FREE VOLUME 8 NUMBER 12

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STRAIGHT FROM THE SOURCE CODE THE FICTION ISSUE 2010 VOLUME 8 NUMBER 12

Cover by Torbjørn Rødland, White Wreck, 1998

MASTHEAD ...... 18

EMPLOYEES ...... 20

WELCOME By Deb Olin Unferth ...... 22

THE LONDON SKATE SCENE By Stuart Hammond ...... 24

STORIES BY BEN RAYNER ...... 26

MASTER WLTM SLAVE By Matthias Connor ...... 32

TWO NEW STORIES By Sam McPheeters ...... 36

PARABLE OF WOOD AND FIRE By Paul Maliszewski ...... 42

JANUS By Terry Southern ...... 46

WRITERS By Gisèle Freund ...... 52

I’M WORRIED ABOUT MY ANXIETY By Clancy Martin ...... 60

12 | VICE GREAT BEATDOWNS IN LITERATURE By William B. Fuckly, Jr. and Clotty Koppleman ...... 64

ROBERT KIRKMAN & TONY MOORE ...... 68

WHO’S AFRAID OF KATHY ACKER? ...... 72

NICOLA SIX FROM LONDON FIELDS ...... 78

CHARLES BURNS ...... 84

BRYAN GARNER ...... 90

EDWARD ALBEE ...... 96

MARY KARR ...... 102

AMY HEMPEL ...... 106

SAM LIPSYTE ...... 112

JOHN RECHY ...... 118

LITERARY ...... 126

CHEATERS By Johnny Ryan ...... 128

POSTSCRIPT ...... 130

14 | VICE

FOUNDERS Suroosh Alvi, Shane Smith

EDITOR Andy Capper ([email protected]) CEO, VICE MEDIA GROUP EUROPE Andrew Creighton ([email protected]) MANAGING EDITOR Bruno Bayley ([email protected]) EMEA GROUP PUBLISHER Matt Elek ([email protected]) ASSOCIATE EDITORS Piers Martin ([email protected]) UK PUBLISHER Matt O’Mara ([email protected]) Jamie Lee Curtis Taete ([email protected]) ADVERTISING DIRECTOR Darren Boroughs ([email protected]) CONTRIBUTING EDITOR AT LARGE James Knight ([email protected]) HEAD OF FASHION SALES Kristen Lazaric ([email protected]) PHOTO SUBMISSIONS [email protected] ACCOUNT MANAGEMENT Angelica Gola-Ebue ([email protected]), Davide Rossi ([email protected]) STAFF PHOTOGRAPHERS Jonnie Craig, Henry Langston, Ben Rayner HEAD OF MARKETING & EVENTS Claire Bartolomeo ([email protected]) PHOTO EDITOR AT LARGE Alex Sturrock EDITOR IN CHIEF VICE GLOBAL Jesse Pearson PRODUCTION Gareth Johns, Imogen Bellotti EXECUTIVE EDITOR VICE GLOBAL Chris Cechin LAYOUT inkubator.ca VBS.TV PRODUCTION Vida Toombs ([email protected]), Pegah Farahmand ([email protected]), WORDS Alison Severs ([email protected]), Hugo Donkin ([email protected]), Bruno Bayley, Rocco Castoro, Matthias Connor, William B. Fuckly, Jr., Rhys James ([email protected]), Alex Hoffman ([email protected]) Stuart Hammond, Sammy Harkham, Claudine Ko, Clotty Koppleman, David Jacob Kramer, Steve Lafreniere, Paul Maliszewski, Clancy Martin, VBS.TV POST-PRODUCTION Sam McPheeters, Jesse Pearson, Johnny Ryan, Tim Small, Al Brown ([email protected]), Mike Horlock ([email protected]), Terry Southern, Deb Olin Unferth Laurence Cleary ([email protected]), Jim Demuth ([email protected]), PHOTOS Niall Kenny ([email protected]), Paria Kamjab ([email protected]) Tom Beard, Gisèle Freund, Richard Kern, Annabel Mehran, Aliya Naumoff, Ben Rayner, Terry Richardson, Torbjørn Rødland, Ellis Scott ONLINE EDITOR Alex Miller ([email protected]) ILLUSTRATIONS Sammy Harkham, Jim Krewson, Laura Park, Johnny Ryan ONLINE EDITORIAL Dylan Hughes, Kev Kharas COPY EDITING Steve Yates WEB DESIGN Solid Sender VICESTYLE EDITOR ONLINE DEVELOPER Daniel Hockley ([email protected]) Daryoush Haj-Najafi ([email protected]) DIGITAL MARKETING Remi Ajani ([email protected]), FASHION EDITOR Alice Harold ([email protected]), Nicole Kai ([email protected]) Aldene Johnson ([email protected]) OLD BLUE LAST Jazz Atkin, ([email protected]), JUNIOR FASHION EDITOR Sam Voulters ([email protected]) Russ Tannen ([email protected]), Ross Allmark ([email protected]) FASHION INTERNS Charlet Duboc, Thais Mendes, INTERNS Salma Ahmad, Camella Agabalyan, Ellie Bunston, O Thongthai, Scarlett Valentine Mark-Taylor Hutchinson, Melissa McFarlane, Sophie Mol, OFFICE MANAGER Leyla Treble Chris O’Neill, Dave Pullen, Tommy Still

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All submissions property of VICE Magazine, Inc. The entire content is a copyright of VICE Magazine Publishing, Inc. and cannot be reproduced in whole or in part without written authorisation of the publishers. For subscription information go to www.viceland.com. Vice magazine is published twelve times a year. 18 | VICE EMPLOYEES OF THE MONTH

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Sean Malto, pro skateboarder. etnies footwear facebook.com/etnies.europe 20 | VICE To celebrate the launch of PUMA Social, PUMA’s tribute to those who play hard- est when the sun has gone down, PUMA WELCOME teamed up with VICE, well-known for our late-night antics, to bring you After Hours Athletes. We threw pub sports-inspired BY DEB OLIN UNFERTH parties at the Old Blue Last in London and the Deaf Institute in Manchester, both hosted by our good friends the House of Hot Breath. Onstage games over the two nights included cardioke, video darts, and no- finally figured it out and I said it: You want me to leave? hands pizza-eating, among many others, I said this because I did have small evidences. The day before they had gotten a little meaner, one of while those not so keen on the limelight en- I them especially, the bigger one, the one who had earlier been my champion. But I didn’t understand. I joyed a game of table tennis, table football had been having such a nice time. I was bewildered. Why did they suddenly not love me? and a free drink or two. And then the next morning it happened again. The big one had a mean look on his face. The other fig- ured she didn’t need to have an ugly look on her face because the big one was taking care of it, so she For details of more late night revelry, go to could just stand to the side and look on, bemused. But I was so stupid, I still didn’t understand. I looked at www.puma.com/social the littler one as if to say, Why is he acting this way? It finally occurred to me: You want me to leave? Of course he wants me to leave! You do? I said. They’d been wanting me to leave for days already! Didn’t I realise? What was I thinking, to be taking over in there like this, hanging around all day? Anyone else would have had the courtesy to clear out days before. Oh, I’m very sorry! I said. I’ll leave right away! They were private people, after all, and I should know that. And I’d been in the way continuously, what a headache for them both! Other people came to stay and they were no trouble. Other people were gone before either of them woke, took over the room for only two or three days. And when I was there, I just expected them to be with me all the time. They had no idea I’d be such a hassle. The big one followed me up and down the stairs while I tried to pack up my stuff. You don’t have to explain, I kept saying. I assure you I get the point! But the big one went on. How could I not see that he was trying to work? Didn’t I see that the room I was staying in was the one that the little one worked in? Didn’t I see her working in every room in the house, carrying her computer around like a homeless person in her own house? They needed the room I was in. And he was certain I’d heard them talking about how the little one’s parents were coming and were going to be in that room next week and how they were going to get no break from visitors. I’m going, I’m going! I shouted, throwing my things into my bag. I understand! I said, jumping on my suitcase to get it shut. They had no idea I’d just be staying there for so long, so unbelievably long, they just had to put their foot down. How could they have known that I would do that? That that was my plan, to show up there and just stay and stay and stay and be so demanding on top of it? What, with my weird eating habits, my slothful oversleeping, my pedestrian reading tastes, my inability to learn a single word of the language of their country. For Christ’s sake! There were places I could stay that weren’t so expensive! I have money! I cried. Really I have plenty! Not to mention—did he need to remind me that they hardly knew me? How many times had they even met up with me before this interminable preposterous visit? Aside from the few times that we all ran into each other at events or because of people we had in common, how many times, he wondered, had they phoned me up and made a date to see me—only me individually? I don’t know! I cried. Twice! said the big one. And the first time didn’t really count because it was my husband they wanted to see, not me. And the second time didn’t count either because they wanted to see me just to find out why my husband and I had split. So frankly, said the big one, neither time counted, and even if they both had, it would not have amounted to such a strong friendship that it would mean I could descend on them in this manner. Get out! I do understand! I said. Of course, of course! I said, running down the street, him behind me. He was following me down the street now, raising his arms to the hotels, bed-and-breakfasts, and quaint inns that stood all around us. On every corner, sometimes two side by side. COME STAY HERE, WELCOME, WEL- COME, signs everywhere read. I assure you, I cried over my shoulder, I do see what you mean! You get no argument from this quarter! What could possibly be the matter with me? the big one marvelled.. What kind of a person behaved this way? There was a name for women like me, he called as I ran off. THE OLD BLUE LAST, LONDON WEDNESDAY 10 NOVEMBER PRIMARY 1 (DJ) O.CHILDREN (DJ)

22 | VICE www.puma.com/social THE LONDON SKATE SCENE

BY STUART HAMMOND

he summer passed in waves of gnarly violence. Bombs started going off in town almost every single week. There were seven in Zone One in July. Sometimes suicide T bombs, sometimes car bombs, sometimes bombs left in a bin or a bag in a gay bar or a cinema or a bendy bus or Tiger Tiger again. A couple of times nobody got hurt, but usually a lot of people got hurt and some people died. Karim’s cousin, who actually used to skate, got blown up in the Piccadilly Burger King at the end of August. A teacher from Billy’s old school died last week from the nails he got stuck in him in the Oxford Circus Nike Town nail bomb in June. On the night of the day that he nollie inward-heeled the Southbank seven, Lucien got shrapnelled in the back and the neck at the ICA. This was at a free booze party that Georgia had snuck him and Eugene into, which turned out to also be the target of the early bomb attack where Alan Yentob and four other people died. Lucien lucked out and he’s OK now. He beat all of us today in a big game of S.K.A.T.E. The streets uptown went dead quiet within two weeks. People were urged to shop again, but millions stayed indoors. London had never known terror like it. Because of skateboarding though, obviously, we couldn’t stay indoors. All of us kept on turning up at Southbank every day. It felt like it was sort of safer there. We didn’t know what else to do. We were all downriver at Southbank on the afternoon that the pod on the London Eye exploded, and we were there eight days later when the big car bomb went off out the front of Topshop on the Strand. We all spun and saw the ball of flame chug up into the air, then the thick black smoke and ragged bits of Topshop curling out and fluttering down over the rooftops. It was happening right around us but we felt like we were out of it somehow. It was so sunny. There was the massive wide divide of the river—why would anybody bomb that?—spread out like a giant moat right there in front of us. All the concrete bulk of Southbank Centre huddling us, backing us up; solid. The undercroft became like a proper shelter. A lot more people slept there. Nobody, we told ourselves, would ever bother bomb- ing a skatespot. In the winter, in the days just before the bombs started up for serious, Nugget drew this sticker—like those stickers that graffers make and stick on everything—which he claimed was for some big new art project of his. One night after Southbank we all watched him stick it slyly on a vending machine on the platform in Waterloo tube. It was basically for jokes. He was about to fail his first year at art college, and he’d never produced any art that any of us had ever seen. All he was really doing then was just skiving and being fully back on skat- ing every day. The sticker said:

ALLAH IS GREAT. THIS VENDING MACHINE HAS BEEN RIGGED WITH A POWERFUL EXPLOSIVE DEVICE. INFIDELS WILL BE BLOWN APART LIKE DOGS IF THEY SELECT THE CRUNCHIE, WISPA OR CADBURY’S FRUIT AND NUT BARS.

It was pretty funny at the time. But they evacuated the station and it was on the news and in the papers and we all felt nervous about the whole thing for a while. By some weird miracle, Nugget never actually got caught, which he was stoked on for the rest of his life. It’s one of those things that just wouldn’t really happen any more. It just wouldn’t be funny. The streets are pretty dead, and loads of old spots that used to be total busts are totally not busts any more, which is sweet, and it’s all much better for. skating. But everyone everywhere knows that the scene in London just kind of sucks now. THE DEAF INSTITUTE, MANCHESTER TUESDAY 30 NOVEMBER CLIQUE DJS GOLD TEETH DJS

24 | VICE Stories by Ben Rayner

ALL PHOTOS FROM BEN RAYNER’S NEW BOOK, POWER BALLADS

26 | VICE VICE | 27 28 | VICE VICE | 29 30 | VICE VICE | 31 iPod I’ve struggled to keep up with people half my age who’ve down- The first week wasn’t so bad if you counted the bar staff as also loaded in a single afternoon records I spent years looking for. “They being there. Andy brought me over a pint. His wife tried to force a MASTER just want to dance, get off their head and have a good time—don’t smile. They had got the babysitters in because, as Andy had told his take it personally,” Andy had said to comfort me when I turned up to wife, even though I wasn’t invited to their house for dinner, we still find I’d been replaced by a skinny streak of a girl with a Bay City went back a long way. I was sat behind the decks. I had also Rollers feather cut who might as well have stepped from one of the brought a bottle of gin, which was stashed with my records because WLTM SLAVE Richard Kern books on my bedside table. “You didn’t enjoy it much I was fearful that, even if I got free drinks, they wouldn’t be anyway, did you?” It was true, the lack of appreciation for what I was enough. The bottle remained hidden as Andy spoke to me. He playing depressed me. I’d play the mighty Verve from Wigan and looked at his watch. There was little chance of it filling up now that NON-SMOKER PREFERRED they’d ask me if I had any Horrors. I wanted to tell these people that the pubs had been closed for over an hour. “What’s this you’re I’d once been in my twenties like them, that I had believed I was inde- playing now? structible, but nothing had prepared me for feeling like this. Just like I explained that it was “Tonight I Am King” by Blue Eyed Soul, an them, I once believed that I could fly, that I was going to write a great alias of the 60s songwriter Billy Vera. “When a place is empty, it has a BY MATTHIAS CONNOR novel and have conversations with angels, but then, a few years ago, real quality that I think cuts straight to the heart of what it means to in my thirties, I had to settle for being the author of an unpublished be alone. It’s about someone who, as long at they are out there on the ndy is the landlord of a pub. It’s a young people’s place, “Perfect,” I said, remembering the phrase “Terrible Tuesdays”, and unauthorised Verve biography instead. Sometimes I pictured the book dancefloor, feels like a king.” The three of us looked out at the empty and if I’m with him, those who recognise him look at me what Tuesday, not Monday, feels like when you’ve been up all weekend. sitting unattended, half price, in the music section in my local branch room before I broke away to line up the next record. A respectfully, but if I’m in there by myself, I feel as incon- “By the way,” he said, “have you got a name that you want to call of Cheap Books Inc. It wasn’t how I imagined my novel would look “‘Dancing Queen’?” asked Andy. spicuous as an old man in a school uniform. It’s the sort of it yet?” when I had first begun writing it. Instead its floppy, lifeless, textbook “Imagine if you’re a ballet dancer and you’ve recently lost one of pub that, while employing the façade of a normal boozer, everybody “Depressed Beyond Tablets,” I told him. form resembled the sort of book about caring for goldfish that you’d your legs in a car accident,” I said. in there is under the age of 25. I’m alright if I’m with Andy, because “Half Man Half Biscuit,” he acknowledged in recognition of our ages. find in a pet shop. “Just imagine…” said Andy as he stared out at the handful of fig- they recognise him as being the landlord, and therefore I must be his ures in the bar. mate. I’ve been telling him over lunch in the pub about my idea for a As a 14-year-old, if you had told me that I would be pretty much the Andy suggested a Facebook page, but I didn’t have one. Facebook was “Has anybody tried to dance?” night there. He listens attentively but seems unconvinced by my same now as I was all those years ago, but with more records, I would one more phenomenon that I blamed for my feeling disconnected from “I caught one fellow nodding in recognition of a song earlier.” enthusiasm. have high-fived the future and exclaimed, “Way to go duuuuuuuuu- the world. How could anyone have 300 friends? Thinking that I was “What did you do?” “A night out for manic depressives?” he asks. “Who’d go to that?” ude!” There was a poster advertising Black Flag’s seminal album My missing out, I had once tried to join, but two weeks later my life was “I told him to stop or he’d be forced to leave.” “Other manic depressives,” I say. War looking down at me when I woke each morning, a can of Stella exactly the same as it had been before. In frustration, hoping that the Andy raised his eyebrows. “What kind of music will you play?” always within reach, the new Richard Kern book open on my bedside few friends I had would notice my absence, I deleted my profile, “Really, really depressing music.” table, more cool sneakers than sensible shoes, a spliff smouldering in except, as I was to find out one day, it was impossible to do this, The second week the night was busier, but when, after a few hours, “But there have already been clubs that have played only sad songs, the ashtray, bookshelves crammed with books, and a choice of skate- which would make me feel as if my identity had been stolen by my people began to wobble in time to the music, I became distracted. remember? There was that one in Scotland, read about it in The Face board shapes leaning against my wall. computer. I now knew I shouldn’t have joined, but the impulse to be This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. In retaliation I played once. What was it called again?” I had recently reached the conclusion that if I had the courage to as happy as others appeared to overcome me. But now I knew it was a Whitehouse at half-speed. A Smiths fan cowered in the corner, as if “Club Misery,” I say, my voice rising in frustration, knowing where take my life into my own hands and end it like I often fantasised sham, and that’s why I told Andy I wasn’t on Facebook. Never mind, he had been audibly impaled. When I tried to turn it up, the bar this was heading. I was being talked out of it and I had to fight back. about doing, I would also have the courage needed to embrace living he said, we could still advertise the night in the toilets. manager asked me what the hell was I doing. I asked him if he was “It was called Club Misery, but you knew they weren’t really life from day to day. Unable to do either, this growing awareness had The flyer was a photographic depiction of Hemingway’s six-word the landlord, and he gave me a look that said he thought very little miserable. They were having a good time, getting rave reviews in left me helpless and finally depressed. story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I already knew that its of me. He knew that the only reason I was there was because I was style magazines. I bet they even had groupies! How depressed could A week before meeting Andy for lunch I had been to see my doctor. author’s tragic end and the story’s maudlin sentiments would appeal to a friend of Andy. they have been, tell me? Listen, I’m really depressed and I want this “Well,” he began, after listening to my complaints, “I would recom- certain people more than others. I would leave them wherever I had In one corner sat a man in an Eminem t-shirt, wearing a pair of club to be really depressing too, for other people who are also real- mend first of all that you begin by addressing a few of these issues noticed others like myself in the past. Spending too long in bookshops, chunky headphones. The sight of him nursing his pint pleased me. ly depressed, so we can all be really depressed together. People who before we decide if we are to put you on any further medication.” on Craigslist, in libraries, wandering aimlessly in parks. On Sunday As did the sight of the guy sat on his own, who, judging by his pretend to be depressed because they think it’s cool to look tor- “Further medication?” I said, somewhat confused—after all, I had evening, among the meals for one and the wine in the Tesco Express. dress, had been expecting me to play more country. I lined up the tured only make those who are depressed even more depressed come here because I had run out of my old medication, not because I was Wherever I went I saw others like me. They were the lonely, the ill-fit- next record and watched him flinch: “Waiting For a Girl Like You” about their situation. You only have to open a copy of any maga- seeking further medication. “Further medication—what do you mean?” ting, the anxious, the depressed, the slightly neurotic, the invisible; by Foreigner. After that it was to be “Little James”, Liam zine these days to read about how the latest member of the “Further medication than the alternative course of medication that they seemed to be wherever I went. Singing too loudly to themselves Gallagher’s first songwriting contribution to Oasis, a tribute to his in-crowd photographed who, week in week out, is having the best you’ve already been prescribing yourself for this long already. It’s as they went about their business, twitching, itching, biting their nails stepson James, Patsy Kensit’s child with former husband Jim Kerr of time of his or her life, is actually suffering from depression. I bet obviously not working, otherwise you wouldn’t be back here again, to the quick, checking their mobiles one too many times, cracking Simple Minds. they bloody are! They’re the same as top-ten pop stars wanting complaining about how you feel depressed. Drinking to excess, smok- their knuckles behind me in the matinée at the local cinema. After all, Increasingly I found myself having to reprimand those trying to indie credibility. How do you think that makes someone who is ing, little or no exercise, a poor diet, the use of recreational drugs I was one of them, but until now I always sought to avoid them dance. It wasn’t that sort of place, I explained, and while the hapless actually depressed feel? That someone, having that good a time without due consideration for their long-term effects, no current because they reminded me of myself. dancer might claim that he was dancing for joy because finally, after with their whole life in front of them, is also ‘depressed’ like me? I meaningful relationships to speak of. Tell me,” he paused to consult all these years, he had found a club that would have him as a member, tell you it is this shallowness, this lack of sincerity in what people his papers again, “do you masturbate?” I wasn’t sure if the regulars would get it. After all, they were young I told him to consider the plight of the others in here. I wanted him to do, how no one genuinely believes in anything these days, apart I admitted, somewhat sheepishly, I had little choice but sometimes, and they brushed failure aside like crumbs off their jeans, whereas I understand that a room full of people all having a good time would from looking cool, which is what makes people like myself yes, for relief. He concluded by asking me next to try to cut back on felt as if I was plastered with failure. They smoked because they had soon attract the attention of all those who regard being happy as depressed. I’m a sensitive guy, you know? Being depressed is all my drinking and smoking, to exercise more frequently, improve my their whole lives in front of them, so they could spare a few years, something that should be taken for granted. And if that became the that some people have left to call their own.” diet, and then see how I feel, before returning in six weeks. He didn’t whereas every time I lit up I felt like I was living on borrowed time, case, we’d soon be back where we started. I knew he had given up. He had a wife and children as well as the mention masturbation again. Maybe I would be in a steady relation- and those younger than me appeared to view me as someone who by Covering what otherwise might have been the dancefloor in tyres pub to run. I was one of those old friends from his past that he’d been ship by then, I could hear him thinking sarcastically. now should care, but didn’t. Someone like me, as far as they were was a precautionary measure, but it worked. Now, if anybody tried to able to shake after he’d straightened himself out. “I tell you what, I’ll concerned, was a bit of a loser. The problem was, I wanted to tell dance, especially if they’d had a couple of drinks, they’d risk injury. give you three weeks,” he conceded in defeat, “but it’s got to be a I had been a DJ at Andy’s pub before, hand-picking gems from my them when I imagined having this conversation, was not that I didn’t Three weeks later, the bar was packed, and the centre of the room Tuesday and do you think you’ll be ready in three weeks’ time?” original vinyl collection to cue up on the decks. Since the advent of the care, but that I cared too much. was a large grid of tyres, each one occupied by a different person trying

