Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

by David Lipsky

  Got it.

  Because, because, you know, I’m thirty-four. And I’ve finally discovered I really love to write this stuff. I really love to work hard. And I’m so terrified that this—that this is going to somehow twist me. Or turn me into somebody whose hunger for approval keeps it from being fun, you know?

  [Reason for it]

  I want to be able to—I mean, you know, I think Infinite Jest is really good. I would hope that if I keep working really hard for like the next ten or twenty years, I can do something that’s better than that. Which means I’ve gotta be really careful, you know? About, you know, you know, I don’t want to end up being somebody on game shows. And you’ve talked about it, it was when the tape recorder was on, nobody’s done, nobody’s taken this well. I mean this has never helped anybody. Anybody’s writing future. So I would be an idiot, you know, if I were not playing various psychic games and erecting defenses.

  This is very smart. You say something that gets a rise out of me, and I begin talking, and it’s good because I like you, so I’m talking to you. But the tape recorder’s on …

  But I was thinking, you were talking about your passion for the work. There’s a scene in one of Updike’s essays in Self-Consciousness, he says—

  He’s got an essay called “Self-Consciousness”?

  He has a book called that.

  I thought it was called Getting the Words Out.

  No, “Getting the Words Out” is one of the essays …

  Boy, if nothing else you’ve given me six things to read. Renata Adler, “Anonymiad,” Nabokov’s letters—

  I’m not sure you’re running that risk, because you’re a much more centered person … I’m sorry to use a word like “centered,” you don’t think—you were shaking your head when I said “centered.” You don’t see yourself that way?

  No, I don’t.

  Why not?

  I see myself as somebody who’s been unbelievably burned by no one other than me. Through not being centered. I have an enormous ambition to be centered. But I don’t—I don’t perceive myself as that way. And I wouldn’t be so careful about this kind of stuff, if I felt very much confidence that I could handle it well. And I’m aware that this makes very good copy, and this will be a neat part of the article. But it’s also really like—you know, I feel like we’ve sort of become friends and … understand that. I mean this stuff, it’s really scary. And I think if we were in exactly the opposite situation, you’d be saying a lot of the same stuff. It’s great. But it’s also, it’s also really scary at the same time. ’Cause I’ve gotta—you know, I’ve got what I hope is like forty more years of work ahead of me.

  Hah. Do you have a huge ambition in general, or no …?

  Yeah, I think I do. What it’s been about has changed a whole lot. I mean I really, I’m now so scared of having the ambition be, to be regarded well by other people. Just cause it’s—it landed me in a suicide ward.

  That it’s now, except for making vague, pretentious statements about art, I couldn’t really name what it is.

  Is there someone then who’s better prepared for this than someone who was in a suicide ward about it?

  I think somebody who’s been in a suicide ward is either way better prepared or way less well prepared. Because I mean, I don’t think we ever change. I mean I’m sure there are still those same parts of me. I’ve just got to find a way to not let them drive. Could I also have—if I can have my Diet Pepsi. [For drinking and then spitting]

  You said you’re hardwired for addictive behavior. You were able to train yourself out of it, you don’t drink programmatically. Don’t you think you can train yourself …?

  That’s safe to say. Except I would, I don’t like the word “programmatical.”

  [Road quiet now. Just the rush of tires over cement, that slightly sibilant, airplane-y sound of the air we’re cutting through with the fender and windshield.]

  I’m going to say, in the piece, that I noticed that you don’t drink … there are places where we ate when I would have ordered like a beer or something but didn’t.

  You can order whatever you want.

  My friends who have been through the program, they say that they’ve always been very conscious—’cause when they first went in the program they didn’t want people to drink in front of them, and so I’ve always since not …

  Well, I’m not any sort of authority on any sort of program. But from my very limited outside understanding of the program, people who have been in it for a while and are fairly—are fairly nice where they’re at: you could snort cocaine off the back of your hand next to them. And as long as they have a reasonably decent reason to be with you, you don’t have to worry.

  Can I turn this off, or …? [The interior light] Boy, it’s easy to speed in this thing.

  Seventy-five though is fair. You can hit cruise control …

  Yeah, cruise control makes me nervous.

  You killed off Michael Chang, too, I saw. In the book.

  [He laughs.]

  OK, here’s the first quote, “The obsession with future-tense fame makes all else pale.” You don’t drink anymore, keep TV away from yourself … you had to train yourself away from it, but you know that being exposed to it might be harmful.

  Ah-huh. [His debatable: Ah-huh.]

  Similarly you had to train yourself away during a very painful period from thinking about attention, right? And now it’s being pushed at you whether you want it or not.

  Right.

  What about that …? Everything else you were able to regulate and control how much you got; not this.

