by David Lipsky
Yeah. But it’s weird. One of the things I don’t like about myself is, I have a very low capacity for enjoyment. Of an actual thing that’s going on. ’Cause I manage to turn almost anything into something scary. My hope is that when you and I bid each other a fond farewell, and this phase is truly over, that besides just quivering …
For instance, that first reading at KGB. Having it be so crowded that I couldn’t get in. Or having a lot of flashbulbs going off. That was neat. And it was scary at the time, and I’m not just sayin’ that. Given that I—that I’d given two different readings in New York where not enough people came to hold the reading. … It was some kind of, it was some kind of neat vindication.
How did you feel …? Were you proud? Pleased? Did you feel like you’d done it?
[It’s often slightly hard to hear him talk, because he always—we always—crack a window, to avoid the smoke, which I actually don’t mind swilling in. Our hypothermia-and-road-noise tour.]
No. The problem is, at the time I was just terrified because there were all these people looking at me. Because I’d like to be the sort of person who can enjoy things at the time, instead of having to go back in my head and enjoy them then.
… Don’t you think the people who actually can’t enjoy that kind ofthing are the ones that actually get stuff done? Because the people who can just get fat off of sort of temporary achievement are the ones who don’t keep going farther.
You’re describing something that they use the phrase “resting on your laurels” for. And I think there’s got to be some sort of continuum. [One of his words.] I think there’s an ability to savor and be satisfied with something that doesn’t just result in, um, stasis.
I guess you could squat on your laurels, right?
Squat your laurels … [Repeats my joke, and then improves it] Or sort of sitting in the vicinity of your laurels and looking fondly at them.
But also be ready to keep moving, right? Not …
Yeah. There’s got to be a way to use the laurels to make the work better. Instead of, if … And I’m scared that I won’t. I’m scared that I’ll fuck up, and plunge into a compressed version of what I went through before.
Has anybody dealt with that well …? Certainly no one our age …
Our age … I mean your man Updike I think is a fairly good example of someone who could just—just is really into the work. And doing the work. And there’s fuss or there’s not fuss, but he just does it. But no, I haven’t seen anyone our age that’s handled this attention particularly well. That’s one reason we keep this—this part of it, whether it’s enjoyable or not, to set fairly strict limits.
Do you have a nightmare image of the worst case?
Well, the worst case of it … The worst-case nightmare of this is that—is that though I don’t feel it yet, I truly, truly enjoy it. And I’m startin’ to turn into somebody who flies to New York every weekend for publication parties, shoves my snout in front of other people’s photographs, and becomes this grotesque, capering figure. I think my terror of that is sufficient to keep me from doing it. But that would be worst-case.
Have you felt the tug at all?
No.
It must have been nice to walk into a room where you were so obviously the center of attention: and you were the center of attention in the literary world, which is the one you belong to. I mean, there have been now five or six weeks, where aside from Primary Colors, the book being talked about—and that’s not even a serious book, you know what I mean—aside from that book, the book people talk about is yours. Which is never an experience you’ve had before.
[The whole world of NPR fiction interviews, readings, escorts, sidewalks outside bookstores; the sub-rosa underground railroad of book publication, with its indoor library lighting and bad complexions, and its lower-budget imitation of big press junkets for things like movies and TV series. A secret society, with its own rituals and observances, now mostly changed or gone.]
It’s true. “Nice” I think is a good word for it. It doesn’t feel … I don’t know, “nice” is a good word for it. It’s not incredibly nice, or life-changing. Or terrible. But it is—you know this though. But maybe your readers don’t, there’s such a lag between the time that you’re really into the book, and the time when the book comes out, that I’m now—I mean, my big worry is am I going to get this manuscript delivered to Little, Brown in time? They’re pressing to get it out quickly I think so that they can—
[Sound of wind like breeze hitting a sheet of sail: sudden ripple, the car waggles.]
Capitalize.
Yeah. Capitalize on this. How am I going to deal with that? And what if I discover a couple of things really don’t work, and I need to take the summer to redo them? I mean, this is not alien to you.
[Trying to get me on his side again, reminding me of our shared craftsman-ness. Chess, but the effort is not so much to win as to get all the pieces on the same side, our men to be the same color.]
No … Is it like taking a new friend you’ve once had a kind of crush on? And then introducing them after you’ve ceased to … like them as hotly? To other people …
It might be. I don’t know about “not like so much.”
You don’t feel so close.
I don’t feel—yeah, you don’t feel like it’s part of you.
But you did feel it was part of you when you were working on it?
Yeah.
What do you mean?
It was just very hard. I’ve never done something where I’ve just had to hold so many discrete pieces of information in my head at any one time.
You ever see Johnny Mnemonic? (He laughs, to be quoting a Keanu Reeves movie) There was almost this … I mean, he gets this sort of data overload, and his ears bleed. And it was just—it made things very hard with girlfriends, it made things hard with friends.