32 | VICE VICE | 33 I am the fire, I am the flame. I am the one who stands strong. My fabric is tough, my heart is brave. My soul is also proudly made by each of you who wears me now and screams it loud,

not to lose their balance. Sometimes I played an uptempo Smiths song intended to keep my promise. That week I had already had my por- just to agitate the more excited of them and watched, bemused, as they trait taken by celebrity fashion photographer Richard Terry, propped fell over each other. Bouncers not normally employed on Tuesday nights up in bed in a psychiatric unit, surrounded by grinning patients, below were, by now, operating a one in, one out door policy. Outside, the the headline, “The man who made depression cool (again)”. queue stretched down the road. Inside the mood was still sombre, but it It was the Monday morning after the clocks had gone back. I’d also contained a warmth, because all those gathered knew that, as alone already warned those boarding the bus that there would be no toilet as they might feel on a Tuesday, they would now be less so. Requests stops, and the journey was scheduled to take seven hours. Those weren’t welcome, nor were complaints. While couples weren’t welcome, coming brought sandwiches for the journey, and dinner was to take I needed to make it clear that it wasn’t a singles night either. From my place in a Wetherspoons overlooking the frozen beach, before we position behind the decks, observing the room, I could reprimand any- made the slow journey home again. Somewhere near Birmingham body I viewed as enjoying themselves too much. People arrived as soon we took a wrong turning and soon we were an hour behind. The as we opened our doors to take up their position in the tyres, as if cries for a toilet stop were relentless. I asked Phil the bus driver, a standing there was the equivalent, in other, happier clubs, of standing heavy-set Geordie with fading prison tattoos, to turn up the music, on stage for those who wanted to pose and preen. There was a core of the Verve’s greatest hits, to drown them out. Looking behind me to people who’d been coming since the beginning, and, since it had moved catch sight of those on the trip, I realised just how much being sur- to Saturday from Tuesday, had been disappointed with the way the club rounded by such a depressing collection of people all the time had had been going. One night they cornered me. been getting on my nerves. Their gravitation towards failure was infectious, and, for the first time, I understood why those who have In this group was the author of the unauthorised Oasis biography tasted even a bit of success might want to surround themselves with (a biography that had been authorised before he was ceremoniously others like them, to remind them of who they are. It was the reason evicted from the band’s inner circle), the guy who’d originally come I had spent my years avoiding people I viewed as similar to myself, thinking we’d play more country, the guy who would sit there with before I had the idea for a night. Sometimes I just wanted to grab his headphones on, and a gothic-looking middle-aged lady from the them by their shoulders and shake them until they woke from their Balkans with tears tattooed on her face and a taste for Blink-182 stupor. By now there were pathetic boos of derision, but I told the and Crazy Town. On her wrist she had a serrated line tattooed with bus driver to press on. I’ll give them depressing: wait till we get to the inscription “Cut Here”. It’s just not as depressing as it used to Blackpool on an overcast afternoon in November. They’ll be beg- be, they complained. The night had become a victim of its own suc- ging me to take them back to Hackney without stopping. I had cess, and I knew that many of the people frequenting it now were already entertained the idea with Phil of accidentally leaving one of also the people that would desert it tomorrow when it was no the vulnerable ones behind to see how they’d fare. By now I could longer cool. feel an arm tugging weakly at my Opening Ceremony sleeve. I “So what’s the problem?” I asked, by now sick of their moaning pulled away with the force one uses to brush off a fly. But then I about how it wasn’t as miserable as it used to be. If it wasn’t as felt the same hand grabbing at my arm again. This time I turned to depressing as it used to be, I suspected that was because I wasn’t as face the agitator. It was Emily, a poet with a chronic stoop and an depressed as I had been, but I couldn’t admit this without looking like intolerable lisp. a fraud. But in running the night I had found a purpose, and I wasn’t “You have to stop the bus,” she begged. “I can’t stand it any longer, about to give it up just like that. I had met a girl, an up-and-coming I’m going to…” singer-songwriter. I’d even given up smoking. Recently there had been I couldn’t bear it any longer either, surrounded by these people. It had talk of a clothing line, a compilation album, and a tour of northern been a year since the night had begun and I snapped: “Piss yourself!” satellite towns. Was I meant to throw all this away just because a cou- ple of regulars claimed it wasn’t as depressing as it used to be? I It was the wrong thing to say, and I could tell by the way her accused them of not being as depressed as they claimed to be, but, one expression recoiled that, this time, I had gone too far. But instead of by one, they were adamant they were even more depressed in the feeling sorry for her, I felt a shiver of delight watching her trying to wake of the night’s continued success. regain her composure as she stood there shaking. She spoke again, her It was a terrible scene. Someone climbed onto the roof and flung voice by now a quivering wreck. themselves into the street below. True, I had opened the fire escape “You’re not depressed, you never were, I know what you are,” because it had been so hot that night, but I didn’t push her. And yes, I she said. And standing there, looking down at her, I was suddenly all had been playing the new Pink single, but, as I explained to the inves- ears for what she had to say. By now I knew I wasn’t depressed, but tigating officers, none of this had been calculated. After being advised I wasn’t sure what I was either, and it was this not knowing that by my lawyer, I admitted that the night was just a bit of a laugh, that caused my discomfort. By now I realised that depression was a blan- we weren’t really advocating depression. ket term for all manner of ailments I’d been hiding behind for years. They accepted this, but it was harder to convince the tabloid reporters Recently I had reached the conclusion that, if these people were doorstepping my house who’d labelled me “Britain’s vilest man”. depressed, then I wasn’t. Was I going to let this poetry student tell “I didn’t push her!” I raged at them as I made my way up my gar- me what I was? I had nothing to lose, so I let her. She let loose: den path with my new girlfriend, her pale face obscured by a pair of “You’re a fucking sadist!” vintage Chanel sunglasses, both of us weighed down by armfuls of yel- As I stood there on the coach, looking down at her, I appeared non- low Selfridges bags. plussed by what she’d called me, but in the nights that followed, when I lay in bed, I couldn’t stop needling myself that maybe that’s what I It was to be the club’s one-year anniversary, and I had organised a was. I looked back at the history of the club and the pleasure I had coach trip. Tickets were available on a first come, first served basis. gained from running it. If I was a sadist, there had to be an easier way We were going to Blackpool. The trip had been advertised as the most for someone like .me to get his kicks then running a weekly night in a depressing day trip you’ll ever have the misfortune of taking, and I pub in Hackney.

34 | VICE TWO NEW STORIES QUANT

oss finally saw it on the freeway, just a few miles north of the “I’m not an analyst, just a salesman,” he explained. “I translate BY SAM McPHEETERS airport. An animated auto-dealership sign blinked out the fall highly technical concepts into an easy-to-understand presentation. For R financing deals against the fading dusk, then flashed to most novice investors, it’s a bizarre concept that you could run a suc- announce SALESMAN OF THE MONTH JIM CURLAN. cessful investment strategy without any strategic input by people. So He’d been spotting fewer and fewer of these roadside testimonials on I’m the guy who normals it up.” the far-flung interstates of his travels. Were there fewer good salesmen “You’re talking about a black box,” Kim said. Ross decided he THE WELCHER in the world? Or just fewer companies willing to congratulate them in liked this guy. public? The dealership complex passed in a blur of light as he dialled “That’s it exactly. Data goes in the black box, stock picks come out information on his cell phone. of the black box. That’s it in a nutshell.” box of Man Is the Bastard CDs named Dennis was riding a “Zip it, girly,” he told her. “You better tell me where to find him A robot voice asked for a city name. Ross over-enunciated, as if “Ross, why on earth would I trust a black box with my money?” bicycle down the street. At the intersection, he ran into his today, right now, or you’re both gonna be eating food through a straw speaking to an idiot, “San-ho-zay. Cal-ih-for-nya.” The voice paused Steff asked. A old friend, a stainless-steel industrial sink named Hans. for the next month.” then cheerfully asked for a name. “Foot-Hills-Knee-sahn,” he said, “Why would you trust a black box on an airplane?” Kim said, tak- “Well, fancy meeting you here,” said Hans. “If you’re threatening me, I’m going to call the police,” she said seeing this name neatly inverted in the rearview mirror. There was a ing Ross’s side. “Howdy do,” said Dennis. firmly, reaching for a cell phone on the blanket closest to them. silence and then the robot made a phone ring somewhere deep inside “Actually, the question is why would you trust the people who built “Finally taking a day off from work?” “Wait a minute. This is your blanket?” Dennis said. “That means the sprawling, overlit complex still flashing in the mirrors. Ross the black box,” Ross said. “Well, it’s just such a beautiful morning,” Dennis the box of Man he was just here. And there’s only one place someone could hide on punched a given number for the company directory and then another “But you just said that people had no input.” Is the Bastard CDs said. “I woke up and thought, ‘If only I could this beach.” She saw him glance over towards the municipal court- number to reach his party. Jim Curlan’s voice—confident, with a “Yeah, you did,” Kim said, switching sides, apeing their old banter. take a personal day, and just go enjoy life, for once,’ you know? house 30 feet away. trace of boredom—asked him to please leave a message. The record- Ross smiled. And then I realised, ‘Jesus, why don’t I take a personal day and “No,” she pleaded. But he was already running across the sand. “No,” ing beeped. “The quant was designed by humans to filter out human error. We enjoy life and go down to the beach? You know, live a little!’ So she screamed after him. “Don’t hurt him! He’s my entire world! NO!!” “Jim. You piece of shit,” Ross said serenely. even use a separate, smaller quant to sift out human biases from our here I am.” He kicked open the door to the municipal courthouse. Jimmy was “You thought I’d forgotten what you did? You fucking maggot. You initial data mining...” He was right about that—it was a glorious day, all sunshiny and huddled in the corner. He was indeed a bottle of children’s aspirin, disgusting venereal-wart joke of a man.” He sighed and glanced back in “It sounds a lot like internet gambling,” she interrupted. breezy blue. Clouds drifted lazily in the sky like leaves in a creek. with comically skinny cartoon legs and arms. the rearview mirror, and even though it seemed counterintuitive with the “It does, if gambling clocks you a nine-point rate of return. Look, “Well, you couldn’t have picked a better day to go to the beach,” “Well, well, well,” he said, grinning. “If it isn’t my old pal. How dealership getting further and further away, said, “I’m coming to get our risk management is exponentially more rigorous than most meat said Hans, who, as previously mentioned, was a stainless-steel indus- you doing, old pal? Staying out of the sun?” you, Jim. Here I come.” He yawned and let a nice pause settle in. funds. That’s what we call traditional investment funds behind their trial sink. “I’m actually just returning from my mid-morning swim. I “I was gonna pay you, man, honest, I was,” the bottle said. “I just “Better grow some eyes on your back, buddy. This is really happen- back,” he said, suppressing the urge to wink. “And we have lower ing. You fucked up. So get ready. Twenty-four seven.” overhead. Tiny research staff, no star stock pickers, no prima don- would spend the afternoon working on my tan, but unfortunately I’ve need a little more time...” He let another pause sink in, then whispered, so low it was almost a nas. We’ve got this motto: ‘Let the data drive.’ It’s corny, but hey, got to pick up my wife and nine children in an hour so we can go “You know, I don’t mind that you don’t return my emails, and I Christmas-tree shopping.” croak, “Doomsday, Jim Curlan.” we run on facts, not intuition.” don’t even mind that you got your girlfriend to cover your ass like the “I just hope the beach isn’t too crowded by the time I get there,” “Meat fund,” Steff said, looking away and rolling her eyes. “That’s hidey-hole-hiding little bitch you are,” Dennis said, grabbing one of said Dennis. An hour later, in San Francisco, he pushed through half curtains printed so stupid.” But Ross knew from her smile that he could sell them right the aluminium baseball bats conveniently stacked by the front door. “Right, right,” laughed Hans. “Oh, speaking of the beach, you’ll with cartoon octopuses brandishing a sinister assortment of knives and now. It would be nothing. By the time the check arrived, they would “But you know what really burns me? It’s that everyone talks about never guess who I just ran into—it was Jimmy, remember him? That swords. Steff had told him to meet her here, at this particular have written his company contact info on a napkin. Within a month how nice you are. ‘He’s such a nice guy, that bottle of children’s aspirin.’ nice bottle of children’s aspirin?” Japanese-fusion eatery in this particular neighbourhood, too late for they’d be clients. And I thought so too. I thought you were such a nice guy that I stuck my “JIMMY THE BOTTLE OF CHILDREN’S ASPIRIN?” Dennis the dinner but not too late to catch a drink and debrief each other on their “I bet you use this exact same speech all over the country, trying to neck out and loaned you six bucks. And here it is a week later, and I box of Man Is the Bastard CDs roared. “THAT MOTHERFUCKER lives. Steff and Ross had dated for a few months in college, but they’d sucker all your poor college pals into this wicked pyramid scheme,” have to search across the 12 continents to get my money back. That’s OWES ME MONEY!!” worked much better as pals. Now she was married, to a man named she said. what really gets me.” He twirled the aluminium baseball bat. “Everyone He raced down to the beach on his bicycle and screeched to a halt Kim whom Ross had never met, and as he spotted them in a booth “I never said I didn’t. Signed up Stu in August,” he said truthfully. thinks you’re the nicest guy in the history of nice guys, when I know the by a group of carrot cakes in the parking lot. toward the back—Steff next to a runtish, moustached little fellow— Ross was the only frequent flyer from the old gang, the lone cross- “Anybody seen Jimmy?” The carrot cakes shrugged nervously, truth. You’re just a two-bit, no-good, needle-dick little welcher.” he realised he’d never met any man named Kim and perhaps didn’t yet pollinator for a once tight-knit group in which Steff had been the lone detecting the rage in his voice. “Aw jeez, no, for the lova Christ” the bottle of children’s aspirin trust this new husband. girl: him, her, Stu, Chet, Todd, Gordo. “How about you,” he asked an anti-abortion sign wearing a som- pleaded. “I’m gonna be a father soon, please don’t hurt me.” He slid into the booth opposite the newlyweds. Handshakes were “Hey, yeah, that reminds me. Have you seen Chet?” she said. brero. “You seen Jimmy?” Dennis raised the bat. “I think it’s a little too late for...” exchanged. A waiter came by. Drinks arrived. “Chet still makes good money repairing ATMs. Still lives in Dallas.” The anti-abortion sign wearing a sombrero gulped and said, “I A shrill civil-defence siren wailed in the distance. Kim said, “So. Steff tells me you’re on the road all the time.” “He’s still married to...” think I mighta seen him at the hot-dog stand an hour ago...” “The fuck?” “I am. Ten months a year, 15 presentations a week.” “Still married to that lady who runs the belly-dancing website. Saw “An hour ago. Thanks, brainiac, that really helps,” he said, jump- He reached down and switched on the transistor radio he kept with “What exactly do you do?” them in June.” ing off the bicycle. him at all times. A newscaster was talking. “She didn’t explain it?” To Kim, Steff explained, “Chet was the guy we were all so sure “Anybody touches my bike is gonna have a nosebleed through their “... scientists have confirmed that the Large Hadron Collider in “Yeah. I explained it,” Steff snorted sarcastically. She’d put on con- was going to be a famous comedian.” asshole when I get back,” he yelled over his shoulder. western Europe has created a massive black hole that will engulf the siderable weight since the last time they’d seen each other, six years “He still could be,” Ross said. The beach was packed: sunbathers, swimmers, frisbee players. very planet in a matter of minutes, if not seconds...” already, but still had that great broad smile. “Remember those horrible prank phone calls we used to do?” Steff He realised he might never find one lone bottle of children’s aspirin Dennis laughed. Jimmy laughed. From very far away, a terrible “I’m a quant salesman,” Ross said. asked Ross, but for the benefit of her husband. Ross took a long, in this crowd. Suddenly a voice called his name. He turned around sucking noise grew louder and louder. “Wow. OK. What?” thoughtful sip from his beer and glanced over at the twin name to see a 2003 Toyota Highlander striding across the beach toward “You know why I’m laughing?” Jimmy said. “See?” Steff said out of the corner of her mouth. plaques near the restrooms, photos of the owner and manager. him. “No.” Dennis said. “Aw, it’s not that crazy,” Ross said, swigging his beer. “I’m the pub- “Vaguely.” “Where’s your boyfriend?” Dennis snarled. “I’m laughing because I’ve been bangin’ your wife for the last 40 lic face of a quantitatively managed investment fund. Meaning, a fund “What kind of prank calls?” Kim asked. “He’s not here,” Sheila the 2003 Toyota Highlander said. “Why years!” that uses only computer-based models to make investment decisions.” “The worst kind,” she said. “The really evil kind.” can’t you leave him alone? He’ll pay you on Wednesday, when he gets Dennis was. about to reply, but then the terrible black hole was “I thought you all went to a liberal-arts college,” Kim said. Kim glanced to Ross with a look of delighted expectation. Ross his paycheque.” upon them. “We did,” Ross and Steff said in near unison. shrugged.

