Live from BEA, the
publishing trade show where naughty booksellers sneaking suitcases onto the
tradeshow floor receive their slow but definitive comeuppance.
The last time I saw Chuck Klosterman at BEA he was
interviewing Aerosmith’s Steven Tyler, a man who – and I apologize for the
language I’m about to use – had no
fucks to give at that moment. Absolutely none. He had a book to promote and was
in the middle of an arena tour, but my enduring memory of him is how widely he
splayed his leather-clad legs in the chair onstage while Klosterman, despite
showing a heroic level of patience, started to turn a bit pink and eventually
shot steam out of the top of his head. And I don’t blame him at all. In an
event billed as a “conversation,” one participant cannot give all the fucks
alone. This concludes today’s R-rated advice on event planning.
Klosterman was much better matched this morning with novelist
and critic Jonathan Lethem, whose ninth novel DISSIDENT GARDENS arrives this
fall. (Klosterman also has a new book out this fall, called I WEAR THE BLACK
HAT: GRAPPLING WITH VILLAINS REAL AND IMAGINED.) After exchanging some
pleasantries about DISSIDENT GARDENS – “All art is helplessly political” is the
soundbite you’re going to see around from that section, Klosterman really dug
into him about his work habits , which was fascinating.
Normally a question like “So you hitchhiked to San Francisco
and then 12 years later you published your first novel. What happened during
that time?” would be too combative for this kind of format, but Lethem
approached it without defensiveness. After dropping out of Bennington College,
he worked in a bookstore in the Bay Area, a place he describes as “where people
go to develop their lives in lifestyle terms, not career terms” (feel free to
weigh in, Californians), and wrote a novel and many short stories during that
time. He attributed his prolificness to having many models of authors he read
who were amazingly prolific, like Philip K. Dick, Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch
and Patricia Highsmith.
Most of all, Lethem said, he enjoys the process of being
present with his writing and doing it rather than being prolific for its own
sake. “I miss the days spent writing DISSIDENT GARDENS,” he said. “I’m eager to
be in that situation again where I’m discovering a book as I write it. The way
I do that matters to me and it feels good and important… Once I’m writing, I go
into a flow state where the preparation melts into a semiconscious fascination
and I’m responding to what the language is doing.” If anything here I was
hoping that Klosterman would interject a little bit about his writing process, which I’m guessing is quite different – but that’s
for another panel.
Lethem wrote his first three novels by manual typewriter,
not because it was the only option at the time but because it felt like a
discipline, and “you commit to every sentence again” when retyping it out. (“My
students’ drafts are nothing compared to the typewriter age,” he joked, adding
that he challenges his students now to print out their stories, delete the
entire file and force themselves to type it again.
The most memorable moment during the audience Q&A was a
woman who asked what Lethem thought of MFAs and whether she should get one. “I
don’t have one,” Lethem said – in fact, he technically never finished his B.A.
-- but he teaches in them, so he carefully picked around what he described as “such
an individual decision.” I think it’s fair to say a lot of young writers (self
included) don’t have the kind of discipline that Lethem describes himself
having, the willingness to be perceived as a “grind” and shelve a novel and “30-40
short stories” before finally breaking through with GUN, WITH OCCASIONAL MUSIC,
but clearly he is unwilling to write off the whole enterprise. Probably a wise
choice.
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