  Well, notice that it’s not exactly like I’m a paragon of self-control. I’ve got a raging nicotine problem. That like that I really need to quit, at least the chewing tobacco. It makes your fucking jaw fall off. You know? I’ve got a sugar problem and I like, you know, I have a pretty hard time with girlfriends. I mean it’s not like, you know, I’m not like … And no, no, no, no—but I’m just saying, you know, it’s not like, it’s not like … but yeah, this stuff, this stuff’s really scary. And it’s really confusing, because if I had totally eschewed all of it, then I think I really would have fucked over Little, Brown, who took a huge chance. But there’s also—that could be a really great excuse, ’cause there’s a little part of me of course that loves this, you know?

  That a major magazine would pay all this money to send you—who are not an idiot or an unbusy man, to come repeat stuff I said into a tape recorder? I mean, it gets very confusing.

  And I’m trying to make these decisions about “Do this, don’t do this, what are my reasons for this, what are my reasons for that?” It’s one reason I want this phase over. It’s extraordinarily, it’s very hard work inside your head. And I think it’s one reason I’m like, you know, smoking three packs of cigarettes and chewing two cans of tobacco a day. (Laughs) It’s just—it’s fine. But one reason it’s fine is, it’s going to be over. Like starting some time tomorrow. And I’ve already got assurances from Little, Brown, there’s no more of this. That like—that I’ve been a good little trouper, and there’s no more of this.

  What’s scary to me is, I’ll bet two weeks are going to go by. And I’m going to wish you were back with your tape recorder—you know what? Then I’m going to have to like, you know, um, then I’m going to have to like decompress from getting a whole lot of attention. Because it’s like getting heroin injected into your cortex. And where I’m going to need balls is to be able to sit there and, and go through that. And try to remind myself that, you know … And you know it’s the same. That what the reality is, is being in a room with a piece of paper. And that all this, this is tangential stuff, and some of it feels real good and some of it doesn’t. But this is all—that’s—that’s what’s real, and the rest of this is just conversation around it.

  It is frightening, as I think about it. Must be like an astronaut stepping back to his house: He’s been directed by people in a different state, shot up somewhere, outside people
planning everything. And then he drives home. And his life has been invaded to some degree, and it’s suddenly uninvaded. And then you have to go back …

  Yeah, it’s been invaded. That, that’s less troubling to me than to what extent have I been a willing accomplice in that invasion, you know? To have written a book about how seductive image is, and how very many ways there are to get seduced off any kind of meaningful path, because of the way the culture is now. But what if, you know, what if I become this grotesque parody of just what the book is about? And of course, this stuff drives me nuts.

  To get back to addiction metaphor for a second. You’re someone who had to fight an addiction to being interested in approval, the same way you fought connections to substances, or to television.

  Yeah.

  And you’ve solved those problems by trying to keep those things away from your sideboard, and yet—

  Sideboard?

  Keep it off your table, so it wasn’t within easy reach. And this has been put on your table. And I wonder if you’re afraid that the part you trained away will jump back in, the same way that alcoholics are afraid that they’ll go on a bender if they drink just one glass.

  I’m worried a little bit. But you know it seems like taking this stuff off your sideboard, its location is less, is less important than getting in the psychic space where you’re willing to take it off your sideboard. You know what I mean? So the next level of complication is, do I congratulate myself on my worry and concern about all this stuff, because it gives a sign that I’ve not been seduced about it? And of course then if I get happy about that, then I’ve lost the edge—I mean, there’s just no end to the little French curls of craziness you can go through about it.

  The thing that I like about it is that—is that Little, Brown is fairly decent. They want money and they want the book to be a big deal. And me doing a certain amount of stuff about me helps the book, and that’s cool. But they’ve already like, you know—they’re not like “Oh, the book’s really hot, we’ve been in touch with ISU, you have the semester off, you’re going to go on a whirlwind tour of Europe,” you know? I mean they’re like, they’re halfway cool. And you know, I’ve talked to a couple of people and they’re like, “You’re right. You know, you gotta teach, you got to get this manuscript ready for Michael, enough of this.”

  Really?

  Yeah. Yeah. Which—so everything’s real complicated. They’re not saints, ’cause you know they would prefer to have me be in People magazine or whatever. But they’re not, they’re not assholes, either. Who just want to like burn me out, and use up this thing, and get their cash while they can and then fuck you. I mean, nothing’s ever that simple.

  So you acknowledge the book as a big deal?

  What do you mean?

  Is it a big deal?

  To whom?

  Has it been received as a big deal … I just wanted to have you saying that. Is this why you live in Bloomington?

  Why I live in Bloomington is I got a job that I turned out—I’ll tell you what. It ups my—I feel real lucky living in Bloomington. It’s way better for me to be living in Bloomington.

  Why?

  Because every time I go to New York, I get caught up in—what do you call it? Now, see, then you’re gonna make it my phrase—what you have called?—

  What’s your phrase?