36 | VICE VICE | 37 “Chet had all these crazy characters he’d do. Like, a drill sergeant, “Nope. That’s out. White and blue says retail.” contrition of the alcoholics, replaced by the pleading chaos of General off the hotel lobby, he located the table furthest from a dozen-strong an angry neighbor, a confused Hungarian landlord...” “It does?” Addiction, a wild, desperate bunch, a revival meeting for mutants. The gaggle of parents and screaming toddlers. Ten minutes later, eggs and “Albanian,” Ross corrected. “We’re going to switch you to Wallace Green with classic black counsellor was a weathered little imp with an absurd blond crew cut, bacon pushed aside to make room for his collection of local post- “Albanian landlord. He’d just lay into people, totally humiliate four-inch.” a man who’d apparently descended into, and returned from, every pit cards, he sighed with satisfaction. So many good choices. On a them. We’d sit around and listen to him go off for hours.” “You are?” of vice available. The imp had no patience for self-pity. postcard featuring the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame, he wrote “You’d all crowd around the phone?” Kim said. “I’ll drop-ship some ties to your hotel tonight. Call me after “What are you overeating?” the counsellor had mockingly asked a an address in blocky capital letters—a housewife who’d written a “No, we—somebody—had one of those sucker microphone things Sacramento.” morbidly obese woman in a double-wide scooter. “Carrots? Celery?” concerned letter to the Oregonian a year earlier—then drew a small for the old telephones. We’d tape the calls on a boom box so we could She’d hung her head to blubber, and the imp mounted a folding tombstone on the message side. Inside the tombstone he printed all listen in.” The burn of this costume change followed him through the day’s pre- chair and used the spectacle as a teachable moment. R.I.P. YOU. Behind him, a grown man was saying, “Dylan, honey! “Couldn’t they trace the number?” Kim asked with real concern. sentations and into the following day in Reno. Carefully inserting yet “Addiction is fine as long you’re addicted to something that doesn’t Where’s your juicy juice?” “This was the old days, before caller ID. You could call people all and although into his speeches made him annoyed, and pondering hurt you. Find that thing and get addicted to it, people. It’s as simple His phone rang: 918. night long and never get caught.” his own annoyance made him more annoyed still. Catching his as that.” “Yeh-low.” “Amen to that,” Ross said softly. reflection in the mirror at the back of a conference room, he realised Ross had smiled. This he could do. He’d hadn’t touched alcohol since. “Do you believe in karma?” “And this guy!” she said, pointing across the table. “This guy was the the green-black combo made him look like a card shark, or an As he saw it, there was a finite amount of stress in the world. All “Actually, I don’t.” worst. His speciality...” affordable gigolo. he did was transfer tension away from himself, like a heat sink. At “You don’t believe that what goes around comes around?” Her “Aw, Kim doesn’t want to hear all this...” There weren’t many problems, however, that a good layover couldn’t no point did he actually add to or subtract from the aggregate vol- voice was serene, with no trace of yesterday’s anguish. “Ross would find a couple in the phone book. Like, Jane and John fix. He stepped into the Denver International Airport the next morn- ume of pain on the planet. It just got sloshed from person to person. “Na. Shitheads rule the roost in every arena of human history,” Jones. And then he’d call and whoever picked up—like, if a woman ing armed with 50 minutes and his red pocket notebook. The His hobby, it turned out, involved the exact same process as his job: Ross said, loudly slurping his coffee. “And the virtuous get the answered, he’d go, ‘Jane?’ And she’d say, ‘Yeah?’ And then Ross notebook was alphabetised by city. Under DENVER, after a half- reducing complex ideas into saleable morsels. Let the data drive. No shaft. No one ever gets exactly what they got coming.” would say, really softly, ‘John’s cheating on you.’” She and Kim were dozen tiny lines carefully crossed out by ballpoint, he found two prima donnas. Danny’s cheating on you. “Really?” laughing together, husband and wife. names, each marked with tiny notations: PM for property manager— “Really. See the news this morning? That mudslide in Belize? Don’t “And Ross had this crazy way of hanging up. The ‘Ross Touch.’ info gleaned from some anonymous wall plaque months earlier—and That night, Ross found two packages waiting for him at the hotel desk tell me all those little kids deserved what they got.” Just real light.” She mimicked this motion daintily with her fork. OP for op-ed, denoting some poor slob who’d had the in Raleigh. One was a large box from Carly—for a moment he She paused, perhaps in consideration. “Maybe they were bad kids.” “Reeeal soft. Click.” Kim was laughing a little too hard. misfortune to write the Post anytime within the last year. thought it was a huge batch of ties—containing the autumn company From behind, he heard an upsurge of screaming children followed by “‘Just thought you should know.’” She lifted the fork for an encore, From a payphone white pages, he learned that the property manager prospectuses. The other package was a light express envelope. An hour the sound of tiny hands beating a tabletop like a conga drum. whispering, “‘Bye-bye.’ Click.” had moved on in life. But the letter writer yielded a listing, which in later, he retired to the hotel’s business centre with damp hair and an “That is possible. But, OK... what about 9 /11? Or Darfur? What “That’s wrong,” Kim managed to get out between chortles. “So, so, turned yielded a voice-mail message. He waited for the beep. unexpected drowsiness. This business centre was really just a business about the Holocaust? You’re going to get tangled up in logic if you so wrong.” “Hey Karen. Hey Josh. Guess who? No, don’t guess. I’ll tell you. nook, barely wide enough for a computer and printer, so he sat with keep...” Steff wiped an eye. “We spent hours and hours doing this. It was I’m a totally whacked-out nutjob. Also, guess what? I’m going to be the express envelope and a company catalogue in his lap. “We’re not talking about Darfur,” the voice said evenly. “We’re just addictive.” at 2320 Elkwood sometime between 4 and 6 AM, and I’m going to The envelope was what interested him. He ripped open the little talking about you.” Ross smiled and took another long swig of his beer, finally saying, smear my creamy faeces all over your windows. So keep your eyes tab and realised, with annoyance, that his CD came sheathed in noth- “Then you definitely just got checked by logic.” “So. Kim. What do you do?” peeled? Ta!” ing more than a flimsy paper sleeve. He removed this, spindling the “Why’s that?” At a different pay phone, he found a different copy of the white disc on his finger and holding it up to glint under the fluorescents to “Because if there was any kind of cosmic justice in play, I’d have Daily road conferences with his boss, Carly, were always harder on pages. He flipped through this and hit a good line at random: check for scratches. retired to a houseboat ten years ago,” he said, hanging up. the West Coast. The next morning, Ross was up before dawn. It Moisey, Cindy and Danny. Who lists nicknames in a phone book? A India had 10 to 12 million internet users. He now had 800,000 of would be after 8:30 in New York. He glanced down through heavy woman answered. their email addresses speared around his left index finger. The mailing Ross loved the nowhere zones of his transits. Interstitials. He thrived hotel curtains as if looking for someone, seeing only the stretch of “Cindy?” list had cost him $450, about one day’s commission. He had all night in hotel suites and airport lounges. He looked forward to casual din- desolate twilight-grey sidewalk visible from his window. Carly said, “Yes,” a woman’s voice said, a bit breathless. She’d run to answer to figure out how to grievously insult 800,000 people in the English- ing, to reading the sports pages over a plate of ribs in an unfamiliar “Your number keeps coming up blocked.” Next to the suite’s sink, a the phone. speaking world. With his free hand, he logged into his email account city and not having to talk to anybody. He crossed the earth, visiting tiny coffeemaker quietly tinkled into itself. “Danny’s cheating on you.” and flipped the empty express mailer into the tiny trash can, reading bathrooms he would use once and never see again. “I keep meaning to fix that,” he said, stifling a yawn. After a wonderful bit of silence, he added, “Bye” and hung up the HAVE A CONVERSATION WITH THE NUMBERS on the fresh “Yesss,” she said over the sound of ruffled papers, a deeply sexy phone tenderly. It was at that moment he realised: he would someday prospectus on his lap. When had they switched mottos? His phone Ross was fumbling with his notebook, trying to transcribe a HOW’S voice disembodied from a deeply homely face. “Speaking of fixes. We miss payphones. There’s simply no way to communicate emotion by was vibrating. MY DRIVING? number while barrelling north on I-95, when his need to discuss your ‘buts.’ Again.” pressing a button on a cell. As if to emphasise this point, his own “Why would you say that?” a woman’s voice asked, nasal and phone rang. “Really.” phone rang. He was surprised to realise he didn’t recognise the 918 pleading. “Yeah?” he said, giving up on the notebook with a frustrated sigh. “Really. The quant isn’t happy about this.” area code. “What?” “You want to know what I think?” said the voice from the 918 As stipulated in his contract, each of Ross’s presentations was dig- “Yeah?” Ross said. “Why would you tell me my husband died?” area code. itally recorded and emailed back to the home office, to be “Oh.” It was a different woman’s voice, cheery but hesitant. “Ahm. “I think you got the wrong number, lady.” “Do I have a choice?” transcribed and analysed by proprietary software. His lectures were Can I speak to Ed?” “Do you have any idea what it’s like to think your husband is dead?” “I think you’re the kind of person who, anytime someone calls you a work in progress, ever susceptible to the whims of pure analysis. “You want to speak with Ed?” He laughed. “Is that a trick question?” with a wrong number, you answer with the most horrible thing you Although this particular program operated independently of the The woman’s voice paused. “Yeah. Is he there?” “For three hours? Do you have any clue what agony that was?” can think of.” main investment-analysis engine, he and Carly had long since begun “I don’t know any easy way to say this,” he said, glancing over to “I don’t know.” Ross yawned. “Can it match the agony of having “Huh.” referring to these separate systems as one, a benevolent brain guiding his gate with a breathy exhale. “So I’m just going to say it. Ed died your concentration interrupted while you’re trying to type a very “And that makes me think you’re the kind of person who takes any its fallible human operatives. two hours ago.” important letter?” opportunity he can to make people miserable.” “You’re using that word too much. It implies indecision, Ross. He hung up and powered off the phone, feeling good again. Freebies. The woman’s voice went silent. He almost thought she’d hung up “Well, hey, far be it from me to disabuse—” Notice, I never use the word unless I’m discussing it with you.” on him when he heard the quick involuntary intake of a sob. “—and so what I want to know is, have you suffered because of this?” “If someone in the crowd moons me, how do I refer to their body Years earlier, after he’d gotten fired from his marriage, Ross had “You fucking... bastard.” There was another, louder sob, then she “Have what?” part?” audited a month of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the base- said, “Aren’t you sorry?” “Have you suffered? Has someone, somewhere, punished you for “You said that last time I brought this up, and it wasn’t really funny ment of a pet store. He wasn’t looking to join any of the 12 steps. “I am a tad regretful that I answered my phone just now,” he said what you’ve done?” then either. What are you wearing?” This nudged him awake. Instead, Ross needed a pitch, an angle. He was already in sales at with a laugh, adding “Click” before actually hanging up. But when he He chuckled warmly, taken off guard. “Come again?” that point: He wanted someone to sell him on the idea of sobriety. glanced at the blank computer screen, his smile dropped. His concen- “Please say yes,” she added softly. “Shirt and tie. What colour combos. Jesus, what did you think I He’d needed a way to quit binge drinking without having it seem tration had indeed been interrupted. “Why do you care what I say?” meant?” like self-denial. “Crap.” “Because it’ll be quicker for you if you’ve already suffered.” “Uh.” he looked over at the day’s wardrobe, neatly splayed on the The meetings had done nothing for him. But one night he’d arrived “What will be quicker?” suite’s unused bed. “Looks like today it’s French-cuff off-white— buzzed and, enjoying his seat, stuck around for the nine o’clock group. The morning required a quick mental calculus. Did Ross’s love of “Ed.” cream?—with the royal-blue tie.” This was an entirely different crowd. Gone was the buttoned-down free breakfast outweigh his distaste for families? In the dining area “‘Ed’ will be quicker for me is why you want to know.”

38 | VICE VICE | 39 She paused, and when she finally answered she spoke with precise “No, I mean occupational hazard for you. You algorithm quant his presentation that they actually perused the company website “YOU WILL STOP FUCKING CALLING MY DAUGHTER!!” enunciation, choosing her words with care. guys bring the crazy out in everybody.” during the presentation itself. the voice roared with such abrupt fury that Ross actually squawked “Sooner or later I’ll have to tell him what happened.” “That so?” “Way up. So, yeah. I gotta say... whatever it is that’s eating you, in shock, tossing the cell phone overhead and past the bedspread. “So?” She finished pouting at herself, snapped the mirror shut, and looked hey. Keep up the good work.” She laughed genially. “Seriously, I He sat frozen, listening to the caller rage in the distance. Only after “I can’t lie to him.” him in the eye. hope everything’s going OK.” She laughed again. “Although not too the room was silent for a long minute did he follow the tiny “Again, so?” “I’ve been telling you this for years, Ross. You got a fucked-up busi- OK. No, I’m joking.” screen’s glow to a hollow in a rumpled coverlet—he’d somehow “Any information you give me, I will have to tell Ed.” ness model. Your risk exposures are too high.” That morning, he’d looked up “Ross Garmey” online. Even mis- launched it to the next bed—switched the phone off, and collapsed “I reiterate. So. What.” spelt, his name lead directly to his photo and schedule. Then he’d with a groan. “So... Ed hurts people.” That evening, he drove to the airport with an irritating and undefined looked up the mysterious area code, learning that its three digits Another groan woke him. A stab of light spilled in through the gap Here Ross surprised himself by exploding in laughter. Several years dread. In the terminal, he swiped his credit card into a kiosk and was added up to northeastern Oklahoma. He’d made the four-hour drive in the curtains and a bitter taste in his mouth told him he’d been ago, in Utah, he’d accidentally cut off a biker in traffic. The man had rewarded with a flimsy paper slip, a vestige from the days when air- from Tulsa to Kansas City enough times to remember its rest stops. In unconscious at some point, although it was hard to believe it was for followed him down the highway for 20 ominous minutes. But when lines held a trace of glamour. Elsewhere, a teller wordlessly swiped the the afternoon, he’d given three talks in one of the smaller chambers long. He rose with stiffness. It was 6:40: 20 minutes to shower and Ross finally arrived at the airport, bypassing the rental-car drop-off flimsy paper slip beneath a laser, producing a tinny ping that let Ross of the Kansas City Convention Center, a room built for 1,800 people. shave and get on the road to St Louis. He dialled Carly. and easing straight into Departures, there was nothing for his pursuer advance down a metal corridor. A number on the flimsy paper slip In the largest of his talks he’d spoken to maybe 100 people. Normally “I can’t do today. You have to cancel.” to do. It was the most secure curb in the state. Later, flying away, he’d matched a vacant chair. In flight, vast, invisible systems managed his such vast, carpeted chambers invigorated him, spurring him to politi- “Why.” had to suppress laughing just like this. No one could bully him. He passage—a blip on a succession of screens—and at a pre-determined cian-grade oration. Today he felt like a high schooler running for “I’m sick.” lived nowhere. time and place, the plane slid back to earth. class president. During each presentation, he’d registered a new and “How?” He wanted to communicate this concept to her now, but he was After a long walk through more chilled air he found another unwanted lucidity, examining the faces of all the strange, intent men The question confused him. “Well. Fever, for one thing. Chills. Um. howling and snorting and even tearing up too hard to speak. She was kiosk, typed in a fresh code, and was issued another flimsy paper watching his every word. At the end of the day, he’d lingered by the Puking.” still saying something, pleading comically. Finally, all he could get out slip. This slip led him to a parking lot and then a parking spot where loading dock until a surging crowd—ferret enthusiasts, he’d read ear- “Since when.” was “Awwww... fuck it. OK?” before hanging up and reaching for the a rental sedan waited with keys dangling from its ignition. He lier, in the lobby—allowed him to slip out to his car and slink out of “Last night. After we talked.” assortment of fast-food napkins that rode shotgun. plugged a cheap plastic TV screen into the car’s cigarette lighter, and the massive lot. “Come on, Ross...” a computer voice told him where to drive. On the highway, he put “I need to change my phone number,” Ross said. “What?” In Richmond, he sat across a linen tablecloth from Tracy and asked, the car in cruise control and felt as if he was being pulled along on “Are you serious?” “You know I have all the data from yesterday’s presentations.” “Have you ever had to deal with any crazies? In a professional capacity?” invisible train tracks. When he turned on the radio, a voice dedicated “Yeah.” He coughed unconvincingly. “And?” She seemed to give the question serious thought. Tracy was his coun- a song to someone named Little Spooky, and when the song started She made a quiet sucking noise and then said, “Sorry. No.” “Come on. Don’t make me say it.” terpart—or competition, depending on the flavour of the up it was so riddled with Auto-Tune it might as well have been “Excuse me?” He couldn’t think of a response, and after a silence she finally said, conversation—at one of Boston’s leading traditional equity funds. She singing androids. “I had to fight to secure you a 917 area code.” “We both know you’re not sick.” was a broad-shouldered, high-foreheaded black woman with a stern The car brought him to a hotel. In the lobby, another kiosk—this “Yeah?” He hung up, accepting a deeper level of confusion. In the bathroom, poker face. Occasionally their travels overlapped for a night of sexual one sleek and rounded and reading DIRECT CHECK IN—issued “They’re long gone. You can’t just get a new one. It’s like getting a he splashed water on his face and laughed when he caught himself in gymnastics. But usually they never crossed paths for more than an hour. him a plastic card with another four-digit number. In the elevator, he 212, or a four-letter domain name.” the mirror. He wasn’t sick. He wasn’t mentally ill, or having a break- After today’s brunch, she was off to meet a group of Colonial pressed the button matching the first two digits of this number. On “So?” down, or losing his hold on life. It was ridiculous. Nothing had Williamsburg asset managers. Ross had a lunch appointment with the his floor, he found a room matching the last two digits of this num- “So, do you really want to be a 646? A 929? A nobody?” changed. He was fine. pension-fund supervisor of a multinational skateboard company. It was ber. When he slid the card into a tight metal slot, a tiny light winked “Look, I need...” a day of rare parity; each could mock the other’s business model— green, indicating he had shelter for the night. He had made it from “The answer’s no, Ross. That’s not negotiable.” She laughed, trying Twenty minutes later he was packed, showered but unshaven— quantitative versus qualitative—with something approaching symmetry. one city to another without speaking to a single human being. to defuse her own tone. “Hey, if it’s any consolation, you’re going to maybe the MFTs would like this look—and out the door. In the “Remember Zobach?” she said, dabbing at her cheek with a napkin. Ross flipped on the light and paused to lean on the cool wallpaper kill it with commissions this month.” elevator, he marvelled at his own psychic resilience. This wasn’t the “Zobach Management Group?” of his new home. The dread he’d felt 700 miles earlier was still here, first time he’d sunk below the horizon for a night. But he always “Yeah.” in this room. He extracted his phone from behind his wallet and After dinner—room service, left by the door—he squeezed himself bounced back quick and hard. One fundamental truth kept him “Never heard of them.” turned it slowly in his hands, like a smooth stone. What was he forget- down into the space between the second, unused bed and the anchored: he was a champion salesman. Defying the odds, he’d “Of course you haven’t.” She smiled. “But I know you never pitched ting? Clicking the phone on, he saw a tiny orange airplane in the room’s wall-length window. With one outstretched foot, he nudged found the one thing he was best at in this world, and he’d been them when Richard Zobach was around. I had one meeting with the guy, upper left corner of its screen. Hours earlier, this was how he’d imag- the curtain open just wide enough to survey the parking lot. allowed—encouraged!—to do this one thing. What rare fraction of and ten minutes in he tells me he’s ‘committed to honesty’.” ined his own flight appearing in the national air-traffic-control Occasional headlights illuminated rows of cars, spotlighting all the humanity ever got such an opportunity? “Huh?” network. He took the phone off airplane mode, aligning it with its hollows and backseats where a man could hide. He’d felt sure that Ross stepped into the lobby, wishing he could call this Ed fellow. It “That’s what I said. In not so many words. Apparently it was like a own invisible network. someone was following him on the drive from the convention cen- would be just one more sale. He wouldn’t even have to prep. He could New Age, lifestyle, self-help thing. Being ‘committed to honesty’ meant He had six messages. Three were from Carly (watch his preposi- tre, despite all the turns and feints he’d forced on his exasperated just explain that he’d been drunk, that the guy’s wife had misheard you couldn’t lie, among other things. He spent the rest of the meeting tions; she’d booked him a teeth whitening in St Paul; seriously, dashboard navigator. “Recalculating,” the computer had repeated him, that there’d been an unfortunate error. He could offer them a critiquing my hairdo. Apparently that’s what he had to be honest watch those prepositions), one from Tracy (his online schedule put mindlessly, mirroring his own panic. Safe here now, Ross sat per- nice night at the best restaurant in Tulsa, or whatever little whistle- about.” them both in Dallas overnight next month), and one from the fectly still, listening to the sounds of the hotel that surrounded him: stop they called home. In three sentences—five, tops—he could flip “You get the account?” building manager of the Kansas City Convention Center (his entry footsteps in the hallway, a gurgle of plumbing, muted laughter, the guy’s sympathies. It would be nothing. “Yeah, but then a week later he went nuts and tried to board a code had been emailed). The sixth message was no message: a brighter but more distant laughter from the world outside. He As with most early-morning hotel lobbies, children ran whooping flight to London without any clothes on. I lost the whole thing.” click. He scrolled through Recent Calls without suspense. 918. could use a drink. circles around luggage and oblivious fathers. For once, Ross “Fascinating story,” he said, finishing his coffee. “Maybe you can There it was. Ross extracted his phone and dialled ten digits at random. Time for enjoyed the din. He wouldn’t have traded places with any of these tell it to Ben Franklin in a few hours.” He checked his outgoing voice-mail message, hearing, “You have a morale boost. Someone answered. bleary, badly dressed dads for a million bucks, but it was nice to “Hey, at least I’m not going to be scrounging for nickels with reached Ross Garmey. Please leave a message.” He sounded confident, “Hello, hi.” His mouth was dry. “I’m conducting a survey...” have them here, to be a part, no matter how fleeting, of their family teenage skateboard dudes,” she said, motioning for the cheque and with a trace of boredom. “Now you listen here, peckerwood,” a man’s voice said. “I’m not memories. He and they were the same: guys with functions. He adding, affectionately, “Dick.” going to go one more night listening to my daughter cry herself to liked that. He sighed, glancing around the room for manager-award plaques or “You’re stressed,” Carly said to him the following night, once he was sleep. You stop calling her.” Ross reached for one of the complimentary apples on the front desk special-employee notices. safely back in his room. He understood she meant this as a statement, “But sir, I’m just conducting a brief...” and grinned in sudden revelation. He was Ed’s number. 917. 918. The “You been having problems with a crazy?” she asked, fishing in her not a question. The quant tallied not only words and phrases, but also “Listen. If you call here again...”—the voice mashed itself into difference between Manhattan and eastern Oklahoma was just a single purse and then retrieving a compact mirror. the pauses and intakes between words and phrases. Last December, it’d the receiver with a slight vibrato of rage—“... if you call here again, digit. It was the most obvious thing in the world. He pulled out his “Not in so many words.” told him he was coming down with the flu two days before he’d felt me and Tom Langley are going to drive out to Fisher Creek Road. phone and, still holding the apple, dialled his own number—the ver- “Hey, insanity is, you know, an occupational hazard.” any symptoms. And I am going to blow your goddamned brains out. Is that clear? sion of his number existing in an alternate, lower-Midwest “How? You just said the worst you had to deal with was getting “Also, your MFTs are up,” she added, referring to his Mobile Do you understand?” universe—with one outstretched finger. Time. to make a sale. your weave dissed.” Follow Throughs, the number of people who had been so moved by “Wha...” Somewhere in the lobby a phone rang.

