Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

by David Lipsky

  I mean, it was all—and I was so arrogant. I would have this defense, that when the professors would say they didn’t like the stuff, I would think it was that they didn’t understand the grand conceptual schemes I’d laid on it. But I was not willing to realize that I’d laid the grand conceptual schemes on a substructure that was essentially, “How will this enable me to show off in way X?” “How will this enable me to show off in way Y?” And it’s something that I see in, for example, Leyner. Who I think is very gifted. But he’s somebody whose vibe I always get: The point of this is that Mark Leyner is smart and funny. The point of this is that Mark Leyner is smart and funny. And it’s fine. And he earns every cent he gets.

  But it’s like, you’re loppin’ off 30 percent—the intangible thing in art that can make the stuff, you know, worth not watching TV for.

  Is it worth not watching TV for?

  Good—I think the good stuff is. But also, I mean art requires you to work. And we’re not equipped to work all the time. And there’s times when, for instance for me, commercial fiction or television is perfectly appropriate. Given the resources I’ve got and what I want to spend. The problem is, when I’m trying to derive all my spiritual and emotional and artistic calories from that stuff, it’s like living on a diet of candy. And I know I’m repeating that over and over. I can find very few analogies that work well.

  It’s in the book …

  It’s in the book but it’s about little kids—whether the parents are going to keep little kids from eating candy. Yeah. And I also—it’s another thing that I have. Is, you’ve watched me eat a lot of sugar on this tour? I’m hypoglycemic. If I eat sugar, I get a headache and feel shitty, and I shouldn’t do it. But once I eat a little bit, I get a craving for more and more and more and more and more. [I nod: another one.] Yeah, interesting.

  Something you learned from Blue Velvet and from Brazil is that the details matter, even in something that’s not realistic.

  Yeah. That whatever the project of surrealism is works way better if 99.9 percent of it is absolutely real. And that you can’t just—you know. And that’s something … I wouldn’t even be able to put it that clearly if I didn’t teach. Where I see my students, you know—“not enough of this is real, you know?” “But it’s supposed to be surreal.” “Yeah, but you don’t get it.” Surrealism doesn’t work. I mean, most of the word surrealism is realism, you know? It’s extra-realism, it’s something on top of realism. It’s that one thing in a Lynch frame that’s off. That if everything else weren’t picture-perfect and totally structured, wouldn’t hit. Wouldn’t punch the viewer in the stomach the way that it does.

  Why don’t you have a TV?

  ’Cause I’ll watch it all the time. Having to go over to friends’ houses to watch TV works. It’s very much like taking an Anabuse or something. I mean, it just lowers the amount that I can watch.

  So you’ll just call friends, “Clear out, here I come.” Or will you watch it with them?

  I’ll make plans. I’ll say, you know, “Are you guys going to watch some TV?” If it’s something I want to watch, I’ll come over.

  Otherwise, you would watch it all the time?

  Yeah, I don’t even know if I would watch it. It would be like what it is with you, it would be on all the time—it would be my version of a fireplace. It would be a source of warmth and light in the corner, that I would occasionally get sucked into.

  [Break]

  [Dave, as check is gliding toward us: “Is Jann paying for this?” Serial question. Also again, to waitress, “We’re traveling platonically,” or “We’re not together, etc. etc., not that way.” I mean, a standard gag of his.]

  David thinks that Kevin Spacey and Anthony Hopkins are in an arm-wrestle for best psycho of the last four or five years. Where does Christopher Walken fit into that?

  Which Christopher Walken?

  King of New York. Comfort of Strangers.

  Yeah, that seemed like, didn’t see that. I thought he was great in True Romance. Just in that little, “the Pantomime.” “Men have seventeen, women’s got twenty-one.”

  [He does a not-bad Walken. Gifted mimic.]

  Ha.

  “My father was the heavyweight champ-ion of Sicilian liars.”

  That great scene: he’s got to tell where Slater and Patricia Arquette are hiding—

  Or that they’re gonna torture it out of him. And so, knowing that he’s got to get him mad enough to kill him … I mean, Tarantino is such a schmuck 90 percent of the time. But ten percent of the time, I’ve seen genius shining off the guy.

  But that scene: It’s convincing heroism, in a way that almost never comes through in movies.

  But then the weird touch of having the name on the refrigerator the whole time. (Smiles) That’s so—

  Did you see The Last Boy Scout?

  Is that Bruce Willis? Is that where he does the jig at the end? Huh. I don’t—I didn’t watch it paying much attention. I think I saw it on a VCR at somebody’s house.

  I really like Bruce Willis. Ever since Moonlighting he just had me in the palm of his hand, I really liked him in Pulp Fiction.

  • • •

  BACK IN THE CAR

  ALL AT ONCE

  DAVE: (Complains) I’m so fucking passive.

  • • •

  AT EXXON STATION

  DRUNKEN GUY AT PUMPS: You guys weren’t at the game by any chance, were you? Hinsdale?

  Missed it.

  [And then we leave the gas cap sitting on top of the pump. Which the National Rent-A-Car people aren’t tremendously understanding about.]