  I just—I just think of this enormous hiss of egos at various stages of inflation and deflation. It’s just this whole—like I remember bein’ in New York and Will Blythe’s thing in Esquire came out. And just being, you know, wanting to cry. Wanting to run over and punch him in the nose. “How could he do this to me?” When I got home and a week later realized that, You know what? He wanted to do—the hype thing pissed him off, he wanted to do something about it, ran into this problem of actually kinda liking the book, so what’s the poor guy going to do? But when I’m in New York, it’s all about me-me-me-me. And how could he do it and where do I—you know, is he ridiculing me in the red hot center of the artistic cosmos, and all this, and uh—

  Esquire.

  Excuse me?

  Esquire. You remember, that phrasing is from that article in Esquire, with the Literary Universe.

  Yeah, you would have been like an infant when that came out! I was at Yaddo when that came out. It was all like, “Who is on the horizon!” “Who is in the Orion constellation?” This whole like—um, God, what craziness.

  So actually you really were a student of this?

  What do you mean?

  You were paying real close attention to the vacillations of literary fame.

  That was in 1988—no, ’87. That the Esquire—no, as a matter of fact, I know exactly. It was in July of 1987, ’cause I remember me and Lorrie Moore and Jay McInerney [Transcriber didn’t know these names: the true parameters of literary fame] were all at the same table, all looking at our own little Esquire that summer. And I didn’t go to—at Yaddo—and I didn’t go to Yaddo till 1987.

  You were in there.

  I was “On the Horizon.” (Smiles) I was on the horizon.

  How did that feel to you …

  Oh, I remember, it was absolutely exhilarating. It was absolutely exhilarating. But of course I forget who it was—oh, it was Alice Turner. It was like, “OK, kid, now you’re on the horizon, now we’ll see what you can do.”

  [The tape side runs out.]

  So you felt thrilled seeing that?

  Yeah.

  [Windows closed: we’re back to smoking, chomping, sipping.]

  … Lorrie and Jay also …

  Yeah, I recall they were somewhat more prominent. Can you hit that thing that will crack this just a tiny bit? Thank you. How about we turn this off unless you’re absolutely quoting, because it makes it hard to steer? No, you want something more interesting about that. I remember—I mean that’s a good example of why, like you know, I mean, I—you know, I probably like that stuff as much as the next person. But it was really awful because there was this whole—let me see, it was thrilling and really scary at the same time. Because it’s like, “Oh, no, that means the next time this thing comes out, I need to be, you know, three inches closer to the sun.” And God forbid, you know, any of the other On-the-Horizon people are closer to the sun and I’m not. And it’s this whole—

  And I don’t think it’s any different if you’re like an accountant for Andersen & Andersen, you know? Some big accounting firm and that you know four or five other junior accountants get promoted ahead of you. Or the guys who got out of law school with you make partner before you do. I mean the craziness is exactly the same. I mean, I don’t think—I don’t think it’s really sort of any different. It might be a little bit more powerful if it’s taking place in Esquire, you know? And it’s unavoidable. I just—what I’m saying isn’t that dramatic, I’ve just learned that the farther away I can stay from it, the better it is for me.

  I’d be awfully surprised if it wasn’t the same for you, unless you’re just a tremendously strong person.

  [Flirting]

  … people I know who’ve gone through this have had a very hard time with transition … and then—

  And then, what’s the next thing? And what’s going to make the next thing as good as it can be? This stuff is not going to help me. [Break]

  … I’m way into—I’ve decided that I need, I really need to find a few things that I believe in, in order to stay alive. And one of them is that this is—that I’m extraordinarily lucky to be able to do this kind of work. And that along with that luck comes a tremendous obligation to do the best, to do the very best I can.

  Which means that I have to structure my life, you know, sort of like anybody who’s dedicated to something. To maximize my ability to do good stuff. And it’s just like, and it doesn’t make me a great person. It just makes me a person that’s really exhausted a couple other ways to live, you know? And really taken them, taken them to their conclusion. Which for me was a pink room, with no furniture and a drain in the center of th
e floor. Which is where they put me for an entire day when they thought I was going to kill myself. Where you don’t have anything on, and somebody’s observing you through a slot in the wall.

  And when that happens to you, you get tremendous—you get unprecedentedly willing to examine other alternatives for how to live. (Laughs in satisfaction)

  We’re rushing. You’re at Amherst and while you were in Arizona it gets published.

  No, it came—yeah, it came out in the winter of my last year at Arizona.

  So then you go to Yaddo the next summer, and find yourself in that list, right?

  Interesting. Yeah.

  Then take me through from then until the room with the drain on the floor.

  I’ll try my best, believing in your talent for compression. ’Cause I can’t be—we can never be linear about ourselves.

  It’ll end up being radically compressed, with some nice sound bites coming from you.

  [We’d almost run out of gas before, when we stopped at Denny’s. That’s how focused on the talk we’d become.]

  Uh-oh—what is that, do you suppose?

  I think someone’s trying to build a scale model of the set from Blade Runner as a hobby.

  (Laughs) Either that or Fritz Lang is alive and well in the heart of Illinois. [Break] He has his Unforgiven, David Webb Peoples’s movies in general.