40 | VICE VICE | 41 JANUS

BY TERRY SOUTHERN

erry lived in Geneva from 1955 to 1960. He did some of his “All right, Viv,” he said, rubbing his hands together, “now let’s get best writing there, including many short stories (this with it! Don’t be so afraid of showing a little emotion once in a while. T previously unpublished piece among them) and his early Christ, that’s what makes this business of living the wonderful... big busi- novels The Magic Christian, Candy, and Flash and Filigree. ness it is—the biggest darn business on earth to my way of thinking! Just When they could afford it, he and my mother, Carol (a painter and try to open up, let the impressions come in. You don’t seem to have any... elementary school teacher), braved the Swiss Alps for France or sensitivity—you aren’t colour-blind or anything like that, are you? Italy—often battling perilous conditions like black ice, gas rations, Hmm? Hmm?” He pinched her hip. They had gotten out of the car while and flat tyres along the way. David Tully, author of Terry Southern he was talking and were near the balustrade now, holding hands. and the American Grotesque, writes that “Janus” (named after the “Well, they do seem stronger,” she insisted calmly, looking down on two-headed god of time, departures, and arrivals) is “a loving it all, where out of the majestic tumble of great golden rocks sprawling valentine to… Carol... demonstrating how the power of kindness can down to the sea, rose a forest of wet-green cypress, rose down and transform even the cynical cool of Southern himself... [in] necessary down, throbbing with purple, down to the blue beating sea, to the counterpoint to his own jaded hipster worldview.” While Terry white and inviolate beach that raced along the coast till the mountain usually extrapolated characters from those he knew (often fell and jettisoned out to a point and the white rock town of lambasting them), this is one of his few stories offering a dose of Bordighera, settled there in the shadow of a lighthouse. good-natured self-parody. Between where they were standing and the town, and about a mile —NILE SOUTHERN out to sea, was a rock, monstrous and barren, rising from the ocean like a cathedral. But it was on the shore side of the scene then that “Well, that wasn’t too bad,” David West muttered as he put the car in something happened. In the distance, from the very top, a hawk the gear and pulled out onto the high seacoast road. He was speaking, size of a small airplane began to fall in a plummeting dive toward the more or less, to his wife, Vivian, beside him, concerning the ease with sea, and the people at the balustrade caught their breath as one. Huge which they had just passed the Ventimiglia customs. bird of prey, silent except for the rage of heaven against the great grey “Not too bad,” he went on in a burlesque of the quite ordinary way wings which it seemed they could almost hear, it dropped like a shell he had said it before, “and not too good!” He grimaced oddly at the over the tops of the trees, down, down, down to the sea where it lev- swatch of sunlight on the windshield. “Should have changed some elled off and sailed, endlessly out, only rising at last in a soundless, money though, goddamn it,” he added, casting a sidelong glance at his screaming arc, up and onto the great barren rock. wife, his brows gathered in fierceness. No one, except perhaps the photographers, had missed it and “Aren’t the colours marvellous,” said Vivian happily. She was look- ing out the window on her side of the car. The sun was about to set, there was a moment of silence. and the landscape and the sea beyond melted into a spangle of soft “Well, that seems to be that,” said David finally. He took the girl’s burning colours. “They’re so much stronger than in France... the dif- arm and started back to the car. “Best push on, my dear! Best push on ference is just amazing!” if we’re to be at the Metcalfs’ in good time. In good time for good din- David grunted while reaching for a cigarette, an assent meant as ner—perhaps they’ll be having partridge.” marked dissent. Sitting on the bench by their car were four men, Italians, and as David “Oh yes,” she insisted pleasantly, squeezing his arm without taking got in on his side, which was nearest them, one of the four rose rather her eyes off the scene ahead, where from the twisting road the amber hurriedly, came over, and knelt down between David and the open car rocks fell away for half a mile through darkest cypress, down to the door. David leaned out of the door himself then, believing he had proba- blue white-breaking Mediterranean. bly dropped something that the man was recovering for him. So they He had expected to hear something like this, but it still came as an were quite close together, and in a sort of conspiratorial attitude, when annoyance. What ideas women had about Italy! Alien, sexual, threat- the man, still kneeling on the ground by the car, and without raising his ening. Stronger colours! Were they really? He looked; who could say? eyes, produced a fountain pen from his inside coat pocket and held it Carol and Terry Southern with their 1938 Citroe¨n, France, 1958. Photo © Aram Avakian. But that they would be, simply 500 yards past the frontier, that was a horizontally for David to see. bit much. “Parker ‘51’,” he said tersely, with an extreme accent, pointing at “What you got? American? Five dollar. Here. Five dollar.” He reached “Two dollar,” said the man, putting his hands in his pockets. “OK,” he said firmly, “cut the crap.” the letters on the clip. Then he quickly unscrewed the rear of the pen inside the window and dropped the pen in David’s lap. David groaned and David shook his head, smiled, and tossed the pen to him, lobbing it “Oh look there,” she exclaimed, giving his arm another little and exposed the filling mechanism, placing his finger again where it picked it up; he tried to return it to the man, but he was just out of reach. gently. The man made no effort to catch it, but let it hit his chest and squeeze. “Isn’t it lovely?” was inscribed. “Parker ‘51’,” he repeated, rising now and darting an “How much,” said the man, “how much you give? Four dollar?” fall to the ground. He didn’t look down at it either but stared at David Just ahead of them at a bend in the road was a large open space set artificially furtive look about the site, “Three thousand lire.” “I have a pen,” said David, turning back his coat to indicate his and said something between clenched teeth in Italian; then he glanced aside as a vantage point for motorists who might wish to pause and David had frowned from the start, now as he straightened up, he own, then making another effort to return this one. “How much you at his companions and repeated it, jerking his head toward the car. take in the view. David West knew that this would appear in their smiled. “No... grazie,” he said. give?” said the man, “three dollar?” “Sonofabitch,” David muttered as he started turning the car around, guidebook as ‘panoramic site’. There were several stone benches on The man didn’t smile, however. He was a heavy dark-faced man, “No, I don’t need it. Thanks anyway.” while the four men glared fixedly at him. From their expressions it the site and room for a dozen cars; some four or five were there wearing a pin-striped suit but no tie, and his coat was draped over his “OK, three dollar,” said the man with a gesture towards his com- appeared they might rush forward and cut his throat, but they didn’t already, their occupants out now, standing around the cars on the edge shoulders like a cape. “Two thousand lire,” he said with a false shrug, panions on the bench to show that the deal was closed. They were move, only glared after the departing car with a strange, ugly hatred. of this great sea canyon, talking, smoking, and looking at the panora- proferring the pen as David closed the car door. staring at the car in an openly hostile way. “And they talk about the French being sick,” said David softly ma; one or two were moving slowly about, crabwise, with bent heads, “No,” David said, “grazie.” After holding the pen at arm’s length for a minute or two, David when they were under way again. “Christ, not the most outgoing photographing it. “What you?” said the man, holding on to the door, “French? What West had an impulse to drive off with it and possibly run over the man whore in Paris hustles like that! Hustlers, that’s what Italians are, the David slowed the car and pulled out onto the site. He stopped near you got? French? Two thousand franc.” as well. “Here you go,” he said instead, making a tentative pitching lowest imaginable sort of—” one of the benches and cut the motor. David shook his head, smiling. “Grazie,” he said, starting the car. motion with his arm, “catch.” “Was it really a Parker ‘51’?” asked Vivian.

46 | VICE VICE | 47 “Are you kidding? For two dollars?” referred with a jerk of his head back toward the panoramic site. too bad, he decided, less than ten degrees anyway, and there seemed “Yes, as a matter of fact, I did.” “Well, if they were smuggled in, or stolen... I mean so that there “No, they’d probably be shot,” his wife said. “And how! Brother! to be just enough room between the car and the side of the hill to Vivian got in; it was apparent that the presence of the house had wouldn’t be any tax—isn’t that the thing?” Boy-oh-boy!” allow for changing the tyre. In their motoring through Spain he had cheered her considerably. She leaned to his side and around him. “Isn’t that the thing? You mean isn’t that slightly irrelevant to the He put his chin down on his chest and, squinting his eyes, began a become proficient at this work and so proceeded rapidly now with “Look, you can see it from here.” point I was making? The point I was making had to do, not so much low guttural “uh-uh-uh-uh” imitation of a machine gun, adding a few only the taillight of the car as illumination. Feeling with his hand, he David had seen it already; he looked at it again—about 50 yards with American fountain pens, you see, but rather with the... incredibly soft whistling-bomb sounds at the end. “Just wait till we get to Venice, placed the jack at the right place beneath the axle and started turn- away, on the side of the hill across the road, a squat, dark, and isolated low... vicious... pimp, whore mentality and character of the Italian baby,” he said. “You’ll see some hustling in Venice, by Christ, that will ing the handle. As the weight took hold, the dirt on the road surface house, where certainly never a car had been, nor a jack, nor, yet again, people—insomuch, as I say, it was fairly typified by that guy back make your pretty little tummy-tum turn flip-flops of nausea! I daresay beneath the jack made a crunching sound and the turning became a telephone. there. That’s the point I was making, you see.” He closed his eyes and you may even black out with sheer nausea and disgust!” stiff, while in the half light he could just see the dark flatness of the Vivian was smiling happily. tilted his head back somewhat to give a smug emphasis to his final tire begin to seek its shape—then something snapped, a loud crack- “I’m afraid I don’t get the connection,” said David, “seek help at words as he turned towards her, but she was—he saw, for he opened The car moved swiftly over the looping road, past Ospedaletti and San ing noise of metal tooth, and the car seemed to make a little jump the friendly cottager’s—that the idea?” them at once—looking out the window. He noticed too that she was Remo. Vivian was looking at the map in the last light of the day. backwards. “Well, we could go see.” about to call his attention to something, her lips just apart, hand near “We turn off just outside Imperia,” she said, “that’s seven kilometres.” “Son of a bitch!” said David, leaping aside. His first thought was “See what? You can see from here that there are no telephone wires, her mouth, one finger half pointing, but then they passed it, whatever “How far is it after that?” that Vivian had accidentally hit the gearshift in crossing her lovely legs no possibility of a car ever having been there, and, apparently, nobody it was, too quickly, so instead she touched the finger to her lip and She took a minute to add the figures. (the image did not escape him), putting the car in neutral, and an oath at home. See what, if I may ask?” continued looking. She had a very pretty mouth, and the gesture “Sixty-three.” for her was ready on his lips. But he knew almost as soon, remember- “Well, see if he can help.” struck him as one of hopeless beauty, childlike, erotic. “Good,” said David. “In good time for dinner then, my dear, in good ing the snap of tension in his hand, that it was the jack, broken, and “Would you mind telling me why you have so much luggage?” “The curious thing,” he continued with an amiable guffaw, “is why time for dinner!” when he turned it now, nothing at all happened, only a sort of grind- “There might be another house nearby with a telephone.” people come to Italy at all. Of course it’s only because of the goddamn They were going to Milan first, but they were to turn off before ing sound. David looked back at the house. He didn’t like the look of it; it Renaissance—and I think we’re all more or less agreed now that that Genoa (where the big road to Milan starts) and go inland by way of a He got it out and went around to the front of the car. looked primitive, and somehow sinister. was just about the crassest sort of billboard sham, cant and vulgarity small town called Ceva, to spend a few days with some friends who “Turn on the lights a minute,” he said to Vivian, and felt a keen “Why are you so eager to involve other people in this?” he asked, conceivable. Good Christ Almighty, the romantic slop of it! God, it has had taken a house there. They passed San Lorenzo and then Imperia, annoyance at the slight delay in her performance of this. He examined coming back to her. about as much to do with art and life today as a Saturday Evening Post and there they took the road going north, to Ceva. It was a secondary the jack, turning the socket with his hand; it turned, quite uselessly. “Well, he could certainly tell us which is the right direction to the cover! Anyway it’s all in Picasso, anything that’s worthwhile. Picasso road, of course, and whereas the coast road had been moderately traf- Finally he came around and got in the car, cursing himself for not hav- garage, to walk in I mean.” skimmed the cream there, too—and mark well, there wasn’t a hell of a ficked, here as soon as the town was beyond a curve behind them, ing moved it to a more level place before using the jack, and again, for “Hmm.” This was a salient point. “Yes, you may be right, my dear. lot worth using, was there? Ha! But, even so, even so—why not get it they were quite alone. David switched on the driving lights. not having taken the luggage out. You may be right! Well, we’ll see what happens.” there? The essence, get to the essence, my dear, instead of wasting our “Oh, it’s going to be a mountain road!” exclaimed Vivian in a voice of “What is it, darling?” asked Vivian in real concern, putting a hand He got out of the car. precious lives wading through a veritable morass of sentimental rubbish!” mingled feelings. on his arm. “Shall I come?” Vivian asked, leaning towards the window. “Well, the colours, in the paintings anyway, are very very nice,” said “Hmm. I’m afraid we’re in for a spot of trouble,” said David, mak- “I don’t wish to discuss it for the moment,” he said, cutting off the “Why on earth should you come?” he said, turning around. his wife, turning briefly from the window, and on this point it was ing his voice husky, “this is bandit country and no mistake!” headlights and lighting a cigarette. “The goddamn jack is broken.” “Well—I’ll stay here and guard our things then.” clear she would stand. “David please don’t,” said the girl, quite excited by the sudden wild “Oh no,” said Vivian. “Right!” He leaned over and kissed her and gently bit her neck. “I “Ah yes, well, the colours... ” He would concede her the colours—no hills. “Oh look back there,” she cried, “at the light on the sea.” He turned on the radio. They had driven a long way since a light don’t want you to think you haven’t a part in this, Viv, and a very harm in that, he thought. “But what a shame, shame, shame,” he said, Behind them the sea lay vast and still, giving itself to darkness, lunch at about noon and he felt now the first pangs of hunger. “What important part indeed, but your role is here, with our things, in the striking his hand softly against the steering wheel and knotting his face veiled now by the dying light in a haze of softest silver. do you mean?” he said, looking at her. It occurred to him that her home so to speak.” in simulation of extreme pain, “that they couldn’t have been more seri- Their car was a British Ford and, by pre-fin standards, was about as share of the luggage was a good deal more than his and had probably “Yes.” ous about the content! What a shame that there couldn’t have been large as a medium-size American car. At any rate, it seemed too large been crucial in breaking the jack. “OK. Later.” more insight among them—a single ounce of philosophic insight... of for this road, and David drove slower now as the way wound and “Well, what do you think we should do?” she asked. He picked up the jack and started off, but it occurred to him that, moral, aesthetic integrity among the lot of them... a single glimmer of dipped and turned sharply through the hills. “I want to think about that for a few minutes,” he said. “Where is with his not knowing Italian, the man might likely think the missing individual awareness... a single grain of revolt from that great caterer’s “I’m surprised they didn’t mention what sort of a road it was,” said the map?” handle was the problem so he went back for that. pot of schmaltz! A single—twinkle, if you like—of humour! Pah! It’s Vivian, looking at David and holding one hand against the dashboard. She got out the map and turned on the dashlight. It appeared that At first opportunity he stepped off the road, got on the slope, and enough to set a man retching from now till doomsday!” “Well, it really isn’t too bad,” he said seriously to reassure her, “... they were halfway between Ormea, behind them, and Bagnasco began picking his way across the ground towards the house. The moon “Well, they were certainly devoted,” said Vivian, “you must say it’s just the absence of a guardrail on this narrow road and the sheer ahead—two towns 24 kilometres apart. They remembered coming was out, but there were clouds enough that the light was scarcely more that, and the colours—” drop of 5,000 feet to the angry rocks below which make it seem bad.” through Ormea and put it at about ten kilometres back, so that than adequate. “Devoted!” David pretended to fall sideways with his gasping “Good heavens,” said Vivian, leaning across him to look out his side Bagnasco then would be 14 farther on. When he was about halfway up, a dog began to howl and bark, laughter. “I’ll say... I’ll say they were devoted! The biggest batch— and ascertain this; he bit her ear. “Oh do be careful, David,” she said. “Of course there could be a town before it that isn’t on the map,” rather fiercely—or was it a wolf? He was fairly certain it was. Small botch, if you like—of yes-men in history! Well, H Bosch wasn’t “Did you do that,” he asked when she was back on her side, “in said Vivian. headlines of The Paris Herald-Tribune formed in his mind: “American devoted—you’re interested in painters of past account—H Bosch order to press your chest against my shoulder?” “Yes,” said David. He had just recalled, too, that it was Sunday. Torn to Bits by Wolf Pack.” He was glad to have the jack and handle did not go along with the caterer’s trash and drivel!” “What?” Vivian stared at the map a minute longer and put it away. They sat with him all right, and he put one piece in each hand. The noise of the “Well—” “Just now, when you leaned across me, did you do so in order, under in silence for a while; the radio, which David had not bothered to put dog grew more violent with his every step nearer the dark house. He “Oh the colours are lovely, that’s true... a bit flamboyant for some the guise of inadvertence, to press your chest against my shoulder?” squarely on a station, was emitting a low static and one or two distant stopped. What, after all, was the use? There was no one at home. It tastes perhaps. El Greco was a faggot, of course, and—” She was laughing. “My chest.” voices. “Begin the Beguine” also started playing, barely audible. was time wasted, time better spent on the road to Ormea... or “You silly,” said Vivian laughing, “El Greco wasn’t Italian!” “Yes, I had the... call it ‘feeling,’ if you like... that you were simply “A grand old favourite,” said David, gazing at the glowing dial. Bagnasco? He tightened his grip on the implements and went on. “Well, Michelangelo was a faggot, by God, of the very first water, trying to get a—” He was cut short by an explosion, like a gunshot, “I’m going to faire pee-pee,”said Vivian after another minute and she In another two minutes he was standing in the angle of the L- a raving—” just at the right rear of the car, and the car wobbled to a stop. got out of the car. shaped shadow of the house. On his left were the door of the house “Listen, do you remember how liquor cost so little in Spain? Well, “Oh God,” said Vivian. “What is it?” she asked, knowing only David flipped his cigarette through the window. It was quite and two shuttered windows, the edges on one lined with yellow isn’t that because there’s no tax on it?” too well. dark now; there was no traffic on the road, nor, he imagined, was lamplight. On his right, a sort of shed that joined the house, form- “—an absolute raving fanatic about it! No, it is not.” David moaned. “Oh Christ, Christ, Christ,” he said, and several other any likely—they had passed only one car since turning off at ing the angle—it was in there the dog raged, behind double-doors “I’m pretty sure that it is,” said Vivian, “on Mallorca at any rate. things not to bear repeating. He switched off the motor and the head- Imperia, 40 kilometres back. The question was, he supposed, which shook under the impact of his charge. His bark, without hav- That’s what Carlos was saying; he talked quite a bit about it one lights, got out of the car, walked around the back of it, and opened the whether to walk ten kilometres back to Ormea, as against 14 ing noticeably decreased in volume, had become a sustained and night. Remember?” trunk, scarcely looking at the blown-out tyre. It was, he knew, the badly ahead to Bagnasco gambling the extra four kilometres on the savage snarl. “Carlos,” David began, pausing to light a cigarette, “was just trying worn right rear, which they had thought to get the last use from before chance of there being a small town before it not on the map. He David knocked lightly on the door. There was no answer, but he to get in your little white frillikins with that sort of gaff, the shifty trading it for a new one. “Well, there’s one plan, by God,” he said, “that put off making the decision and set up a keening sound in time to had the feeling he was being observed. The presence of the jack and spiv. Spain, by God, is where we should be going now. Bosch, Goya. didn’t go awry. Ha!” “Begin the Beguine”. handle, such a comfort on his way up, he suddenly felt as a grotesque And the Spanish people are really the greatest, don’t you think so? I The part of the road where this occurred was like a pass, with “David!” said Vivian, appearing at the window on her side, onus. Standing here in the shadow holding them, would he not appear mean really, can you imagine seeing any of that crap in Spain?” He ground rising on each side of it. Fortunately the incline here was not “there’s a house over there! Did you see it?” rather sinister himself, even as one lurking in an ambush outside the