  • • •

  BACK IN THE CAR

  I-55

  [I ask David to drive.]

  Satisfy my curiosity. During that big bewildering party you had for the book at Tenth Street Lounge, when you went to the bathroom, you were looking in the mirror, right? That’s what you went for?

  When?

  When you went to the bathroom. We were talking, and you went to the bathroom. The kind ofthing where you would touch one side of your hair, push it back a little bit, and just look in the mirror. I guess I was wrong?

  I went to the bathroom to take my tobacco out. As a matter of fact, I think I made it a project not to look in the mirror during that party. Because I knew that a lot of other people were looking at me, and if I thought about what I looked like, I was going to go crazy.

  But it must have been a bewildering … I mean, you didn’t even interact with anybody at that party …

  (Testy) Sure I did. I didn’t—I spent half that party in the office up above, with first Charis and then Mark Costello. And there was a great little like nook. Where we could look out at everybody talking, it was an enormous amount of fun.

  [At wheel] This is nice, I get to drive a car with more than one operable cylinder. A good road-trip car.

  [Break]

  Michael—I’m not going to pronounce his name correctly—and it’s not Michael, it’s the Asian tennis player at Enfield …

  Pemulis. He’s not Asian.

  No, not Pemulis.

  Oh, oh, oh. LaMont Chu.

  Why I brought the book into Denny’s, although we didn’t get around to it. The character, LaMont Chu, he has a complex response to fame. Which he goes to Lyle about.

  Heh heh heah.

  [He’s pleased. He’s been waiting for someone to do this.]

  Tell me about that. You know why I’m asking the question, that’s why you’re laughing. So tell me.

  Sure. Nah, it’s just this whole, um—yeah, that’s a lot about what it’s like to be kind of a young, grad-student writer. Who really reveres certain older ones. You suffer from a delusion that, for all the pain of your envy, there’s this inverse, satisfied feeling. Which is the pleasure of being envied by you. And that that—and then I can remember bein’ a tennis player. And havin’ exactly the same feeling about older, successful tennis players, and it’s just …

  But now you’re in the inverse spot, act
ually.

  Mmmmm. Really?

  Yes.

  Well, then I can tell you, from authoritative firsthand experience that there’s nothing like—there’s no keen, exquisite pleasure that corresponds with the keen exquisite pain of envying somebody older. Who’s written something, or won some tournament, that you particularly admire.

  Let’s talk about the simple brute thing …

  Just tell me where the rear window defogger is here.

  Um, as I was reading it, and marking it, and knowing it had to come from your reading of other people, while you were having trouble doing your own work.

  Heh heh heh heh. (Dark, exposed laugh, with the pleasure of being discovered)

  It’s like, only a writer under, like, thirty would have known that that was … That it came out of bitter truths. That’s actually—that’s a scene that was much cut down by Michael. ’Cause it went on and on and on, with a whole lot of fame theory, and delusions about it, and stuff like that.

  You were talking about guys who found black gold while they were out shooting game, right? And you were talking about writers who’d found that, I thought?

  Oh, you mean like younger writers our age or something? It was more like the older—like that there was a feeling that went along with having your picture in a magazine. You’re right—there’s some delicious ironies to this whole process that I haven’t even … This is one reason why I need to go home and quiver. Is ’cause I haven’t thought about any of this stuff.

  I’m going to begin reading to you now. I’ve gotta find the interior lights in here. So I can begin reading to you some quotes …

  Let me just … Oh, “South,” “Joliet …”

  That’s the prison, right?

  That’s one of its charms.

  Blues Brothers?

  Yeah. It’s also the setting of the first part of The Sting.

  George Roy Hill … great director … that great comedy about hockey.

  Hockey—Oh, Slap Shot? Yeah, that was pretty good.

  … I love the Hanson brothers.

  Yeah. Yeah, “You better watch out for the kid, he’s going to have somebody’s dick in his mouth before you can say Jack Robinson.”

  There’s this fascination with homosexuality in the script, which is very odd and mean.

  Yeah. It’s kind of a nasty movie, but it’s very funny. [A set of taillights crosses into our lane.] This guy is a true asshole.

  It’s truly funny, it knocked me out as a kid. Then his career ended.

  How did it end, by the way?

  He made—Funny Farm was the last movie he made. Chevy Chase, a splashy bad real estate purchase. Strange, biggest director in the ’70s … A Little Romance …

  He made A Little Romance? It was a great movie.

  The Sting and Butch Cassidy … huge seminal hits …

  How did his career go away like that?

  I think he just stopped doing hits … Diane Lane in A Little Romance … wonderful.

  Broah! Oh yeah! I know, I’m agreeing. Not to mention the fact that she grew up into, to just be a fucking angel. She was in The Cotton Club, but she’s been in hardly anything else.

  … also in Streets of Fire …

  I hate this: “Vehicles are closer than they appear.”

  So you thought this was coming, right?

  What?

  That someone was going to read these things to you …

  Read as much as you want, as long as I don’t have to respond.