Why?
Because there just wasn’t very much of me that was left over. Not because of, “oh, all-consuming artistic thing”—it was just like, that, I was thinking about it all the time, I was working on it all the time.
Were you dating in that period or no?
Yeah.
And do you think the relationships were hurt by this?
Yep.
Did you ever feel like just saying, “Look, I’m not at my best. Please bear with me, stick around, for a year or two and this will be over”?
Uh, no, I never, it never occurred to me to say that …
It never occurred to you to say that?
Yeah, although it’s also—uh-oh …
[Toll booth coming up.]
I’ve got a bunch of change actually in my bag. … The next one is fifteen cents.
[We clink over the money; we’ll lose the cover on the gas tank at Exxon.]
No, but I’ve also got a pretty good idea. I mean, you’re probably the same way, this is what I do: And I know, six months from now, it’s going to be like this on something else.
Yeah.
You know, my big worry is, Am I gonna have a hard time digging myself into that situation? (Laughs) You know?
Yeah. And in fact you hope to be digging yourself into that situation, don’t you?
Exactly. But it’s also—I’m also almost thirty-five. And I’d like to get married and have kids. I haven’t even started to work that shit out yet. It sounds like you’re doing better than me.
Well … what kind of hours do you work, when you’re working?
I usually—I usually go in shifts of three or four hours with either naps or like you know fairly diverting do-something-with-other-people things in the middle. So like I’ll get up at eleven or noon, work till two or three.
[The tape side runs out.]
[We’ve pulled into a Denny’s. Both order hamburgers now: it’s a late enough hour for the day’s meat portion.
We settle at a table in the smoking section. It looks like smog in a valley, interrupted by the peaks of truckers’ caps, heads nodding over plates and coffee.]
> Dave, re publicity: interviewers’ approach to a lot of things seemed based on reviews and not on the book.
I want to suggest that.
[To tape] There’s a lot of smoke in this restaurant, a lot of smoke in all the restaurants we’ve been to in the Midwest. I’m surprised there’s a smoking section at every Denny’s. David adds, after we sit down, that “there’s even a chain-smoking section in the Denny’s.”
(Looking round) High proportion of people wearing caps, too. High proportion of people wearing caps.
Quote was—that there are even chain-smoking sections in some Denny’s.
So, I was surprised that they put it there also … I wonder if there may be interior clues in the book. They checked that crap with you, didn’t they?
[We’re talking about how Time decided the book was set in 2014.]
They actually didn’t, but I did pretty well. I mean, the only reason why I know what the date is, is because I had to go, you know, I had to go find a perpetual calendar. And make sure that the days of the week and the dates that they are matched up.
… we know it started in the first term of President Gentle’s administration, so …
I think you guys would be—it’s either 2008 or 2009, when we get home I’ve got the perpetual calendar there. And I could see which one. It’s another thing about the remoteness, is like: you asked me this three years ago, and I would have talked your ear off about it. And in a weird way, I sort of forget.
But recreational chemicals again. Wild Turkey, you smoked, uh—There’s that dope-smoking guy in the opening.
(Annoyed) Why is this of particular interest? We talked about this at the airport, before the flight.
We did, I thought I’d get you on it again. Just because, I called some people in New York while we were in Minneapolis, and everyone had heard that thing about you …
I guess—I don’t know whether you believe me or not. It’s just not true. For one—because for one thing, it’s not true for any reason other than that my constitution is very weak. And I would’ve, you know, it would’ve fucked me up, for a long time. I just couldn’t—I mean, I know people who have been serious cocaine and heroin users. For over a decade. And they have hearty constitutions that I just don’t have.
So which rec chemicals have you tried?
I did some acid in high school. I did a lot of it for about six months and then—I never felt like I was the same again after that. It messed with me. I would encourage those of your readers not yet at puberty to stay away from stuff until you’re at least—say, until your first wet dream. Not to do stuff. I don’t think children were meant to … Did a fair amount of psilocybin in college but I would do it over vacations. I didn’t do anything when the semester was going on. [Funny. A very sensible, homework-filing drug user.] Smoked a reasonable amount of dope, particularly in college and grad school. And … uh … and drank a lot.
When did you stop smoking dope? No coke … or?
I think I did coke twice. And I think people who are wired to like—I mean, I think drugs and alcohol for me were a shut-the-system-down thing, instead of a rev-the-system-up thing. For instance, I’m not a huge coffee drinker now. Um, and cocaine for me felt like, there was none of the euphoria. There was none of the feeling of being inspired. It was rather like having consumed twenty cups of coffee, that horrible tooth-grinding stomach … that um, hot-stomach feeling.
The reason that it’s hard for me to shake, is the sense that there’s some other thing about the drug thing. That you haven’t gone into. I mean, I can understand your reasons. But there’s so much about drugs and addiction in the book, about addiction in the book. That there has to be something stronger … a little bit stronger than what you’re talking about.