48 | VICE VICE | 49 door of this isolated cabin? He held the handle vertically flat against “Automobile?” asked the man, coming forward and nodding and across the road, the man directing him and pushing when the And while the car creaked and moaned, and the two men shud- his leg and tried to conceal the jack by turning his body slightly side- toward the road. He had a strong and pleasant face, with, David ground levelled off. dered, gasping in strain, Vivian took in her breath. “Now,” she said in ways away from the house. Good God, he thought, he must be thought, a strange soft dignity to it, but because of the difficulty in “What’s he going to do?” asked Vivian by the window as she a whisper, “it really is, David!” mad—that was much worse. Already seen and now concealing the communicating, he did question its amount of intelligence. helped with the pushing. He opened his eyes, just enough, and saw that while there was now weapon! He put them both on the ground and knocked again. The “Sì,” said David, “automobile.” David got out without answering. a great space between the tyre and fender, something was happening double-doors of the shed bulged as the dog’s fury reached a crescendo. The man touched David’s chest and then his own and made a slow, “David?” below as well; the tyre was becoming round. Would not the dog be released against the trespasser? Why not? lifting motion with his hands to show that they themselves would lift He coughed. “We’re going to lift the car ourselves,” he said. “By Christ!” he said, and the two men pressed on now with the kind Perhaps with a sharp word of command: ‘The throat, Gino, the the car. “Really?” said Vivian, sounding much more pleased than surprised. of strength which is bedfellow only to insanity and encouragement. throat!’ He picked up the jack and pretended to examine it, turning David laughed, though the corners of his mouth felt stiff in doing so, The car was now at the bottom of the cottager’s hill, and he stood In another moment he heard the stones scraping over the ground, the socket, and shaking his head to show its state. Or would he not, and shook his head. looking at it, his hands on his hips. and he knew they had actually done it. He turned and shook hands after all, be blasted at close range by some kind of primeval shotgun, “No, no... impossible... trop lourd... mucho, mucho.” “Momento,” he said, then turned and went up the hill. with the man, and though they were both surely smiling, he wondered which even now was being carefully aimed? “Troppo pesante?” said the man. “Can you really lift it?” asked Vivian. if, in his own eyes, there weren’t tears. Then the door opened; the dog stopped, and a very large man of “Sì, troppo pesante.” David cleared his throat. “No,” he said. He went to his work of changing the tyre, his hands shaking a little about 50 stood in the raised doorway with the yellow light behind him. The man shrugged, and then David shrugged and smiled and turned “I wonder what he’s doing now,” she said, looking at the dark hill. with delight. Vivian and the man watched him, and he was glad he He had a napkin stuck in his shirt and was still moving his mouth. to go, trying to think of the word for “goodbye”. “Him? Oh, didn’t you get that part of it? He’s going to round up could do it well. But he was thinking too that he would give a part Interrupted his dinner, thought David, that’s a grand start. Well, “Momento,” said the man quickly, gripping David’s arm before turn- his six brothers, and they’re coming back to kill me, rape and kill of his life to be able to speak enough Italian to thank the man here goes. “Bueno sera,” he said, “... excusa.” He raised the jack, ing back into the shed. David watched him take the axe out of the you, and quite methodically divide our things between—” properly. pointing and giving the man a smile of helplessness. “Cassé,” he said, chopping block and lay it aside, move the block to the centre of the shed, “Oh David.” The man came over and examined the spare he was about to put on turning the socket with his hand, “... kaput.” He pointed to the road. and from the floor by the wall, pick up the wooden door beam and place The man returned alone however, and quite soon, carrying several and patted it. “Automobile... pneumatico... kaput.” And he went through a little it across the block. His face alight, he proceeded to give a slow, dramatic large flat stones, which David recognised as having been taken up “Buona,” he said. mime to clarify this. demonstration of the leverage principle. from the ground in front of the house. At the sight of the man labour- “Sì,” said David, looking up at him, “buona,” then he pointed to The man stepped down out of the doorway into the rectangle of David felt an absurd flutter of hope, which gave way at once to ing beneath 200 pounds of rock, he momentarily forgot that they the badly worn tyre that had blown out. “Malo,” he said. light. He wiped his fingers on the napkin in his shirt and then took the extreme annoyance. “No, no,” he said, shaking his head, “troppo meant more useless work for himself as well, and only felt a sudden “Sì,” said the man, looking at it, “malo.” And they laughed together. jack from David and examined it. He turned the socket with his hand. pesante. No. Impossibile.” The chopping-block was about two feet profound sadness at the ignorance and burden of all mankind. He It was soon down, and after raising the car again enough for He was turning it the wrong way. He said something in Italian and put high and the beam a 4x4 seven or eight feet long. Both appeared stur- went forward to help him, but the man was already lowering the load Vivian to get the stones out, they started carrying the things up the his finger in the socket indicating that a handle was needed. dy enough but there was no chance of getting the beam under the axle, to the ground by the car; then he crossed one arm over his forehead hill, Vivian with the lamp and one rock, and they with the rest. “No, no,” said David, producing the handle, “kaput... fini... and he knew that the possibility of he and the man exerting enough and stood for a minute getting his breath and smiling at the boy and Although it was considerably more, David wasn’t aware of the finissimo.” pressure to lift the entire side of a fairly large car was of course nil. girl who watched him. “Bene,” he said, and after nodding at Vivian, weight this trip. The man tried laboriously to fit the handle in it. David sighed “Ah sì, sì,” said the man, nodding vigorously. he put the door-beam across the tree stump and illustrated his lever- At the house they helped the man fit the rocks back into the ground inwardly. Waste, waste, he thought, taking the handle and fitting it in David tried to protest, but the man looked so determined as he age principle for her. in front of the door. As soon as the rocks were in place again, the dog to demonstrate again how it wouldn’t work. came out of the shed, carrying the block in one arm and the beam bal- “Sì, sì,” she said eagerly, nodding to show ready comprehension. lay down on them, and they all laughed. Then they just stood around The man shook his head at the jack, and it struck David that he anced in the other, that David felt there was no graceful way out of Her job, he went on to indicate, would be to push the pile of stones for a moment, still smiling, both Vivian and the man looking at David might not know what it was. “Momento,” he said and went inside the simply allowing the negative proof to assert itself—this at the cost of under the side of the car when they had raised it high enough. as though the next move were his. And he in turn did not know what house. A minute later he was opening the doors of the shed, holding more time. But he would certainly not help carry the stuff down the David, leaning against the car with his hands in his pockets, looked to do by way of thanks—it seemed to him that offering the man up a lamp in one hand and pushing the doors wide apart to reveal to hill and so dissipate his needed strength in the folly; and then he away when she expressed happy understanding of her assignment and money was somehow out of the question; he thought if only they had David the sparsity of any such equipment as the jack. He invited realised that of course he would have to help carry it, not only down knelt down by the pile of stones like a child at a game. He was begin- a bottle of good wine to give him, or something like that, in friendship David to see for himself. the hill but up again, so he slowly replaced the jack and handle on the ning to feel sick at his stomach, and his chief concern now was that rather than payment. He put out his hand and patted the man’s arm at It was a woodshed, half filled with stacked logs and a great pile of ground and took the beam. neither Vivian nor the man would think to want the luggage taken out. the biceps. “Molto forte,” he said, nodding, “... fortissimo!” kindling. An axe was stuck in a chopping-block tree stump—he pointed They walked down the hill in silence, the man carrying the tree stump The man sidled about, situating the chopping block, moving it sev- “Sì, sì,” said Vivian, smiling, “bravo.” that out first. Then he walked around the shed, picking up its few items, and the lamp, and David, the beam, while the dog raced wildly ahead. eral times before he was satisfied. Then he put one end of the beam The man smiled. “Niente,” he said with a shrug, but he looked pleased. one after the other, a wedge, a hoe, a machete, discarding each with a David was whistling, soundlessly, masochistically, as his mind caressed, under the side of the car, and David joined him at the other. As they After another moment, David extended his hand in farewell. “Mille shrug to show its impracticality in this situation. David followed him with an almost psychotic calm, the hideous realities of the situation: they leaned forward on it and began pressing down, David listened with a grazie,” he said, “mille... grazie.” around in a daze for a minute before getting hold of himself. “Sì, sì,” he would have to walk to Bagnasco, find the darkened garage, find the little smile of bitterness to the creaking sound as the body of the car Vivian shook his hand too and thanked him again. said and stepped outside the shed. The dog had come out the other door home of the garage owner (he in Sunday repose), communicate the started to rise upon its springs, away from the axle. He was only mildly “Niente,” he said, and they started down the hill, the man and the and was lying on the flat stones in front of it, apparently resting after his problem, and what would be most difficult of all, and no doubt an surprised that the beam didn’t break. dog standing behind them in the light of the house. exercise of wrath. He seemed friendly enough now. entirely separate operation, change money. He had one traveller’s cheque “It’s coming!” exclaimed Vivian. “God, what is ‘goodbye’?” David asked. “Una telephone?” asked David, nodding first at the house and then of ten dollars—which, since they would have to eat too, would not be “Will you shut up,” he hissed at her. He thought if he had a free “I can’t remember,” said Vivian. “Adios?” around at the region in general. “Dove una telephone, por favore?” enough—and the rest were in 50s. They would take a terrible beating hand at that moment he would have hit her head with it. “Will you “No, no, what is it?” “No,” said the man, raising a finger and shaking it when he had on the exchange rate for the 50, if indeed, one could even be found. His just can that... infantile enthusiasm of yours for two consecutive min- “Arrivederci,” they said, and David knew he would have already understood, “no, no.” arm ached from the cumbersome beam and he stopped to switch hands. utes—it isn’t coming, it’s just raising up on the springs. Look at the gone inside. But no, he was there, he and the dog. “Dove una garage?” asked David. The man paused too, and said something, a question, smiling. goddamn tyre.” He waved back. “Non capisco.” “Sì,” said David, in the tone of a weary parent, and they trudged on. There was about a foot of space now between the top of the tyre “Arrivederci,” he said, nodding and smiling, “arrivederci.” “Dove una... garage... por reperation? Omera?” When they reached the car, David pointed to the flat tyre. Then he and the fender, but the wheel, the tyre itself still rested, pressed cruelly “Omera. Sì, sì. Omera.” pointed to the axle, which was almost touching the ground, to show flat, on the ground. They drove in silence for a while. “Omera,” said David carefully, “o Bagnasco?” that it was impossible to get the beam under it. They eased the pressure and let their end of the lever come up again. “What a wonderful thing,” said Vivian finally, in a sort of full- The man expressed a sudden serious affinity at this, stepping forward Vivian had gotten out of the car and joined them. “Momento,” said the man and he stepped over and took the upper throated way, turning to David, expectant, her eyes soft and big. and tapping David on the shoulder. “Bagnasco,” he said, pointing to “Buonasera, Signore,” she said with a nice smile for him, and the man rock from the pile and put it on top of the block. David started to say something, but cleared his throat instead. the north, “quattordici chilometri... quattordici!” He held up one fin- smiled and nodded. David felt dizzy; he felt perversely keen to go along with it now “Well, it takes all kinds, my dear,” he said then, in his senator’s voice, ger on one hand and four on the other. “Omera... dieci chilometri... He spoke at some length then, and David assumed it was some indefinitely, to see how weird it could get—if the man were suddenly patting the inside of her leg, “it takes all kinds. A grand old maxim, and dieci!” He held up both hands, fingers extended. Then he shook his form of elementary rhetoric about how it was, after all, and through to suggest that they stop and climb a tree, he thought, he would do so while I know you’re not one to favor tired phrases, I think you’ll find— head at this and knelt down to the piece of light on the ground where no fault of their own, quite impossible. But it was all too soon clear by with relish, cackling perhaps, and certainly switching Vivian’s bare legs as you grow older—there’s more truth than poetry to it!” he drew the figures 14, saying, “Bagnesco,” and 10, “Omera.” the movements of his arms that they must get the car away from the ahead of him every inch of the way to the top. Then they were press- She snuggled against him. “Yes,” she said, smiling. “Sì, sì,” said David, nodding, “grazie.” He was quite relieved to wall and across the road. ing down again. Down, down, eyes closed, he no longer thought of the They only had 12 kilometres to go after Bagnasco; it looked now as have it over and done with, and he picked up the jack and handle and David was quiet for a moment while the man and Vivian looked at waste or of conserving his strength, but only tried to escape all aware- though they would. probably get to the Metcalfs’ in good time for din- was about to thank the man once more in taking his leave. him, waiting. “All righty,” he said; he got in and let the car roll back ness of the moment, to lose himself in sheer exertion. ner after all.

50 | VICE VICE | 51 Writers

PHOTOS BY GISÈLE FREUND

Images courtesy of the Gisèle Freund Estate and IMEC Images. James Joyce, 1939

T.S. Eliot, 1939

52 | VICE VICE | 53 Marguerite Yourcenar, 1966 Virginia Woolf, 1939

54 | VICE VICE | 55 Jean-Paul Sartre, 1939 Thornton Wilder, 1939

56 | VICE VICE | 57 VICESTYLE.COM

Jean Cocteau, 1939

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58 | VICE I’M WORRIED ABOUT MY ANXIETY

BY CLANCY MARTIN ILLUSTRATION BY JIM KREWSON

ovelist and memoirist Clancy Martin (please read How to Perhaps the greatest existentialist of the 20th century, Franz Kafka, Sell, the novel he released last year with Harvill Secker, and wrote a story called “A Country Doctor” (he thought it was his best N “Lisa”, his deeply sad remembrance of his sister in our story) attempting to express the connection—often experienced by us in recent Catastrophes Issue) is a vital member of today’s phi- dreams—between our feeling of being inadequate and our everyday losophy community. He is a repeat translator of Nietzsche (Thus experience of worry and anxiety. If you haven’t read the story (or read it Spoke Zarathustra in 2006 and an upcoming edition of Beyond Good recently) you ought to, as soon as you get the chance. It will feel alarm- and Evil) and he serves as Department of Philosophy chair at the ing—even threatening—and very, very familiar. Jean-Paul Sartre, University of Missouri—Kansas City. He’s also authored, coauthored, another must-have for our Greatest Hits of the Existentialists album, or edited multiple volumes of philosophy. For this issue, we asked wrote towards the end of his career that he “did not truly know what Clancy to take a quick stab at existentialism and what it is, or was, or people meant about anxiety and dread and the rest of that, it was just still is, or should be. the way we talked at the time: I never experienced angst”. This from a Since it’s usually bandied about by the most pretentious, clove- man who regularly stayed up all night drinking and taking speed so that cigarette-smoking, beret-wearing students in your local college, he could give his college lectures the following morning (if taking speed existentialism has become a subset of 20th-century philosophy that all night so that you can lecture in the morning with a hangover doesn’t is much maligned and even more misunderstood. That’s a shame, give you anxiety, I suppose nothing will). But Kierkegaard, the 19th- because it’s actually very useful. So here we go, reclaiming existen- century Danish philosopher who first identified the concept of anxiety tialism from the hands of the dilettantes and detractors who’ve so (and wrote two books about it), argued that the feeling of being out of callously abused it. place and the circling, dizzying, sickening sort of thinking we associate with worry (and worry taken to its further reaches in anxiety and I had lost my shoes; I had to leave immediately, my students were dread) are intimately and importantly connected. Kierkegaard thought waiting; my assistant already had the exams in her hands; class started that to be fully alive was to be anxious. at 9:00 and, I saw on my alarm clock, it was 9:15, now 9:16 (the There is an old view of human life that argues that human beings black numbers seemed to frown at me like menacing graffiti painted in have a particular purpose to fulfil. You find this in the Judeo- an alleyway, a warning that only escalated, that necessarily multiplied, Christian-Islamic tradition: We are fulfilling the law (Judaism) or because the minutes were ticking past); then I observed that it was not embracing the love that is Christ (Christianity) or living the righteous just my shoes: my clothes were gone, someone had taken the bed, I life (Islam). In all three varieties of what is fundamentally one tradi- couldn’t even retreat beneath the covers; and still my students were tion, the goal is fulfilled when we reach the next life. Similarly, the watching the clock, which I realised was in fact my own alarm clock, ancient Greeks thought that human life had a purpose. For Plato this on my bed stand at home; yes, it was true, I was there in the class- was self-knowledge, for Aristotle, perfecting our function as rational room, my assistant was there too, frowning at me—where were my beings: in both cases, this would lead us to the natural goal of virtue clothes? I called myself a professor of philosophy? Wasn’t I chair of (and happiness). In the Hindu tradition, we are to fulfill the cycle of my department? Had I become a senile old man?—and she did not reincarnation, determined by karma, so that we can eventually become hurry to cover me with her great blue coat, on the contrary, she began one with the Godhead; in Buddhism, we are to see through the veil of to laugh, then the students joined in, waving their green and orange illusion created by attachment, so that we can escape suffering. Scantron forms in the air, and I caught sight of myself in the mirror— Purpose, purpose, purpose. You aren’t who or where you are sup- for suddenly a mirror appeared in the dream—and I was not a posed to be; you have to get from point A to point B; you are engaged 43-year-old professor, I was myself at 16 or 18, naked and robust, but in a fundamental struggle that takes place in this (generally speaking, cringing, unprepared, I was not the professor at all, I was there to take refractory and painful) life on earth in order to escape it or somehow the exam, and the woman I had thought was my assistant was in fact reconcile yourself with it. the professor, she had brought me in front of the class and stripped me But suppose we are animals, as most of us believe. Does it make of my clothes to show everyone how I had failed. I sat up in my sense to suggest that animals—nonhuman animals, that is—have a dis- sweaty bed. tinct purpose? In the Old Testament they do, of course—their purpose Sisyphus’s drag alter ego Sissy Fuss, as drawn by Jim Krewson.

60 | VICE VICE | 61 is to feed and work for humans. But most of us don’t buy that view recognise that you have no further purpose, you are not supposed these days. Do we really think that all good dogs go to heaven? Good to be anything else, you must accept even suffering—in fact, you marlins, too? How about good tree slugs? Well-behaved bacteria? Moral must embrace all of life, you must affirm suffering as much as you mice? Ethical ear mites? We don’t expect moral progress from nonhu- affirm pleasure, you must affirm failure with the same enthusiasm man animals—it would be silly to say that your pet dog is engaged in with which you affirm victory—and then you can live the best the ongoing project of becoming a better dog, and how much more silly human life. That may sound like yet another “getting from A to to say the same of, for example, the clever octopus—so why on earth B”: a purpose disguised as a nonpurpose. But for Nietzsche, you should human beings get the special exception, which in fact looks like already are that person: you simply have to let yourself accept the a special burden? fact. You will not be someone else tomorrow. You’re not even sup- Friedrich Nietzsche, who, due to one of those unhappy historical acci- posed to be. All that you are is all that you’re meant to be: and dents, went crazy only a few months before he planned to begin his that happens right now. study of Kierkegaard, argued that our human need to be something other It’s a hard notion to wrap your head around. Albert Camus, the than what we are—that feeling, so familiar to all of us, that we are inad- best friend and then best enemy of Jean-Paul Sartre, tried to explain equate, that we must somehow justify ourselves, that we have an it in his discussion of the myth of Sisyphus. Imagine poor old unfulfilled purpose that will relieve us upon its fulfilment—is merely an Sisyphus, he says, condemned by the gods to endlessly roll a boul- expression of our frustrated drive to be cruel. Very briefly, here’s how it der up a mountainside—slipping in the mud and gravel, nearly works: before we were joined together in large societies, we could satisfy breaking his back with the struggle, every sinew quivering—only to our drive to be cruel—which is just like the drive to have sex or to eat or watch, when he reaches the summit, the boulder roll down the to have friends or any other number of natural drives—by expressing mountainside again. What is Sisyphus thinking as he walks back that drive upon the members of other human groups. There were battles, down into the valley? It is his purpose to bear up this rock—but it “festivals of cruelty” as he calls them, even increasingly ritual and is a purpose without a purpose, a striving without any meaning— stylised expressions of cruelty (think of the public-torture carnival days and he will do it for eternity. That’s what it’s like to be us, Camus and auto-da-fé of the Middle Ages and the Spanish Inquisition, for exam- says; and for years, even centuries, perhaps, Sisyphus is in anguish, ple). But as it becomes more and more difficult to express our drive to he is frustrated, he dreads the moment when the boulder will roll cruelty upon others, the drive does not go away; rather, it turns back down again. But at last he beats the gods. How? By recognising upon itself, it inflicts pain on the mind of the individual experiencing the that there is nothing else but his struggle. He can either roll the drive. That pain—which comes to be called bad conscience and eventu- boulder up for the gods or he can do it for himself. When he says, ally guilt and is formalised in the myth, so Nietzsche thought, of original “I will roll this boulder,” his anxiety vanishes. He does not dread sin—is your mind attacking itself, expressing the drive to cruelty inwards the task, because he chooses it. He does not seek any further mean- because it cannot find an outward expression. So, for example, George ing, because he embraces the fact that there is none. Maybe Sartre W Bush may have had a lot of fun pulling the wings off flies and blow- had already accomplished this, and that’s why he didn’t experience ing up frogs with firecrackers when he was a kid, but then he got in anxiety; or maybe he was on enough different drugs that he simply trouble for it and the drive was suppressed—although he may not be the didn’t notice (Kierkegaard thought that the worst thing that could best case, as it looks as though he found other ways to release his pent- happen to a human is that he or she would fail to experience anxi- up aggression in later life. ety, because that meant failing to experience yourself—but I think Now we start to worry. And it’s not just ordinary worry, as it’s a fair question to ask whether we want to experience ourselves). when I’m worried that my checking account is getting low, so I So what does the existentialist say to me about my dream? He transfer some over from savings, and the worry goes away. It’s that free-flowing worry that transfers itself from one object to the next; tells me that so long as I am letting myself be my own victim—so when I stop worrying about money I start worrying about my love long as I interpret my worry as an unfulfilled purpose, as something life; but no, that’s not it, it’s my career, it’s my work; and yet, that’s that’s wrong about me or my life (so long as I am goaded, Nietzsche not it either, it’s my friends, they seem to be excluding me… You might say, in the wrong direction by the pain of my frustrated know the drill. The mind spins. If the spin accelerates, you get a drive)—I will continue to have my night sweats. The fundamental vertiginous feeling, as though you are looking into a chasm, and way to make sense of life is to acknowledge that I am wholly the chasm is you. A friend asked me recently: “Hey, Clancy, you responsible in this one: responsible not to some other life that I seem down. That interior monologue driving you crazy today?” So: ought to be leading, but for this present one I am actually living, the drug Miltown, made famous by the Rolling Stones as “mother’s where I choose to be where I am, what I am, who I am. “Anxiety is little helper”; next, Librium, Valium, Klonopin, Ativan; plus, SSRIs: freedom’s possibility,” Kierkegaard wrote in 1844 (in The Concept Prozac, Zoloft, Celexa, take your pick. Ropes that hold us above of Anxiety). For him, the mental pain that Nietzsche identified is a the abyss; or parachutes that carry us safely down; or blinders that reminder that we are the ones in the driver’s seat. Anxiety, then, is keep us from seeing it. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing in not the reflection of our inadequacy, but rather the knee-jerk favour of unhappiness or against drugs to treat anxiety and depres- response to our misguided, self-defeating, and logically doomed sion; rather, I’m trying to figure out whether and why anxiety is efforts to be someone other than who we are. The reason we feel just something to be avoided (it looks like it may be, on Nietzsche’s inadequate is that we wonder if we’re up to the task—when the task account), or if there is some good in it, if it tells us something has already been accomplished, is always already being accom- important about ourselves. Nietzsche, to be fair, offered a way out plished, by each of us. So should I sit here in a maelstrom of worry? of the pain of anxiety: in his last book, the masterpiece Ecce Or do I have what it takes to be free? Which. is only another way of Homo, he teaches us “how to become who you are”. You must saying, do I have what it takes to be me?