  You had to know that somebody would ask you about that … that’s the kind ofthing you write … When you write a scene like the one with that kid, and Lyle talking about wanting to be famous. You know that someone’s going to come back and ask you about those things.

  Except only another writer would. That’s the good and bad thing about choosing you to do this. I’m serious, man, if you—like this would have been over a day ago if you hadn’t been somebody who writes novels.

  Well, I appreciate that …

  I can be very tough when I have to be. It’s actually—it’s the way to get me. Is get me to like the person, and I’ll like become way more passive and worry about their feelings and all this stuff.

  … have you been worried about my feelings?

  It’s part of, you know, this mélange of various things. It’s one reason this is tiring. Yeah, and also, I had this incredible—I mean I’m rubbing my hands together so I can call you in six or seven months. I can’t wait till you like have somebody, you know, hanging around. Wanting to hear your—it’s all so interesting.

  Nothing, the kind of thing that’s happened to you happens to young writers once every five or ten years.

  It may not be something of this length. But you know enough about how—I mean this—some version of the dog-and-pony show goes along with having a book come out.

  No, that’s true. But the kind of attention that you’ve gotten … maybe happens once in a decade to someone our age. …

  No, this is like—this is like two things. This is the thing in The New York Times Magazine and the thing in Rolling Stone.

  [Slightly disingenuous]

  I follow, for better or worse … writers. When they break into certain kind of levels of success, when books get certain kinds of attention … and this kind of stuff happens very, very rarely.

  Huh!

  Oh, you know it too. Come on—you’re smiling! You know you know it too. You follow this crap also, come on.

  I follow the crap. But I struggle much harder against the temptation to follow the crap. And I follow it from much more of a distance—and yeah, I have some sort of idea of it. But have some compassion. I mean, I’ve already told you that, like, I gotta be very careful about how much of this stuff I take inside. Because I go home, and I spend a month getting this manuscript ready. And then I got to start working on something else. And the realer this shit is to me, and the more I think about it—and, of course you’re holding the tape recorder so that I will end up reading what I’ve said in this article. That will feed the self-consciousness loop. (Laughs) That like, I need to be—so I’m not just, I’m not fucking around with you, and I’m not playing you like you’re stupid.

  You’ve just gotta realize that, that I’ve gotta be real disciplined about how real I make this stuff to me, and I also don’t want to overblow it. I think something—the truth is somewhere between what you’re saying and something about what I’m saying. I mean Amy Holmes is doing a tour for The End of Alice that’s bigger, and involves more interviews, than the tour I’m doing. You know? So it’s maybe like ten books a year, ten literary books a year by young, by young writers are—

  Publishers want it to happen. They bait the hook in various ways. And they’ll bait it with a lot of horsemeat—or whatever they bait it with—or a small amount of horsemeat—

  Conch, I think, is what cuts up nicely, into cubes.

  I was thinking of a kind of big fleshy thing, sure.

  Huh!

  But they throw it out there, and it doesn’t always get a strike. I mean, they throw it out there, and they don’t know who or what’s gonna bite.

  So there’s been a strike this time?

  A marlin.

  The rod is bowing way down. Bowing.

  A huge marlin. A marlin of, like, prehistoric proportions …

  Ah-huh. [Trying to control pleasure]

  Which happens very very rarely.

  But it might be one of those fish that you get all happy, then you lean over to gaff it and it takes your arm off.

  Yeah, but in this case, it’s been gaffed, and it went fine …

  Uhhhh, let’s—Why don’t you call—I’ll tell ya, here’s what would be real interesting, you can find him. Why don’t you call Jay and ask for his take on this book. McInerney.

  [Who gave the book a mixed review. Samples:

  “I felt a … feeling of admiration alloyed with impatience veering toward strained credulity … If Mr. Wallace were less talented, you would be
inclined to shoot him—or possibly yourself—somewhere right around page 480 of ‘Infinite Jest.’ In fact, you might anyway.”]

  OK. I will ask, and I will call him. But here’s the thing: Do you know how many times Rolling Stone has done a young writer, a profile, in the last ten years?

  Uh-uh.

  Zero.

  Really.

  I checked, zero.

  Except let’s realize that, OK, right; I think I wrote a good book. And I think for some reason—like the timing was right or whatever. But one reason Rolling Stone is interested has very little to do with me or the book, it’s this kind of miasma of hype around the book, that feeds on itself.

  Well, no, but it’s just, it’s—I mean, you’re talking—you want to know what this tour was like. Forty percent of the interviews were interesting, and 60 percent were very charming people. Who you know, “I gotta admit, it’s such a big book, I’ve only read five pages. But what I’m really interested in, is, what do you make of all this attention?” You know? And I’m just—the phenomenon is not lost on me. And given that fact. Plus the fact that I got a serious investment in having a certain amount of detachment from this … So all I’m trying to do is explain to you that—Yeah, if I’m playin’ a little dumb I’m not, I’m not trying to condescend to you or act like you’re stupid. It’s just I don’t, I don’t want to feel every edge of this quite yet.