The thing about it is that, is that … I mean, this is something that gets frustrating to me. The drug stuff in the book is supposed to be basically a metaphor. Now, I did make it my business, I mean, I got very assertive research and finagle-wise. I mean, I hung out. There were twelve halfway houses in Boston, three of which I spent hundreds of hours at. Because it turned out you could just sit in the living room, and nobody is as gregarious as somebody who has recently stopped using drugs. And that—and that I got—I mean I got a lot, I did what you’re doing now. Except over a much longer period of time and much more subtly. Um … and I think that I’m fairly good at creating certain impressions. I was not and never was a heroin addict.
OK. But about addictions in general: You split up your experience, I obviously can’t say this with great authority. But between Orin and Hal, you gave him your chewing tobacco, for example. And you say that Hal is “genetically hard-wired for addiction to chemical substances.” And that would lead me to wonder.
[Hal, the character closest to him …]
Well, I think it’s fairly clear that I am too. The only thing I’m dithering about is what substances I was with. And one reason I think why—I mean, I remember smoking, and I’ll tell you this—I smoked black tar heroin. You know what that is? That you put on a cigarette? At a party once. And I really, really liked it. And this was—this was the period in the late twenties. And the weird thing is, is that I did it at the time that I was starting to go to some of these meetings, and really became convinced that this was some sort of, that it was some sort of neurological condition they were talking about. And knew that if I went and acquired more of it, that I was just—that I was just gone.
So the rumor I heard in the late ’80s that you had gone to Harvard, something had happened, and you had gotten involved with drugs while you were a student, that was untrue.
It’s factually false. It is true that I was drinking a lot when I was there.
When did you stop smoking pot?
I stopped smoking pot—I think I stopped smoking pot right about the time I got out of grad school. You know, it wasn’t any kind of big decision. I just, it wasn’t shutting the system down anymore. It was just making the system, it was just making the system more unpleasant to be part of. My own system.
WAITER: Has anybody helped you all yet?
Not one bit.
[Break]
To avoid this being turned into a locus of indictment, not by you but by somebody else who reads this, I would say that—I mean, I think there’s nothing trivial or unimportant in the book. And that one reason for that is that Michael—I mean, I was really able to take some help from Michael on it.
Who do you suggest I talk to about the book? Your agent? Michael? Who else?
I’ll tell you, there was a guy … One of the guys who really helped me about this is an editor—did you see that magazine that Betsy said “Do you want to borrow” that’s at my house? His name is Steve Moore at Dalkey Archive Press. D-A-L-K-E-Y, it’s in, that’s actually in Normal. He’s sort of the guy who got me my job, told me about it. He’s an editor of this review and he read it in manuscript, read the thing early. And actually—I don’t know if he recommended cuts, he had me move a certain amount of stuff around. This was I think in the next-to-last draft—moved some stuff closer up to the front. It was real weird, it was a toss-off suggestion, but it was very helpful because it helped me structure the thing differently. But he was somebody who read the thing in manuscript. Umm …
I will talk to him. Anyone else? How can I reach Mark Costello, do you think? Actually, the odds are I’m gonna want to talk to your parents. [Dave shakes his head.] You don’t want me talking to your parents?
They’re real, they’re real private people, and would have a hard time with it. I hereby request you don’t. They also—
You don’t have to go any further.
OK. Just to tell you, they also wouldn’t be that helpful. They didn’t read the thing until—like—
Now, I would ask them about what you were like as a kid …
I’ll tell you, I can—I can give you—I can give you Mark, and Bonnie would be able to tell more about that. (Thinking) Costello, Costello …
Give it to me over th
e phone. We don’t have to use Denny’s time for it.
Turn it off for a second. [Break] It was real cerebral—
Do you think you’ve gotten less cerebral since? [David nods.] I think you have too.
But I think a lot—maybe at least for somebody who comes out of a more theoretical avant-garde tradition, I think the aging process is a thawing process. I think you can see that.
Some people never thaw that way, though.
Manuel Puig, Márquez, Cortázar, all of them thawed.
WAITER: You all OK so far?
… Even Nabokov didn’t deal so well with it. His first remark, after Lolita, was: “Of course, this should all have happened thirty years ago.” With attention, he became crazy.
Really?
The last twenty years … Read his collected letters. After ’59, his letters have this seigneurial sound … A perils-of-celebrity story. I don’t want to tell you what to read, but …
That’s just the name of it: The Collected Letters?
In the beginning, they’re very charming. He’s this young writer. And then later on all the charm gets squeezed out of them.
“Seigneurial” means what?
… like a kind of baronial tone, inviting you to walk outside and tour the grounds … ’Cause now he can begin throwing his weight around …
He had enormous weight before that, though.
Yes, but in a very small readers’ group. If you check it he began acting very, very differently.