62 | VICE drunk dad, who brags that he quit voting lifelong faithful servant interrupts to suggest, Vonnegut wills himself into the narrative for after he heard that a black man in Ohio had politely, enough with the blinding? Those are the explicit purpose of watching the violence GREAT BEATDOWNS the franchise, beats the snot out of Huck for fighting words. Cornwall draws his sword, (and suffers a broken toe in the melee). Even going to school and learning to read and and so does the servant, but Regan ends the Christ’s scourging and tortures—the gold write. It is hard not to take Pap’s side in this. duel, stabbing the servant in the back with a standard of all smackdowns in perpetuity— Reading and writing are useless skills that borrowed sword. Returning to Gloucester, occurred without the direct, live-in-person IN LITERATURE have never done a thing for anybody. When’s Cornwall addresses his remaining eye as he participation of its architect. Finally a writer the last time you got a job reading? During pries it from his head: “Out vile jelly! Where takes responsibility for our entertainment. Pap’s struggle with Judge Thacker over cus- is thy lustre now?” Gloucester’s eye doesn’t Sorry, Bunny, that’s what you get for being a tody of Huck and his money, Pap takes Huck have shit to say in return. fictional character. BY WILLIAM B FUCKLEY JR AND CLOTTY KOPPLEMAN out of the reach of the law’s long arm, to a secluded log cabin in the woods, where he HIPPOLYTUS (HIPPOLYTUS BY EURIPI- JOB (BOOK OF JOB, THE BIBLE) alternately pounds on Huck and leaves him DES, TRANSLATED BY GRENE) The brilliance of Job’s beatdown is that it treet justice is a rare commodity in sleigh slave. Because he doesn’t take kindly artist” in the refugee camps under Los locked up on his own for days at a time. Life is pretty chill for Hippolytus until he never involves any actual beating. Instead, high literature. Unlike its companion to confinement, Buck must be broken. This Gatos? Was his youth stolen from him by the When home, Pap rants about “the govment” finds out his stepmom, Phaedra, wants to God and Satan use the poor slob as both a S universe of film, the realm of books is happens in a rather brutal one-page Mandatory Castration Act? Did he know the and “the nigger”, gets wasted on cheap booze pork him. First he’s all, “What?” Then he’s spiritual football and guinea pig—the original static and immutable. Movie charac- pounding that ends with the noble, 140- recovering jenkem addict’s crippling pain? and chases Huck with a knife, “calling me the all, “Naw.” So she’s like, “Later.” Since the spirit-guinea pigskin—without ever setting a ters evolve and erode; there will always be a pound Buck crumpled and whimpering on It’s a good thing somebody put a hurting on Angel of Death, and saying he would kill me, play is set long before its premiere in 428 BC, finger on him. First Job’s sheep, camels and chance, no matter how remote, that film char- the tundra. “After a particularly fierce blow this white boy and gave him something to and then I couldn’t come for him no more”. Phaedra has to laboriously engrave on a sui- servants burn down in a mysterious fire, cry about. acters you don’t like will eventually find he crawled to his feet, too dazed to rush. He cide tablet that Hippolytus raped her. Then effectively putting him out of business. When themselves beaten senseless in a remake. But a staggered limply about, the blood flowing FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER she hangs herself. When Hippolytus’s dad, Job calls up the prayer complaint hotline, SALADIN CHAMCHA (THE SATANIC novel’s characters, once written, can never be from nose and mouth and ears, his beautiful (FRANKENSTEIN BY MARY SHELLEY) Theseus, gets home, he starts crying over her God says, “Gosh, Job, that’s a tough break, unwritten. You may want to read about Pip, coat sprayed and flecked with bloody VERSES BY SALMAN RUSHDIE) No George Romero zombie ever bitched and corpse to his father, the god Poseidon, all like, hopefully you had insurance?” Then Job’s ten Puck, Poirot or Portnoy getting curb-stomped slaver.” The breaking, we read, has worked. A hijacked jumbo jet explodes over the bellyached like Frankenstein’s monster. And I “Poseidon, my son is a punk. Poseidon, my kids get smooshed. He calls Satan for some into human jelly, but unless you write the grim “He saw, once and for all, that he stood no English Channel, dropping bodies “like don’t seem to recall Dracula, the Wolfman, son is a bitch. Please, O Lord of the sea: Kill commiseration, and Satan says, “Gee, Job, act yourself, it will never happen (and even chance against a man with a club. He had tidbits of tobacco from a broken old cigar”. the Mummy, or the Creature from the Black my punk-ass, bitch-ass son.” So Grandpa dis- that’s rough but, you know, force majeure, then, you’ll be relegated to grubby fan fiction). learned the lesson, and all his life after he Indian actors Gibreel Farishta and Saladin Lagoon embarking on anything close to this patches a bull from the ocean that spooks shit happens, better luck next batch.” Still, Occasionally, however, those obnoxious lit- would never forget it.” To this, the modern Chamcha plummet five miles and wake on guy’s self-pity marathons. Let’s look at the Hippolytus’s horses, which bolt, dragging Job’s faith doesn’t budge, a display of erary characters slip up. Here are our faves. reader must add: Big Fucking Whoop. Buck the beach. Since this apparently isn’t zany facts. In chapter 11, the monster breaks into Hippolytus’s increasingly bruised, broken, masochistic devotion that gets him covered in still doesn’t have to worry about a mortgage, enough, Gibreel then transforms into an the shepherd’s house and wolfs down his hamburgered body behind them. Hippolytus “sore boils” from head to toe. God’s like, JAMES BOND (CASINO ROYALE BY car insurance, identity theft, pants, angel, while poor Saladin devolves into a breakfast of bread, cheese, milk and wine. is like, “DUDE!!!” Hippolytus is like, “MY “Ouch, Job, looks bad, have you switched IAN FLEMING) cyberstalking, ED, inflation, unregulated goat demon. The goat-Saladin is promptly The correct term for this is “stealing”. Then PANCREAS!!!” He bellows Discharge’s soaps or detergents lately?” Instead of giving At the climax of Ian Fleming’s first James Bond political spending, street gangs, megaflu, thrown into a windowless van by cops less he drunkenly stumbles into a village, finding “Why” as his beloved steeds bend, fold, spin- God what for, Job plops down in the rubble, novel, the villain Le Chiffre has 007 stripped nuclear annihilation, or a Large Hadron concerned about his demonic demeanour himself “grievously bruised by stones and dle and mutilate his big ass on the rocks of scraping at his festering skin-pepperonis with naked and tied to a chair, then canes him in the supernova. Take a number, Cujo; we’ve all than that he may be a “Paki” trying to enter many other kinds of missile objects” (in the Troezen. Then the goddess Artemis appears to bits of broken crockery and trusting that balls for a solid hour. “It is not only the imme- got problems. the country illegally. From there, it’s pretty 1838 “Complete and Uncut” version, Frank Theseus to vouch for Hippolytus’s innocence. everything will work itself out. It’s a marvel diate agony,” Le Chiffre explains as he straightforward ultraviolence, with Saladin gets pelted with rubbish bags, nappies, flower Theseus is like, “Fuck, dude, I didn’t mean to, of passive-aggressive cop-outs, and kind of pulverises Bond’s nads, “but also the thought HOLDEN CAULFIELD (THE CATCHER IN kicked in the ribs, balls and face, gouged in pots and cinder blocks, and at one point like, kill him, kill him. Fuck! Dude. provides a punishment-fits-the-crime neatness that your manhood is being gradually destroyed THE RYE BY J.D. SALINGER) “various parts of his anatomy”, and forced someone runs out and brains him with a toi- Seriously?!” Unlike Oedipus Rex, which por- to the whole affair. and that at the end, if you will not yield, you Maurice, the Edmont Hotel’s pimp and to eat his own “soft, pellety” shit. But let). Instead of using the moment to reflect on trays incest as a tragedy, Hippolytus presents will no longer be a man.” (One wonders elevator operator, flicks the scrotum of lit’s unlike other beatings of the socially his life of crime, the monster instead spends incest as a way tragedy might have been JUDAS (INFERNO BY DANTE ALIGHIERI, whether the Wu-Tang Clan’s “Yeah, I’ll fuckin’ biggest whiner through his pyjamas before vulnerable (Uncle Tom, Women in Love’s the rest of the story whining about the “bar- averted. If Jim Morrison had read Hippolytus, TRANSLATED BY DURLING) lay ya nuts on a fuckin’ dresser/ just ya nuts whaling on him, dropping Holden’s fat ass Gudrun, all the countless ass whoopings barous villagers” to anyone who will listen. perhaps he would have sung, “Stepmother? I Dante Alighieri took a hard line on simony: layin’ on a fuckin’ dresser/ and bang them shits like a greased tuba. Worse, Maurice calls administered to Janie in Their Eyes Were Subsequently, the book is now seen as a para- want to… MY PANCREAS!!!” what part of zero-fucking-tolerance don’t you with a spiked fuckin’ bat/ wassup BLAAA!!!” is Holden “chief”—WHAP!! That’s for John Watching God), this violence is sprinkled ble of intolerance, when really the moral is understand? Yes, the Divine Comedy’s strong, an homage, or rather an instance of fami- Lennon. You’d pimp-slap Holden too if you with so many allegories, allusions and that a shepherd has the right to eat his meals BUNNY HOOVER (BREAKFAST OF positive anti-simony message still comforts lienähnlichkeit.) Just when the villain is poised, had to listen to his endless moaning about impenetrable non-Americanisms that it’s no in peace without some asshole food-junkie CHAMPIONS BY KURT VONNEGUT) and inspires young readers who are struggling knife in hand, to perform a Bronx vasectomy “vomity-looking” objects, things that are less pleasant than an afternoon of Road monster man barging in. Bunny Hoover, son of businessman Dwayne with questions of faith today. Though we can on the master spy, a SMERSH agent enters, “crumby” and people who are “phony”, not Runner cartoons on Nyquil. And for this Hoover, is “a notorious homosexual” who all endorse his condemnation of sodomy, wastes Le Chiffre, and carves the letter M into to mention the way he is always subliminally Rushdie gets a death sentence? EARL OF GLOUCESTER (KING LEAR BY plays piano in the cocktail lounge of a some other positions Dante took on the issues Bond’s right hand. Bond fully recovers from the commanding you to kill celebrities and WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE) Holiday Inn. Refreshingly, Bunny’s battering of his day are just as provocative and contro- ball-stomping; soon, he is enjoying full, frank, politicians. Yeah, Holden, spending all day HUCK FINN (THE ADVENTURES OF After Gloucester’s son Edmund narcs on him, is not a hate crime, instead coming in the versial in ours: take his stance on the pope’s and regular intercourse with a woman named smoking, drinking, and going to plays in the HUCKLEBERRY FINN BY MARK TWAIN) the Duke of Cornwall has the Earl bound to a midst of his own dad’s psychotic rampage. temporal powers, or his views on Italian Vesper, with whom, he reflects, sex always has Manhattan of the 1950s sounds like a real No gods, no masters, no pants were the only chair. Cornwall’s wife, Regan, plucks his Bunny’s beating isn’t the worst of the book, prosody, or his hopes for the constitution of “the tang of rape”. bitch here in the postnuclear rubble of 2010, rules in 1830s Missouri, a time and place beard, as grievous an insult during the reign but it is the most dramatic, with Dwayne the Florentine state. As for Boniface VIII him- where it is illegal for people to gather in where a child would often walk into a door— of James I as it was in ancient Judea and con- rolling his kid’s head “like a cantaloupe up self, well, the pope needed to have his wide BUCK (THE CALL OF THE WILD BY public, our schools are torn by race wars, a door named Pap. During the golden age of tinues to be in present-day Boulder. At the and down the keys of the piano”. Later, in the ass whupped and handed to him sideways, JACK LONDON) and our children no longer remember a time American child abuse, young’uns could catch line “Upon these eyes of thine I’ll set my ambulance, Bunny’s face is “unrecognisable, and you could quote Dante on that. But if Buck—a big slobbering St. Bernard Scotch when human beings lived above ground. Did hell for sneaking a corn-silk cigarette, for hav- foot,” Cornwall commences to add eyeless- even as a face”. there was one thing Dante and Pope Boniface sheepdog thing—finds himself kidnapped, Holden Caulfield ever have to grind out a ing smallpox, for being “too fancy” for ness to Gloucester’s list of problems. After Even more refreshing is that Hoover’s beat- VIII, damned though he was, could agree on, sold to brutes in Alaska, and turned into a subsistence wage “working” as a “blowjob smallpox, or for no reason at all. Huck’s Cornwall performs the first optectomy, his ing happens in the presence of its author. it was this: Judas Iscariot seriously fucked up

64 | VICE VICE | 65 when he sold out our Lord, and so he and shot full of heroin and scopolamine for social. It’s a rare happy ending in the deserved the most brutal stomping of all time, two days, and he thinks the room is on fire. Cormier oeuvre, and one with a powerful for all time. Dante therefore damned Judas to Outrageous by the standards of 1940, when strong message. Satan’s pit at the very bottom of Hell, where Farewell, My Lovely was first published, 70 Satan, crying with his six eyes, forever chews years later Marlowe’s nadir just sounds like WINSTON SMITH (1984 BY GEORGE Judas’s head in one of his three mouths. Satan a pleasant weekend in the Southland. In ORWELL) scratches at Judas’s body as it hangs from his today’s LA metropolitan area, even a single, As a much-abused civil servant of Airstrip mouth, clawing his spine “naked of skin”. white professional between the ages of 25 One, Smith undergoes a series of vicious and 40 who has some graduate education beatings and tortures even before stepping LAOCOÖN (THE AENEID BY VIRGIL, and earns $60,000 or more annually will through the doors of the dreaded Room TRANSLATED BY FAIRCLOUGH, spend an average of 2.3 hours a week fellat- 101. It’s sad, kind of, until you realise that REVISED BY GOOLD) ing strange men for groceries. Private he’s had ample opportunities to avoid this Soon after the delivery of the Trojan horse, a detectives, by contrast, now live in their cars, fate. Winston and Julia make freaky priest of Neptune named Laocoön makes a suffer savage beatings at the hands of humpadoos in the woods; why doesn’t he number of good points to the crowd: the marauding Suicidals, and fellate strange ani- just camp out there? What would have OUT NOW ON LIMITED Greeks are crafty and deceitful; the horse is mals for nourishment. stopped him from slyly packing a bindle and SEVEN-INCH VINYL probably an “engine of war against our walls, hoofing it out of Airstrip One entirely? His to spy into our homes and come down upon RAY MITCHELL (SAMARITAN BY career? Sure, he would’ve had to build some the city from above”; and there are probably RICHARD PRICE) sort of boat or raft. So what? Monks were a bunch of Greeks hiding inside the horse. He Mitchell is the baby of the bunch, a 2003 doing this in the fifth century. Sure, he then demonstrates that the horse is hollow by entry from crime author and The Wire writer would’ve had to find an island or wilderness WWW.HOUSEANXIETYRECORDS.COM MYSPACE.COM/ZOOKID striking it with his spear. But Sinon, a Greek Richard Price. The story revolves around area uncontrolled by Big Brother. Ingsoc warrior whom the Trojans have captured with Mitchell’s beating by an assailant he refuses doesn’t even control the prole hoods, so suspicious ease, distracts the crowd with his to identify, a massive head blow that why would they have a stranglehold on sob story, and Laocoön goes off to sacrifice a “announced itself as an odour and a sound— some quaint little isle off the Scottish coast? bull to Neptune. As he is killing the bull, two a singed smelling, high-pitched whine, dog The more you think about it, the harder and serpents with “blazing eyes suffused with whistle high”. Samaritan is peppered with all harder it becomes to have any sympathy blood and fire” come out of the sea, wrap sorts of delightful little tidbits about traumatic whatsoever for someone who basically themselves around his two sons, and start eat- brain injury. Which is good, because Ray hands himself over to the Man. To quote ing. Laocoön wades into the “gore and black would be simply insufferable if we didn’t Howard Stern (speaking about Rodney venom” to save his boys, but the serpents already know about the sloshing, bruising, King), they didn’t beat this idiot enough. wrap themselves around his waist and throat, Muhammad Ali punishment in store for that and pretty soon Laocoön is screaming like, do-gooder brain of his. SUBSCRIBE SYMKYN (“THE REEVE’S TALE” IN FREE yes, a sacrificial bull. After wasting priest and VOLUME 8 NUMBER 12 THE CANTERBURY TALES BY GEOFFREY family, the serpents head straight for a shrine JERRY RENAULT (THE CHOCOLATE CHAUCER) to Minerva, which convinces the Trojans that WAR BY ROBERT CORMIER) In Chaucer’s hilarious bedroom farce, TO VICE Laocoön was justly punished for profaning This tale of teen rebellion concerns Jerry Cambridge students John and Aleyn pay a the goddess’s sacred horse with his spear, and Renault, a freshman who challenges his pri- For years we told people not to subscribe to Vice because it doesn’t really that he was just “being a fag” about the horse vate high school’s cruel social order. Jerry’s visit to the dishonest miller Symkyn and make us any money and, unlike most other publications (which are corrupt in general. refusal to sell chocolates in the annual fund check out what coitus with his wife and organs of lies and filth), we don’t use our subscriber numbers to try and drive climaxes in a boxing match attended daughter feels like. When he gets wise, squeeze an extra quid out of advertisers. Plus, the whole managing the list PHILIP MARLOWE (FAREWELL, MY entirely by jeering schoolchildren. In the sav- Symkyn picks Aleyn up by the “throte-bolle” and mailing thing is a huge pain in the arse to deal with. LOVELY BY RAYMOND CHANDLER) age three-page assault that follows, the and bloodies his nose. They brawl; Symkyn’s Chandler’s detective takes a lot of beatings, young protagonist is systematically beaten, wife hauls out the family staff and tries to This is all still the case, but after untold years of emails and letters from but all Angelenos can relate to the one he bludgeoned, clobbered, dick-punched, face- play street baseball with the college boy’s people whining about how they can’t get their hands on an actual physical gets checking out psychic Jules Amthor. A crunched, kidney-gouged, knee-breached, head, but she was “y-fostred in a nonnerye” copy of the magazine because some idiot keeps grabbing 20 copies at a smelly “Hollywood Indian” named Second pancreas-stomped, retina-kicked, taint- and just winds up dealing her husband a time and then selling them on eBay, we are throwing our hands up and Planting takes Marlowe’s gun away, jams his bashed and uterus-nuked. All that remains skull-crushing blow. Aleyn’s friend John is saying, “FINE!” knee in Marlowe’s spine, and pins his arms on the floor of the ring is a gurgling abomi- conspicuously absent from the fight until So if you want to get Vice in the mail every month, it’s £35 for 1 year back. Then he gets Marlowe in a body scis- nation of blood and hair. Conveniently, his Symkyn cries, “I dye!”—at which point John including the behemoth Photo Issue in June. Send cheque or money order sors, wraps his hands around Marlowe’s beatdown is a just punishment no matter finds his testicles, and he and Aleyn lace up (payable to VICE UK Ltd) to: throat, and chokes him until he passes out. where the reader stands. Fans of conformity their Docs, dog-pile on Symkyn, and beat him When Marlowe comes to after that smack- (Jerry didn’t, after all, sell the chocolates) get like the Vietnamese kids in Romper Stomper VICE Subscriptions down, his eyes are full of blood, and Amthor the same satisfaction as fans of individuality (1992). Pundits and media watchdogs rush to New North Place and Second Planting are pistol-whipping him (Jerry attempts to renounce all his convic- blame the crime on “Oi! music”. As singer London in the jaw with his own gun. It’s cool, tions afterwards, although his tongue and Jimmy Pursey delivers an elliptical but pas- EC2A 4JA though: the Bay City cops show up, help face are too shredded to do much more than sionate defence of the genre during a televised Or subscribe online at: www.viceland.com Marlowe to their car, give him a ride to the produce a few feeble farting noises). debate, a ten-by-ten-foot copy of Discharge’s edge of town, and beat him unconscious. Renault’s drippy remains are shovelled into a “State Violence State Control” single (Clay Please allow 6 to 8 weeks for delivery of your first issue. When he wakes up in a locked room in a burlap sack labelled KIDS HOSPICE and the rest 1982) falls from. the sky, crushing the icon. junkie doctor’s office, he’s been tied down of the school holds an impromptu ice-cream He was 55.

