to do the reverse, in a sports book: an as-told-to, but with full prose.
Couldn’t do it … Someone else kind of did.
When you were at Brown, did you study with Hawkes?
[John Hawkes, head of the university’s writing program. Sometimes there, sometimes on leave. I mention Hawkes’s problem—mood elevators—and David guesses the exact name of the medication. He has the PDR, the Physician’s Desk Reference, down.]
I did that weeklong visiting writer thing in November while I was cutting the thing at Harper’s … taught—
PA: Flight 4432—Passengers of American Eagle Flight 4432, service to Chicago, sorry to inform you that at this time we still have not received any promising news with regard to the runway conditions here at Bloomington. Again, this is an indefinite delay. We have no anticipated departure for this aircraft at this time.
Good thing we can smoke a lot of cigarettes at this place.
How serious was the tennis?
I wudn’t as good as the kids in the book, but I was good enough—there would be local tournaments, and then at a certain point there are regionals, and then there are sectionals. And I was good enough at least to get to play in sectionals. And then I would bumble through the first couple of rounds, against other schmoes like me, and then I would run into a seed. And those were kids usually who were from suburbs of Chicago, or the good suburbs of St. Louis, or Grosse Pointe, Michigan. And that was all just a joke. They would beat us 0 and 6, 1 and 6. They were playing a totally different game. And I know that I always since I started writing wanted to do a story where I sort of got to project myself into the heads of kids like that. And the kids in the Academy are even a level above them. [The kids at Infinite Jest’s Enfield Tennis Academy—big-hitting, nationally ranked.]
And had you started playing at three or four or five?
(Shrugs) It’d be fun to hit with Amis sometime.
I wouldn’t want to do it as a piece—I’d just like to be the best writer–tennis player. I’m real hard to beat—’cause I’ve just played a lot of tournaments. I don’t look that good, but I’m just almost impossible to beat. I know that sounds arrogant. [His second time with that word: He’s more comfortable being proud about the physical, which can be measured, and which is a sideline anyway. Much more confident talking about his semigood tennis than his extraordinarily fine prose.] It’s true. I’m a—I’m a somewhere between good and very good natural athlete. The ones who become really great players (a) start really young, (b) get lucky enough to be put into great coaching tracks, and (c) are phenomenally talented athletes. And tennis takes—I just didn’t, don’t have the foot speed and the reflexes, you know? Which you need; it’s the same reason I couldn’t be a major-league hitter. I don’t quite have the foot speed and the reflexes.
I don’t think I realized that till—um, it all got very confusing to me, ’cause I didn’t go into puberty till real late. And this is part of what the tennis essay is about, and I really sort of felt betrayed by my body. And always thought that, “Well, if I coulda just developed when I was fifteen, like these guys from Peoria, I coulda been …” And the fact of the matter is, I couldn’t.
Schacht’s problem? [Ted Schacht, from the novel’s Academy]
Nah—Schacht’s got knee issues.
Yeah—it’s weird. A lot of this stuff, I can’t remember.
(To waitress) We’re gonna basically just hang out here for a while.
There was a lot more stuff about these various guys and their relation to tennis. I mean, there were a number of drafts. One I cut quite a bit before I even sent it to Michael, and even I realized that, that—the tennis stuff had to be used, it couldn’t be in there for its own sake, because very few people find that stuff interesting.
But no. Schacht’s big thing was taking tremendously scary bowel movements and having a bad knee.
It’s Orin.
Right.
Orin had your football thing too; I loved the little thing about them having to actually fly into the stadium as the Cardinals …
Michael really wanted that taken out, and I sorta loved it, and it was only a page and a half. I said, “Just give me this one.”
A lot of the stuff that comes off as drugs in the book is intended to be more or less plausible.
2015 is when it takes place?
I had to get the dates right—I believe it’s 2009, but don’t quote me.
You know, I wanted it set in just enough so our kids would be in adolescence.
[Interesting and very sad: setting the novel the year after his death, somehow this is heartbreaking. His having no idea this is coming.]
I don’t think it’s as late as 2015.
So when you say a late puberty—sixteen, fourteen?
I’m not talking about when you have nocturnal emissions, I’m talking about when your physique changes. There’s this huge deal in junior tennis between whether you’re playing with the physique of a boy or a man. And like I didn’t start to put on any kind of meat until I was in college. So I was basically playing with the body of a boy until I was seventeen years old.
I had withdrawn before—
I started to smoke a lot of pot when I was fifteen or sixteen, and it’s just hard to train when you smoke a lot of pot. You don’t have that much energy. (Laughs) So I was, like—you know, I was still going to tournaments. But I was mostly doing it, going to like hang out with the guys and party. And I was getting to the quarters instead of the semis of these tournaments. And there was just a general kind of slippage.
Second year of high school then?
Yeah: fifteen, sixteen, somethin’ like that. I mean, starting really to kind of like it. And also other stuff: did a lot of Quaaludes. And by the way, there’s certain stuff about this stuff that I won’t talk about. This I don’t mind talking about.
Heroin?
No. I didn’t like it that much. I didn’t have the constitution for it. And I’m serious—I’m not. There’s no way to be a heroin addict and work that hard.
You could dispel that rumor?
Yeah—except what if they just think I’m lying?
People in New York have heard this rumor—what came down to us is that in Boston you’d gotten very involved with drugs and had some kind of breakdown.
Heroin doesn’t make you break down until you stop doing it. I don’t know if I had a breakdown, I got really really depressed, and had to go on a suicide ward in Boston. It had nothing to do with drugs. It had nothing to do with drugs. I had already started to lose a lot of interest in drugs sort of before then.
Worried by this rumor in publishing circles?
No, although I’d heard—Adam Begley [the New York Observer] had reported this rumor that I was a cocaine addict. He said Vollmann told him that, which I didn’t really believe. But it just seems laughable to me, because I did I think once at a party, and I found it excruciatingly unpleasant, like drinking fifty cups of coffee or something.
It just, it seems
odd to me. There are fairly well-known writers, and I don’t just mean Burroughs, but writers who are big now, like with the initials D. J., who are fairly well known to have been heroin addicts who got straight. And they don’t make it a secret. If I’d ever been a heroin addict, I don’t think I’d have a problem saying it.
It’s weird—I, like—I mean, I’m somebody who spent most of his life in libraries. I just, um, never lived that kind of dangerous life. I wouldn’t even stick a needle in my arm.
How do you think that rumor got started?
Who—whom did you hear the rumor from?
Don’t know.
[What do I say? From my office this early morning, while you were doing good work with shampoo, hair brush, and towel?]
It’s very odd—I’ve got no idea how it got started. None. I think the only thing that I ever conceivably had a problem with was marijuana, and marijuana was a huge deal for me when I was about the age of Hal in the book. And then once I got to college, I mean, college was just so hard, it was hard to get stoned and read. And I just, it sort of melted away.
Getting-clean stuff is what you can’t talk about—a program? Or what you were getting clean from?
[He looks at me, turns off tape.]
[Break]
I’m not in the program, and I wouldn’t want it to come off like somebody who’s in the program. And that’s just how it’s gotta be. [AA] And ask your friend—your friend will enlighten you about it. Talk to him. From what little I understand about it, talking to private citizens about it is very different. I believe, I don’t know that much about it, but I believe the phrase in the eleventh tradition is “Maintain anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.” About which, it’s one of the few things they’re adamant about. Again, that’s from … from what very little I understand. From what very little I understand.