66 | VICE ROBERT KIRKMAN & TONY MOORE

INTERVIEWS BY JOHNNY RYAN

few years ago I wanted to try to get blocks of text readable in comic form is cry during Pixar movies, trailers for good back into reading mainstream [something that’s] learnable, really. I’ll say action movies, and any time my children A comics. I asked a friend who knew that large blocks don’t scare away novel read- show any hint of happiness. his shit to name some titles I should ers, so there’s a lesson there. Lettering Did you get to have a lot of creative input check out and the first one he mentioned was placement in comics is an art in itself, and the into the TV show or did you just grab the letterer—which is a very real job—often The Walking Dead. I had seen this book cash and yell, “I’ll see you assholes later!” doesn’t get enough credit. A bad letterer, who around and I just blew it off as another and then peel out on your Kawasaki Ninja doesn’t work with the art, makes it very hard hacky book cashing in on the zombie resur- and spray “fuck you” gravel in director Frank to read a comic book. I’ve been lucky enough gence, but my friend assured me that it was Darabont’s face? to work with Rus Wooton, who is very talent- better than that and I should give it a try. I It sounds like you were there, so I don’t ed and who does our word balloons and text. bought the first collection and was immedi- even know why I would bother answering He trained under the very talented letterer ately caught up in it. The story follows a cop this question. named Rick who wakes up out of a coma Chris Eliopoulos. I would give a lot of credit smack in the middle of a zombie shitstorm. for The Walking Dead’s readability to Rus. Help us wade through the shit and tell us some more awesome comics to read. He goes on to lead a ragtag group of sur- You and artist Tony Moore are longtime Pretty much anything with my name on it is a vivors through this nightmarish landscape, friends and collaborators. You created The sure bet. Or so I’m told by my parents and searching for a safe place to hold out until Walking Dead comic together. What prompted people who are close to me. Otherwise I’ll try this apocalypse blows over. The book was so Tony to leave the series? Any drama, I hope? to narrow things down to a pretty small list: compelling I had to get the rest of the series Well, there’s always drama when people as Y: The Last Man (Brian K. Vaughan and Pia and I tore through it all in a week. I can’t close as Tony and I work together. So, you Guerra), Planetary (Warren Ellis and John think of too many comics that got me so know, sure. My favourite response to this Cassaday). There are some newer books, like excited that I honestly could not it put down, question is that Tony got pregnant and had to Chew, that I think will soon become modern so that right there is a pretty amazing accom- leave the book, because that leaves things classics, there’s a serial called Criminal (Ed plishment. The comic has gone on to become interesting and mysterious which is the best Brubaker, Sean Phillips) that I think people a huge international sensation. In fact it’s so way to leave them. will enjoy. Personally, my favourite of all time fucking great that Hollywood bigshot Frank The real answer is much more boring. We is a series called Savage Dragon (Erik Larsen). Darabont has turned it into a hit TV show. were very adamant about scheduling early on, Vice knew how much I loved it and asked me and Tony—fantastic artist though he is—is Look, talking about comic book lettering is to interview the creators of this comic book much more the type that works best on a about as exciting as watching paint dry on a masterpiece, writer Robert Kirkman and artist variety of projects, rather than a single, con- butter churn. Let’s get back to talking about Tony Moore. I lurched at the chance. stant deadline, so we decided it would be best authors. Who do you like? Harold Robbins? Vice: You do something pretty amazing in this if we went our separate ways for the time Tom Clancy? Jackie Collins? I want names. comic in that it’s very text heavy, and usually being. So, at that time, I contacted Charlie OK, Chuck Palahniuk, Stephen King, Alan when I see a comic with that much text in it I Adlard, who is a fantastic artist, and we’ve Moore. That’s enough, right? want to hang myself. But I find your writing been working together ever since. There’s that scene in the comic (and the TV pretty breezy and compelling. I couldn’t put Men cry a lot in this comic. Are you an emo- show) where the people cover themselves with the book down. I can only think of a handful tional guy? Me too. I see a Pillow Pals a zombie’s guts before walking through the of comics that have accomplished this: Alan commercial on TV and I’m a total wreck for streets of Atlanta to hide from the other zom- Moore’s From Hell comes to mind. Do you days. Do you want to go on a cry date with me? bies’ keen sense of smell. Does this mean that take any inspiration from non-comic writers? More than anything else, and I don’t even if a zombie was chasing me and I blew a big, People that write, y’know… what do they call know who you are. I like that you just went greasy deathfart it would think I was a zom- ’em? Books? ahead and assumed that I’m emotional. I just bie too and leave me alone? Robert Kirkman: I certainly do. There are tra- want to say that I have never cried in my life, Yes, yes it does. No. Lord. Yeah, the sense ditional-format books that I read and I enjoy and that crying men are ridiculous. You of smell thing is tricky because it tends to This image was made by The Walking Dead artist Charlie Adlard for the Comic Book those. But I don’t know that writing large should be ashamed of yourself. That said, I make you think that zombies are blood- Legal Defense Fund. 68 | VICE VICE | 69 my becoming upset was about not being a co- Also, a super nice guy. Some of his figures “The rainy escape from zombie-infested owner and considered a co-creator despite come out a little wonky now and again, but building the thing from scratch with him, on he’s a workhorse. I’ve got a lot of respect for Atlanta was maybe one of my favourite the speculative Image Comics deal of back- the guy. end pay. We hashed out contracts and I’ve If you were on a boat with Kirkman and scenes I’ve ever drawn in a book.” relinquished my claims to the property, but Charlie Adlard and you and Adlard fell out of regardless, I still find his stance regarding my the boat and were drowning, who do you involvement pretty offensive, and I think hounds and can smell better than humans we’re nearing issue 80. There’s very layered think Kirkman would save? that’s an irreconcilable difference that will can. The way I always looked at it was that storytelling, and a lot that has been build- Charlie is clearly much more useful to him. I’d keep us from working together in the future. I the absence of rotting smell would make ing for eight years. But everything else I do wager I was pushed out of the boat in the first don’t talk shit on anybody, but I’m not going zombies able to hone in. The whole idea is awful. place. to hide from it or sugar-coat my feelings on stems from the fact that zombies aren’t very I have an idea for a TV show about a heli- smart, but they don’t eat each other. There the matter. What comics are you working on now and copter with these really big testicles that hang when will they become TV shows? are relatively few visual cues—for example, Did you have any creative input into the sto- down which it uses to bonk people on the Well, I’m working on Fear Agent right now, “staggering” wouldn’t prevent a zombie ryline of The Walking Dead comic? Or did head. It’s kind of like Airwolf meets Boogie which I co-created with Rick Remender. It’s from eating you—so I figured smell would Kirkman just hand you a script and say, “Get Nights. It’s called Ballscopter. The next time wrapping up forever pretty soon, and it work just fine. to work, slave!”? you see Frank Darabont can you just pass this breaks my heart. It’s a big, epic space opera Not really. I had a couple of ideas for How far ahead do you plot out the series? Do idea along to him? Y’know, see if he’s into it. starring an alcoholic cowboy, in the vein of things that got into the book, such as you have an ending in mind? Do you ever see Thanks! the high-adventure sci-fi of EC’s stuff from Andrea being a crack shot, and I chose to a time where you’ll be too old and senile to the 50s and old Flash Gordon and Buck TONY MOORE interpret some events in the script a little write it and someone else will have to take Rogers serials from before that. I don’t know Vice: The Walking Dead is probably one of the differently than Robert intended, but over- over, or will you end it before then? about a TV show, but I do know that the best comics series in the last ten years. Please all I trusted him to do his job and he I think it’s time to end it when I’m not hav- fine folks at Dark Horse are working very explain to the readers how you go about mak- trusted me to do mine. ing a good time and the readers aren’t hard to set it up as a motion picture in ing a comic that doesn’t totally suck shit. having a good time. If I’m still having a This book has a fuckload of awesome zombie Hollywood, and things are looking pretty Tony Moore: Step 1: be worth a shit at what good time, though, even if the readers aren’t, violence, but were there things that you hated good so far. Also, I had another book called you’re trying to do. Try your absolute I’ll run it happily into the ground. As a read- drawing? Like, did you ever wake up in the The Exterminators, which I did at Vertigo damned best. If you weren’t born awesome, er, I’ve always liked stories that just kept morning and think, “Shit! I gotta draw anoth- with Simon Oliver. It’s about the band of attempt to become educated in the field you going, and I have a lot of ideas for The er four-page scene of some dude crying and misfits and fuck-ups employed by an exter- wish to enter, so that at least you can draw Walking Dead, and think I can keep it up. talking about his feelings! Goddammit!”? mination business in LA, and the crazy from the knowledge of those who came So yeah, I see myself writing it until I’m old I’ll never complain about a few pages of myriad of shit they encounter in the line of before you. It will also open your eyes to and grey and completely horrible at it, and talking heads. They pull my ass out of the duty. Plus, it has some good creepy X-Files- things that suck shit, so that you don’t unwit- the book sucks. I see it as an endurance race, deadline fire on a regular basis. The only type supernatural overtones. Dexter tingly join their ranks. with this major commitment to making scene that stuck in my craw was the scene producer Sara Colleton got it optioned at Seriously, though, I think The Walking things interesting along the way—I’m proud where they put the guts on themselves to Dead’s success largely comes from a lot of Showtime, but things fell apart around the that we’ve gotten to issue 80, and I think I’m camouflage themselves from the zombies. love for what we were trying to do. We truly writers’ strike a couple of years ago, and it’s up to the challenge of keeping things com- I’ve just never bought this angle of smell loved the stories that inspired us to make the still looking for a home. With Sara’s success pelling through at least issue 400. Let’s see if being such a big giveaway. Half of ’em don’t book, and did our absolute damnedest to cre- on Dexter, and now The Walking Dead I pull it off. even have noses, and none of them are doing so well, I think it’s got a pretty good ate something we both felt was worthy of actively breathing, so what are the chances Name one of your comic book artist heroes shot of landing somewhere. Plus, the writing standing alongside them. Fortunately, people of them catching a whiff? Also, this isn’t the who you met that turned out to be a total dick. picked it up and felt the love we put into it. is awesome. Really twisted dark humour, first time this has happened, but it’s an Everybody has these stories about different with some quality gross-outs, and some great You and Robert Kirkman have been comic col- anecdote that applies to the situation, and creators—John Burns is the top candidate on characters. Glen Morgan wrote a pilot for it laborators for quite a while. What are some fellow dog-owners can relate: my dogs got that list of people you meet who turn out to that knocked my damn socks off. comics that you guys have done together which out today and one of them managed to find Beyond that, I’m working for Marvel these be assholes and that ends up being dishearten- will never become huge TV sensations? something that smelled like death and days. My next book hasn’t been announced ing. I’ve never had the privilege of meeting Well, despite a brief run on Spike TV, I seri- vomit, which, of course, she rolled in. She yet, but I think people will dig it. It’s a pretty him, and I’m a huge fan and will continue to ously doubt that Battle Pope will ever be a maybe got a couple of teaspoons of that drastically different take on a popular fan- be a huge fan; I don’t care if he is a huge smash hit. Even if they made a funny version greasy filth on her, and she was out in a favourite of the 90s, who has been out of dick, I’ll still buy his comics. I will say, some of the cartoon, I still doubt it’d carry. Even at pretty heavy storm. When she got inside, the commission for quite a while. Mouth-breathers great artists are nice people: Erik Larsen and its best, in a world where The Tick gets can- stink filled my whole goddamned house and will be upset at the change, and their poor Todd McFarlane are both amazingly down to celled twice, Pope doesn’t stand a chance. we had to give her a pretty vigorous sham- mothers will hear about it for months. earth and fun guys to be around. Joe Quesada Everything else, though... TV gold! pooing, which I’m still not sure got it all. is kind of a dick but I never idolised him Intelligent people who read comic books to I’ve collaborated a few times with other So, on top of not buying the zombies This is a previously unseen drawing by Cliff Rathburn. Thanks to Sina M. Grace for image assistance. have fun will get a real kick out of it. when I was younger, so... artists. It always starts off cool, but then I smelling people, I also don’t buy that a few What are the other comics that you’ve writ- quickly become irritated and want to get the minutes of even the heaviest rain can just List the 250 biggest assholes in the comics After all the success that the book has had are ing watch, and also happens to have an awe- ten that are equal to or better than The fuck away from the other guy as quickly as rinse that shit off to the point you smell like industry and please write a paragraph or two some vagina what squirted out the awesomest Walking Dead? possible and then talk major shit about him Irish Spring from a distance. Also, if you you annoyed that you left it, or are you all explaining why. I think all of my comic books are equal to on the internet. Which collaborations made rubbed that shit on you, you’d get sick as a like, I don’t give a shit, I get paid anyway? baby daughter that was ever squirted out of a Anybody who ever touched pen to paper or better than The Walking Dead, of you do this, too? fuck, and only an idiot would do it on pur- Not really. I was pretty miserable by the end, vagina. At the end of the day, my hands are for Kieron Dwyer’s Lowest Comic course. Haunt is still very young—we’re Well, Kirkman and I have clearly gone our pose. All in all, that whole scene annoyed and clearly things weren’t working out. I can’t clean and the cheques clear, so what, me Denominator is right up there on the list. wrapping issue 12 before the new year— separate ways. We had our disagreements me. Oddly enough, though, the rainy escape complain. If I hadn’t left it, I might not have worry? Life’s good. I don’t have the time or After reading Klassic Komix Klub, I’m pret- but I think it has great potential, and some about how things were supposed to operate, from zombie-infested Atlanta was maybe gotten to do any of my subsequent books, energy to carry that kinda baggage. ty sure your name is on there at least 15 or horror elements. It’s about ghosts as and since then our different perspectives have one of my favourite scenes I’ve ever drawn which I immensely enjoyed and I co-own. Charlie Adlard took over drawing The 20 times, Johnny. Poor old T.K. Ryan opposed to zombies, so there’s a parallel given rise to what each believes to be the key in a book. The creepy zombies, the rain, the Also, I got to do some pretty crazy shit at Walking Dead after you. Do you like what worked for 40 years on Tumbleweeds, and there, and great art by Greg Capullo too. issues leading to our split. I admit that I was- tension... it all made for a really fun scene Marvel, too. Not to mention, I might not he’s done with the book? then his only begotten son turns out to be a On the superhero side, I’d say Invincible— n’t as fast as was needed to keep the thing to draw, and overall, I still think it was one have gotten married to an awesome gal, Kara, I do. He’s a great storyteller with balls of filth-monger and a sexual .deviant. I hope long-running, similar to The Walking Dead, rolling on a monthly basis, but a good deal of of my most successful sequences. who helps run my business like a Swiss fuck- steel when it comes to slinging ink around. you’re proud of yourself.

70 | VICE VICE | 71 Who’s Afraid of Kathy Acker? PHOTOGRAPHER: ELLIS SCOTT ART DIRECTION: EDWARD QUARMBY STYLIST: MISCHA NOTCUTT Casting and styling assistant: Scarlett Valentine Hair: Makita Naka using Bumble and Bumble Make-up: Nadine Elias using MAC Models: Hirschy and Robbie at Select; Lewis, Claire, Billie, Keiran

During the 70s and 80s, bisexual former stripper and groundbreaking author Kathy Acker penned a series of post-punk rewrites of classics such as Great Expectations, Huckleberry Finn and Don Quixote, with added abortion, rape, incest, pornography, graphic violence, terrorism and feminism.

Diesel jeans Atsuko Kudo bra, v i ntage top Humanoid-lover Thivai from Empire of the Senseless, based on William Gibson’s Neuromancer. The autobiographical murderer the Black Tarantula from Portrait of an Eye.

72 | VICE VICE | 73 Alpha 60 vest, adidas trousers, Converse shoes vintage top from Beyond Retro, Atsuko Kudo suspender belt, American Apparel bloomers top, Nike 6.0 jumper, Westwood Stolen Girlfriends Club jacket, Vivienne Sancho Panza from Don Quixote, based on the Cervantes classic. Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, based on the Charles Dickens tale.

74 | VICE VICE | 75 American Apparel vest and trousers from Beyond Retro American Apparel t-shirt, vintage Diesel dress, coat from Beyond Retro, jewellery Janey Smith, the sex addict in love with her father, from Blood and Guts in High School, based on Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Ange, the time-travelling pirate prostitute, from Pussy, King of the Pirates.

76 | VICE VICE | 77 Nicola Six from London Fields*

PHOTOGRAPHER: TOM BEARD, STYLIST: SAM VOULTERS Hair: Hiroshi Matsushita, Make-up: Xabier Celaya, Photographer’s assistant: Alex Sebley Stylist’s assistant: Thais Mendes, Model: Kirstie at D1

*The Martin Amis novel London Fields

Bordello bra American Apparel shirt, COS dress, McQ jacket, hat, Ray-Ban sunglasses

78 | VICE VICE | 79 American Apparel dress, knit and jacket, vintage Lacoste Martens boots cardigan from Mint, vintage leggings, Dr.

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80 | VICE VICE | 81 55DSL top, Pringle cardigan, Lacoste jacket

82 | VICE VICE | 83 CHARLES BURNS

INTERVIEW AND PORTRAIT BY SAMMY HARKHAM

harles Burns is the author and artist early on don’t get resolved until the middle of Was it daunting to have this huge palette behind uncannily creepy comic books the book. opened up to you? C like Black Hole, Big Baby, and Skin Sure. It wasn’t daunting. There are things that you Deep. In his work, he’s created a But the way that I work is also open-ended can achieve with colour that you simply can’t world that feels like an eerie parallel to those enough that there’s room to explore new do with black and white. There are ways of of David Lynch and some of Lovecraft. It’s ideas as they come to me. I guess the best way telling the story where you can suggest mood reality, tweaked and menacing and always just or you can have key colours. to describe it is that I know the story, and I’m familiar enough to feel almost plausible. His working out how to tell that story. In addition to the Tintin motif running best-known work is Black Hole, which tells the through X’ed Out, there are also recurring I would assume that, like most cartoonists, story of a group of teenagers who become references to Burroughs and his idea of you take a long time to complete the whole infected with a horrible disease that causes dis- Interzone. Was he someone you were thinking thing and that new ideas might be popping gusting mutations, rendering them outcasts about when you were writing? I know that up or you might be changing as a person as who shun society and hide out in the woods. you’ve talked about him being an influence It’s a perfect allegory for the awkwardness and you go. on you in the past. alienation of adolescence. It’s sort of like With X’ed Out, my original plan was to do a It’s not so much in the writing itself, but more Dazed & Confused on a permanent dose of story about my life in the late 70s, when I was how he influenced me during a specific time white blotter, like one of those never-coming- involved in the world of punk rock. And, you in my life. The protagonist is a reflection on down bad trips made real. It’s a classic. know, there were a couple of false starts there. who I was and what I was thinking. In the The first installment of Burns’s new book, I was initially doing this black-and-white late 70s I was reading a lot of Burroughs, X’ed Out, has just been released. Like all story, and it was rendered in a very similar and I was suddenly involved in punk-rock of his work, it juxtaposes the real with the way to Black Hole and I was just not happy. I culture—kind of wholeheartedly embracing otherworldly. This time, Burns’s own was looking at this work like, “This is awful.” it. Burroughs really fit into that worldview. rememberings of his time as a punk rocker /pre- Anytime you have that feeling, it means you His kind of dark humour and the clarity of tentious art-school kid alternate with a surreal should tear up those pages and start again. So his writing really impressed me. When I was complementary story line in which a Tintin-ish there were two or three false starts before I starting work on this book, I reread a lot of character wanders through a Burroughs-esque really wanted to have some way of pushing his pieces that I hadn’t read for years. It was city of monsters, intrigue, and paranoia. myself into unknown territory. One of the interesting to revisit that and reflect on his Waiting for volume 2 is going to be tough. things that was helpful was taking on a colour work now that I’m a middle-aged guy as Sammy Harkham, who interviews Burns book, with two major plot threads—one that opposed to a twentysomething dude. here, is one of the most talented and original takes place in this more cartoony Tintin sort voices of the comics generation that appeared of world, and then another thread that’s much Was it partly to get yourself back into the after Burns and his peers. Sammy’s ongoing more in my typical… headspace of that character? A little bit of that, yeah. I mean, I’m showing book series, Crickets, tells stories that veer from Grounded, let’s say. More reality based. this character who’s fairly naive, and he’s get- the weird to the historical to the personal and More typical of the world that I look at. realist, all connected by deep humanity and wit. ting up and doing a kind of spoken-word Harkham is also responsible for the comics So was it a eureka moment of, like, “Oh, performance piece, and I wanted it to feel anthology Kramers Ergot, which is the best reg- colour”? Once you introduce colour it kind of naive. I think that there’s a certain age ularly published thing of its type since the glory changes how you write. at which a lot of people embrace writers like days of RAW in the early 80s, which—hey, It certainly does that. But, kind of backing up Burroughs, and then they kind of internalise look at the threads coming together here!—was a little bit, the way I work is I write and write that sort of work. So, yeah, I wanted to have a showcase for the work of Charles Burns. and write and just keep notebooks—crappy this art student who wants to do Burroughs- The independent-comics world is a strange notebooks so I don’t feel intimidated about inspired spoken-word pieces. I actually ongoing saga of peers, rivalries and hierar- filling them up with ballpoint-pen scrawlings. included some cut-up writings from chies. It would make a great soap opera if So you write in text at first? Burroughs in the text as well. the players were a little less pale and Primarily, yeah. There are usually a few little You worked on Black Hole for ten years. Did slumped. But Sammy and Charles are, luckily, visual notes here and there, but it’s mainly you feel completely spent afterward? Like, friends and mutual admirers. Here is what just text. I compile all my ideas and do my emptied out of every idea you’ve ever had? I they had to say to each other over the phone best not to censor myself in any way. I just let find that as soon as I’m asked to do another last month. anything enter into it. And what I found story after I’ve just finished something, my Vice: How do you start a project like X’ed myself doing was taking all these notes on first impulse is to almost do the exact same Out? And, you know, this is a question I’ve this kind of Tintin character and also doing thing because my head is still there. always had about Black Hole as well—do you all this work on this punk story. And so the Right, and like I was saying before, the first begin with a heavy outline? eureka moment was combining those two attempts on this story really did feel like I was Charles Burns: With Black Hole, and with threads. When I was thinking, “Tintin, of falling back on what I was comfortable with this book as well, there was a skeletal out- course, that kind of Franco-Belgian album for- in Black Hole. When I was done with that line. I mean, there’s a complexity [in these mat,” full-colour books came to mind. And that book, I intentionally took on a couple of pro- books], and if I want to have an important was something that was very fun to do. As you jects that had nothing to do with comics. I image that shows up early and doesn’t get mentioned, when you work in colour you have was asked to do this animated movie, and I resolved until much later in the book, I need this whole new set of tools for telling a story. took it on for a couple of reasons. Partly, I to figure out how that’s going to work. Like And I didn’t want to just do a colourised ver- wanted to get out of my little studio that I’d in Black Hole—plot threads that get introduced sion of my black-and-white work. been sitting in for so long and do something

84 | VICE VICE | 85 the first episode have any bearing on where So as much as you know what the structure “Most artists, most cartoonists, most writers you go from here in terms of the story? of X’ed Out will be, you still have to come up I think that I’ve reached a stage in my life with ways to get it out? come back to the themes that are important where—at least hopefully—I’ve been able to It goes back to knowing the story and then put blinders on enough that I’m not influenced finding a way of telling that story. That’s the to them.” by the immediate response. I guess I would feel hard part. I’m sure that you’ve been around bad if every single review I read and every per- people who can tell an amazing story and that was collaborative. And I wanted to go Even though there were a couple of false starts son I talked to said, “This is a pile of shit.” you’re just transfixed, and then you can hear work in Paris for a little bit, that was a because you felt like you were harking back to You know, that would make me feel bad. someone try to retell the same story and it’s highlight as well. There was a number of Black Hole too much, there are elements in X’ed Or if everyone kept using the same terms to like, my God, let me out of here. cartoonists who were involved in the movie Out, like a couple of visual motifs that you’ve describe it, like, “Well, it’s very dense, Charles.” Then there’s someone like Dan Clowes, who’s project who I knew and liked their work. I played with for a long time and certain looks I try to trust my instincts and trust my ability says that he’ll be working on a story and as guess it was like pushing myself out into a for characters, that feel familiar in a nice way. to put together a story. soon as he realises what the story is actually world that was really not something that I It’s definitely not a sequel to Black Hole, but we What is your daily schedule like? Do you “about”, he’ll see what he’s tapping into as knew or was comfortable with. So that was can immediately tell that we’re in your universe. keep regular hours for your work? far as his own life, and it kind of stops him. good. I also did a little photo book during Oh, yeah. Most artists, most cartoonists, most Pretty much, but I still do other projects that He loses interest in it. But, anyway, what else, that time. writers come back to the themes that are come in. I have a show that’s coming up in Charles? What else can we talk about? And then did a time come when you said to important to them. There are people who, in Paris, so I’ve been gathering a portfolio of Let’s see, one of the two questions I get the yourself, “OK, enough time has passed. I’m some way, write the same story over and over prints for them. But yeah, I sit down and write most is, “What about the Black Hole movie?” again. I’m not quite doing that, but there are going to sit down and come up with something”? every day, one way or another. Sometimes I’m I’m acquainted with a lot of film people since I certainly things that bubble up to the surface— I did that, yeah. There’s this feeling, this frus- sitting there looking at notes and then looking live in LA, and Black Hole does come up. I tration sometimes, when you’re not actually influences and ideas that keep coming back at a blank page in front of me and nothing is again and again. don’t know if that’s because they know I’m a working and producing something—where coming. And then there are the days when the cartoonist, and so they talk to me about it, but you’re in that stage of formulating ideas but How do you feel about having the first part writing starts flowing. I can’t ever totally pre- Black Hole is like the golden ring. Everyone you actually just want to work. You know, of this story released when you still have so dict it. But I do sit down every day and make wants to write a script of it. Everyone wants to you want to be involved with the process. much more work to do? Will the response to an attempt at writing, that’s for sure. make it. Everyone’s tried to do a draft. And you’re not really involved in any of that, right? Like, you don’t care? It’s not a matter of “I don’t care”, but when I was done with the book and there was that period where I could have tried to write a script myself, I made a decision not to. I mean, I certainly would be involved as far as offering opinions, but as far as direct involve- ment… I just wanted to move ahead. I didn’t want to spin my wheels with a project that may or may not ever happen. Right, you never know with movies. But I do know that I can sit down at my table and draw a new comic. I know that that’s possible, even if I were to just end up walking across the street and photocopying it at the little copy place, I know that I can come up with something. You’ve done some set design too, right? Yeah, it was for the Mark Morris Dance Group. I worked on this thing called The Hard Nut. My official title was concept designer, I think. I did drawings and worked on some of the ideas behind this dance, which Front cover of Black Hole #4, 1997 was an updated version of The Nutcracker. This is kind of mind-blowing, but it’s been 20 That’s great. Are you engaged with what other people are years since I did that. It’s going to be per- There’s a frustration where I’ve just been back doing in comics right now? formed again at the Brooklyn Academy of here in my studio for a couple of days and my Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m always interested in Music this holiday season. time has been spent taking care of all the vari- everything that’s out there, and I actively look Oh wow. ous little things like emails. I won’t really be for good work. I haven’t quite reached that I haven’t seen it in years and years, so I’m actu- back to work for a couple more weeks. But I’ve bah-humbug stage yet in my life. ally going to go see it. That should be fun. got pages waiting for me, so that’s good. When you were first starting to do comics, OK. So, here we go: when do we see the You’ve been living in Philadelphia for a long time. there was a certain vibe of mid-50s next book? My wife teaches at Tyler School of Art, so that Americana in your work. Even looking at Oh Jesus Christ. No, sorry. was the reason we moved here way back when. X’ed Out today it still seems so true. People want to know. And do you like it? The style of my artwork as well as my way of I’m slightly over halfway through with the Yes. I like big, decaying East Coast cities. It telling stories did come out of the kind of work Endpapers from Black Hole #11, 2003 second book. How’s that? feels right. that I grew up liking and kind of emulating—

86 | VICE VICE | 87 “I looked at Tintin “Most magazines are driven by a desire to make money by putting celebrities in books when I was them. But Vice looks like it’s here because it wants to be.” — Ian Hislop really, really “Magazines can be very dull and shallow, Vice seems to have turned that on its head.” — Dame Vivienne Westwood young—before I could even read.”

imitating certain kinds of line quality. By the THE WORLD time I was working on Black Hole, there was something much more personal there, some- thing where I wanted to tell stories that were more character driven and not so much about comics per se, or about a certain style. ACCORDING TO VICE Not about ironically playing with a certain notion of Americana. Right. Black Hole is about a disease that affects teenagers, and about the lives of those particular characters. In some way, the other elements are incidental. I mean, of course it plays an important role, but it’s not just about, you know, an STD that deforms teenagers. That’s not what the story is about. The story is about characters who are strug- gling with their adolescence and finding their way through that portion of their life. There’s a certain well of pop culture that you go to for inspiration: horror movies, Godzilla movies, old comic books… There’s work that I grew up with and looked at and internalised. It is still in my subcon- scious, and I pay attention to that part of myself, and those images come through. For example, I looked at Tintin books when I was really, really young—before I could even read—and so there were elements of the sto- ries that I didn’t understand the relevance of. In The Secret of the Unicorn there’s one scene where Tintin is down in this basement. He’s been kidnapped. He wakes up and there’s this intercom that’s stuck on the wall. And in my mind, I had no idea what an intercom was, but I could tell that there was a voice balloon coming from this little hole in the wall. Right. Front cover of Nitnit #3, 2010 It seemed like this kind of disembodied mouth that was stuck into this wall, and it really took on a creepy feel. And so X’ed Out is not about Tintin, but it’s certainly about my reaction to some of those images that I internalised at that point in my life. Do you have older siblings? How were you seeing Tintin before you could read? I had an older sister, but my dad was inter- ested in comics. He went to the bookstore and the library every week and picked me up these American editions of Tintin. There A full colour, 352-page hardback compendium were six of them that were published in the of the best of the last few years of Vice magazine and VBS, featuring brand new interviews, early 60s, or late 50s, and I’ve yet to run articles, photos and illustrations. into another American cartoonist of my gen- On sale in all good bookshops now. eration who even had any knowledge of those books. I guess the distribution wasn’t . Cover of the Yo-Yo’s “The Time of Your Life” /“Seven Shades Front cover of Johnny 23, 2010 very good. of Blue” single, Sub Pop, 2000

88 | VICE BRYAN GARNER

INTERVIEW BY JESSE PEARSON PORTRAIT BY LAURA PARK

ryan Garner—author of Garner’s largely oral culture, things can change quickly. How do you see the quality of writing and Modern American Usage, editor in As we saw the rise of literacy over the next communication on the internet affecting B chief of Black’s Law Dictionary, and few hundred years, especially in the beginning grammar today? a contributor to The Chicago of the 18th century, the language became rela- I can’t really tell. Some of it is quite bad and Manual of Style—is our favourite grammari- tively more fixed. It’s very interesting that a quite sloppy, and some of it is quite good. I an. He was also David Foster Wallace’s grammarian like Lindley Murray, who in just don’t know what most people are reading favourite grammarian, and that, for savvy 1795 wrote his English Grammar, became the on the internet. I have the idea that it’s mostly grammar fascists under the age of 40, is like a best-selling author of the first half of the 19th a few middlebrow vehicles that give quick recommendation from Jesus. Garner occasion- century. He sold more than 10 million copies news dispatches. ally borrows in his writing the term SNOOT, of that book. News aggregators and things like that. which is a Wallace family acronym (standing Wow. I don’t think that we have a substantial per- for “Sprachgefühl Necessitates Our Ongoing Nobody else was close, and grammar was centage of Americans who read seriously now. Tendance” or “Syntax Nudniks of Our something that Americans seemed to care about I suppose that to some extent that may have Time”). A SNOOT is a person who cares a been true 50 years ago, but if you took, say, great deal about grammar and usage. A a lot. Murray was an American lawyer who upper-middle-class readers or people of a cer- SNOOT will often correct a person’s bad ended up sort of defecting to England after tain socioeconomic status, what we might call speech or writing but will always try to do so opposing the revolution and moving to York. upper-middle-class people, half a century ago in a kind rather than a snobbish manner. But he became very influential as an English and asked how many of them were serious D.F.W. was a SNOOT. Bryan Garner is a grammarian. He outsold Stephen King or J.K. readers, if 75 percent of them were serious SNOOT. We all should aspire to be SNOOTs. Rowling—and to a smaller population. It really readers, then today it seems to me more like American English is under attack by many is quite extraordinary. 20 percent. We’ve lost a lot of serious readers. varieties of lazy, misguided, and careless I love the thought of earlier generations of usage. Have you seen Idiocracy? If we don’t, Americans arguing points of grammar. Because of competing media, probably—tele- as a nation, get on this soon, people two gen- With the rise of literacy, especially in vision, games, film. erations from now will talk as they talk in America, there were strong notions of cor- Yeah. I think that’s all part of it. that movie, but for real. It won’t be anywhere rectness. And, by the way, Murray was a And with the internet, I also think of how near as funny when it’s real. good grammarian. He’s often derided. But he people express themselves via things like Garner recently spoke with Vice, taking a did not, contrary to maybe not popular Facebook or Twitter, where there’s a large little time from his busy schedule of lecturing, belief but popular academic belief, tell people value based on not only being as brief as possi- researching, writing a book with Supreme not to end a sentence with a preposition or ble—which can be a good thing in terms of Court justice Antonin Scalia, and generally never to split an infinitive. He didn’t. A lot clear writing—but also a lot of shorthand and fighting the good fight of preserving the grace of the popular notions about grammar are use of acronyms. Those things might lead to of American English while also tracking its just wildly false. interesting evolutions in language as time goes evolution. For this, we thank him. Also, at the on, but in the short term, it’s just a mess. end of this interview, you’ll find a test from Those are just two of the strange directives What most linguists seem to think is that Garner’s Better Grammar for Lawyers course that we receive in school that don’t really there are some conventions that will probably that he has graciously allowed us to repub- have a basis in the rules of grammar. not stray far beyond tweeting and instant lish. It may seem simple. But try it. You will Today we seem to be descending back into messaging, and that they can be useful. I likely be surprised by how elusive the finer this kind of Renaissance oral culture. I think myself tweet and I use pretty much complete points of grammar and usage prove to the that a lot of people go through their daily words. I find it interesting to try to get it average bourgeois reader today (that’s you). lives and read very little. That’s unlike, say, the 19th century, in which reading was a down to 140 characters and at least to say Vice: To start, I’m interested in how English mainstay form of entertainment. Today there something meaningful. grammar and usage morph over time. are so many other competing demands that Do you keep up with the state of grammar as Bryan Garner: Well, grammar is constantly it’s quite possible to go through life with min- it’s taught in public schools nowadays? changing. It was changing fairly rapidly from imal reading except maybe what can be seen I do. I have a very substantial collection of the period before Chaucer wrote in the 1200s on a handheld device. grammars as used in schools from the begin- through probably the late 1500s, when nings of the republic. I probably have about Shakespeare began writing his plays. In that I’d say that the general decline of proper 3,000 or 4,000 grammars. period, of course, there was this mixture in grammar today has to do with the fact that the English language—a combination of it’s not really put into practical use by as That’s a lot. Norman-French dialect and Anglo-Saxon many people as it once was. And I do have the definite impression that Middle English—which became sort of an Well, we have lost serious readership in mod- there’s a great disparity. The private schools, amalgamation of French and English. And ern culture. It is astounding how few lawyers the preparatory schools, continue to teach it most of the speakers were not literate. In whom I deal with subscribe to any serious in a rather serious way, but public schools on those kinds of conditions, when you have a journalism at all. the whole do not.

90 | VICE VICE | 91 And if public schools don’t teach grammar as traditional ways of teaching grammar in whether she could find a word in the dictio- and a lot of unduly complex writing, and this well as private schools do, it would follow American schools. nary that I didn’t know. If you took out pollutes their own writing habits. So not only “There is simply no way that anyone’s normal that grammar helps to maintain class differ- What was the logic behind doing that? scientific words that were of no value to me, are they very weak in grammar and very weak in just putting together good, strong schooling would have prepared the person ences in culture. Well, it was several things. One of them was she could rarely stump me. I had a much big- sentences, but they are also trying to ape Well, I think it does. I don’t know if you read this egalitarianism that essentially said that ger vocabulary when I was 17 than I do something that’s much more complex and to know what he or she needs to know about my entry called “Class Distinctions” in we should not disapprove of certain dialects, today. One interesting thing to me is that archaic. They end up being execrable writers. Garner’s Modern American Usage. It’s one of that we should treat dialects as equal, and David Foster Wallace apparently had a very English grammar and English usage.” my favourite entries. that the English teachers will find it more fun similar experience. You know, David was a Is looking for examples to use in the next edi- friend of mine. I have. It’s a sort of book that I really like in to teach literature than to teach the rudiments tion of Modern American Usage a daily that I can pick it up, open it at random, and of good grammar and good usage. I know. I think that his work was where I practice for you? to record grammar dispassionately. And that utilitarian reader, when I’m reading most first heard of you. Yes. I’m constantly taking notes, and I’m very jump in. [laughs] Well, as long as the teachers are hav- means that whatever the dialect, if it’s West books, the stuff that I’m looking at can plug The University of Texas recently acquired his fortunate to have dozens of allies around the Look at that little entry called “Class ing fun… Texas, if it’s black English, if it’s cockney, into any one of 15 of my books. It could be a papers, and among them is a vocabulary note- world who send me things out of magazines there is no such thing as good or bad. A pre- usage point. It could be something about Distinctions”. When I wrote it, I thought it It’s a little bit like trying to teach people to book that he started as an adolescent, and it’s and newspapers, and I’m always grateful to scriptivist looks at the language from the advocacy. It could be about public speaking. was mildly incendiary. But nobody has ever play piano, and to play pieces that are well very similar to mine. have those examples. All I need to have is the point of view of the standard dialect and A lot of the stuff I read is law. So every time mentioned it in a review of the book. It’s kind beyond their capabilities. If you don’t learn beginning page of the article and the page judges deviations from the literary standard as I’m reading, it’s with an eye to somehow capi- of interesting. the rudiments, you can’t go on to more I’ve seen some of that collection online. It where the mistake occurs. I like to be able to being less than ideal. To a prescriptivist, it is talising on what I’m looking at by What’s the gist of it? advanced activities. looks great. He was kind of alone among his verify it, and I like, frankly, print sources. I possible to make a mistake. To a descriptivist, incorporating it into any one of the various My impression is—and there’s quite some lit- contemporaries in his precise care for gram- Going back to these points of grammar that have not gone in for citing things that are a mistake is impossible. In the world of books that I’ve written. I can never read with- erature on this—that the public schools have mar and vocabulary, and his willingness to you refer to as “superstitions”, such as not rather unverifiable, although I suppose at affairs, virtually everyone is a prescriptivist. out a pen in hand. simply stopped trying to teach it. It’s not that use obscure words and to write these daring, ending a sentence with a preposition or not some point I might have to cite net materials. Descriptivism is a very artificial construct, they don’t do a good job of it. They don’t long, complicated sentences. That’s kind of rough. beginning a sentence with and or but… these But I like print because it shows that a certain developed by linguists for purposes of record- even try. It’s not even a subject that is offered Just as I was. It’s a very lonely experience. I think it’s at least a mild curse. things were taught as gospel in my high level of care should have been taken in pro- ing grammars. Descriptivism has its place, but in most public schools. Part of why that is, I Although I did have one friend, J.P. Allen, school, and they’re just wrong. ducing it. For me to venomously call out it has no place in the world of affairs. It’s a shame to miss out on the emotional who is now a moviemaker, novelist, and think, is a misguided egalitarianism that sug- That’s right. And by the way, just to clarify some associate professor at the University of impact of good fiction. playwright out in San Francisco. He and I It’s more like cultural anthropology than gests that we should not put teachers in the things for your readers, I should note that I am Toronto for a mistake in a book is quite legit- I suppose. Although when I read Charlotte’s were in high school together, and we pur- grammar. position of criticising language as it’s used at a product of public schools all the way imate. But to take something from Web to my daughter, I was streaming tears by sued this interest very strongly. So I wasn’t That’s right. It’s very much in line with that, to home by various students. through. Public high school, public university— somebody’s website is maybe not as legiti- the last several pages. I could barely read it to entirely isolated. talk about how a society does things and not mate. But Garner’s Modern American Usage her. And Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms— Right, right. University of Texas. I grew up in West Texas. I judge them at all. If you were an anthropolo- A lot of people—when they come across is a compilation of faults, basically, that I I find that a very difficult final part to read. It might look as if the teacher is criticising the did actually have a high-school course in gram- gist studying cannibals, there would be no somebody who uses abstruse words or a larger have found in all kinds of writing. I try to do parents of the pupils. And there is a view mar that was taught by a coach. Picture this, in disapproval of their eating habits. That’s some- Yeah. than usual vocabulary, or who speaks with among some inane linguists that says that we Canyon, Texas, a coach who stood at the head it with a kind smile, not with a scowl. thing that’s hard for most people to fathom, His technique is wonderful and I’m holding noticeably proper grammar—will perceive shouldn’t be teaching nonstandard speakers of the room dipping snuff while teaching, and Are you able to tell me one or two of the just as it would be hard for most businesses to the book and crying while reading. So I can that person as arrogant or snooty. Do you the standard dialect—that it’s simply the filling up a Styrofoam cup with his gross, more common mistakes that you find? hire someone who answers the telephone by react very strongly to the stuff that I read. come across that much? dialect of the people in power. Instead, we brown saliva, and he didn’t know a damn There are about 10,000 in Modern American saying, “He ain’t got no business today.” And I’ve written some tributes for friends of I’m aware of it. Although I think that if you should be teaching everyone to be accepting thing about English grammar. So I had no edu- Usage. When people ask me, “What are your mine who have died, and I’m crying while I’m have the right approach, if you’re a down-to- Will you tell me the names of a couple of con- of linguistic differences. cational advantages in terms of picking up biggest pet peeves?”—well, maybe this is writing it, and a lot of people have told me earth sort of person, and you just happen to temporary fiction writers of whom you’re a fan? This I’ve encountered before. standard English. because it’s my profession, but I’m beyond the they had similar reactions in reading them. speak well and use language well, nobody I don’t read as much fiction as I should, But when it comes to getting hired as a recep- But as you’ve written, you were lucky enough state of pet peeves. There are 3,000 things that Didn’t E.B. White write Charlotte’s Web? really knows. A lot of SNOOTs, I think, are although I have a large collection of fiction. I tionist, for example, or for any number of to come from a family that had a long-standing seriously bother me, but I find that having the Yes. pedantic, cold, sort of unpleasant, superior also tend not to read contemporary things. I positions in corporate America, it simply interest in grammar, usage, and linguistics. outlet of the usage book to record them in and people. And that’s no good. That gives pre- spend a lot of time reading classics. But I like That’s sort of a funny coincidence—a book becomes impossible for people who are not at That’s right. My father minored in English at disapprove of them—sometimes with some scriptivism a bad name. David Foster Wallace. I like Larry McMurtry. I that moved you to tears is by somebody who denunciatory fun—is a great way of coping. least bi-dialectal, who don’t really have a Texas Tech University, and he had a very find myself staying away from the best sellers of also coauthored The Elements of Style, a clas- Just to clarify, “SNOOT” is a term that grasp on what has traditionally been called healthy interest in grammar and language, I guess that the difference between you and a the day. For me, anything that is currently the sic grammar and usage guide. Do you pay Wallace coined to describe people who care a “educated English”. This problem has gotten and so did his father, my grandfather. lot of grammarians is that you do something rage is something I have absolutely nothing to attention to public-speaking trends in terms of great deal more about grammar than most much more serious since the 1960s, and now constructive with the things that you find to do with. I kind of wait until books are at least the speeches given by politicians and CEOs? So was there a parallel self-education going people do. most of our educational systems are simply criticise. You use them as examples. ten years old to look at them. I have no knowl- I’m a very serious student of public speak- on for you when you weren’t really getting I like friendly, warm, robust people who care drifting. We’re seeing a lot of linguistic drift. True. That’s why I sent you this little diag- edge of the New York Times best-seller list. ing. I do a lot of it myself. I do about 120 what you wanted out of your public school about the language and use it well, and there nostic SNOOT test, and I would wager with seminars a year of six hours each. That’s a How does this relate to the ongoing battle education? are lots of them around. That’s the kind of You’re not missing much, believe me. you that most of your readers will not do lot of public speaking. between descriptivists and prescriptivists? Yes. I kind of trace it back to a comment SNOOT to be, it seems to me—not someone I just bought The Collected Works of Joseph better than getting four of the seven ques- Well, I think it was derived from descrip- made by a girl I went to high school with, who’s going to be scowling and all upset by Conrad, and I want to read that. It is indeed. tivism and from structural linguists in the who complimented me by saying, “You have tions right. I bet that most of your readers whatever somebody happens to be saying. That is great stuff. I’m a very keen observer of good speakers. 1940s and 50s. A lot of it can be laid at the a really big vocabulary.” And that was great. will miss at least three, and probably a I’ve learned a lot, actually, from televangelists. Or a person who is constantly correcting I try to read things that have enduring value. I doorstep of one man, Charles Carpenter Fries, I mean, I had a big crush on her. I thought, majority of them will miss four. It’s a tough They are often some of the best speakers other people’s speech. cannot imagine reading J.K. Rowling. who was responsible for essentially eliminat- “Wow, she likes a big vocabulary,” and I then little thing for people. around. I think that politicians, on the whole, That’s right. That’s no good. ing grammar from secondary education in this spent a couple of years building a huge How about giving us a layman’s definition of Well, you’re not nine years old. are maladroit and inept. But I collect books country. There’s a great book by Harry Warfel vocabulary, not realising that this was not In your work on legal writing, there’s a lot of descriptivism and prescriptivism? That’s right. on public speaking, and I love to hear great called Who Killed Grammar? He wrote it in working on females at all. [laughs] But I started support for plain and simple—a kind of Let me just try this off the top of my head. A And when you are reading fiction for plea- speakers. One of the best in the world is 1951. It was very insightful. He essentially a vocabulary notebook that I still have today. directness that is lacking in a lot of legalese. descriptivist is someone who tries to study sure, is it difficult to be so attuned to Theodore Olson, a lawyer in Washington, makes a compelling case that it was the It’s about 600 pages of words that I copied I’m all in favour of plain English. The prob- language scientifically with absolutely no grammar and usage? DC, and the former solicitor general of the National Council of Teachers of English, out of dictionaries, some of them very difficult lem with most legal writers is they entered value judgments—to simply describe how That is a huge distraction. I cannot lose myself United States. He is a man who really knows under the influence of Charles Carpenter and very recondite words. My mother used to law school as rather inept writers, then certain speakers use the language, without in a novel. That is to say, I am constantly how to speak. He knows how to say the right Fries, who systematically dismantled our play a dictionary game with me to see they’re exposed to a lot of very bad writing any of its sociological significance, but instead aware of technique. And because I’m such a thing at the right time. I once heard him give

92 | VICE VICE | 93 a eulogy for a friend of ours who died, Tex start paying attention to what really effective John Trimble’s Writing With Style. It’s just a Lezar. It was the most perfect eulogy I’ve ever writers and speakers do. You ought to have a wonderful book. The subtitle is Conversations heard, and it had everybody in tears. couple of dictionaries of usage by different on the Art of Writing. So you read a couple What are televangelists doing right? authors just to become conscious of words, of books, you’ve got your usage books you Delivering words with great emphasis in inter- and the potential problems with English should look at two minutes a day, you pay a esting ways. What they’re mostly doing words. There is simply no way that anyone’s lot of attention to the best fiction and nonfic- wrong is giving the message that they’re giv- normal schooling would have prepared the tion writers of our day, and then you start ing. [laughs] But I enjoy the way they person to know what he or she needs to writing a lot, either by journaling or writing modulate their voices, the way they have a know about English grammar and English letters. You can make a lot of progress very greater range than most public speakers do. usage. There’s simply no way. And so you quickly if you do those things. need that reference source. I think it’s a good Some of them, of course, are barnstormers. You mentioned the New Yorker, and generally idea to browse through it, read a little bit at But some of them actually have a good mes- I think its grammar and usage are great, but a time, learn more and more about words sage for people, and they tend to use very few I’m really bothered how, when the same notes. If you appropriately discount the mes- and language. That’s the way I did it. And then I read the Economist and the New vowel occurs consecutively within a word, sage, there’s a lot you can learn from them they place an umlaut over the second occur- about how to speak. Yorker, and pay very close attention to how sentences and paragraphs are put together. rence of the vowel. And sermonising is certainly one of the oldest Start understanding how the paragraph is the It’s not actually an umlaut. It’s technically traditions of public speaking. basic unit of composition. called a diaeresis. The umlaut occurs in It is, yes. A lot of the early rhetoricians Can you explain that a little more? German words only. But it’s the exact same were people like George Campbell and mark. It is a weird quirk of New Yorker Hugh Blair, whose 18th-century books on A really good discourse proceeds by para- style. I just think of it as a quaint thing that rhetoric I’ve used in a lot of my own writ- graphs, and a paragraph is sort of the the editors there do. The other thing that ing. They were all about sermonising. I’ve building block of a good essay. Too many used them in things like my book with people see the sentence as the building block, they do that I hate is putting a comma Justice Scalia on persuasion to address how and they don’t pace their ideas well. They between the month and the year. It drives do you persuade judges? Those classical have bumps between sentences, not a smoothly me crazy when they do that. That has not rhetoricians were tremendous. flowing development of thought. Advanced been good editorial style for the past 50 writers know that the paragraph is the basic years, but it was enshrined somehow in What advice would you give to people who unit of composition. are in their mid-20s and might feel like their stylebook years ago. If you discount they’re lacking in proper education regarding That’s a good way to look at it. Any more those two things, however, the New Yorker these things? Where can one educate oneself concrete advice? is excellent. [laughs] regarding grammar? You have to write a lot. You ought to keep a I guess, as a whole, the archaicism at the New Well, if you don’t have that mindset of feel- journal and write a lot of letters, and I mean Yorker is sort of charming. ing behind the eight ball educationally, you old-fashioned handwritten notes. Read very Yeah. But when you print what you just said, need to acquire it. No matter where you attentively, keep a vocabulary notebook, and you want to make it archaism. went to school, and no matter what your read a couple of books on writing. My first supposed educational advantages have been, I recommendation would not be Strunk and Oh God, of course. Sorry. Between the diaere- think that every really effective writer or White’s The Elements of Style. That would be sis and that, you’re killing. me right now. speaker is largely self-taught. You need to my second recommendation. First would be I can’t help telling you! DIAGNOSTIC SNOOT TEST

1. How might we [(a) affect, (b) effect] a reconciliation between these litigious siblings? 2. How [(a) big of a, (b) big a] lawsuit is it? 3. Tell me: [(a) has, (b) have] either of our clients arrived yet? 4. Neither of your answers [(a) are, (b) is] correct. 5. Neither you nor I [(a) am, (b) are] responsible. 6. Have you ever [(a) swum, (b) swam] in that pool? 7. In the end, all the defendants got their just [(a) deserts, (b) desserts].

© 2010 Bryan A. Garner & LawProse, Inc. These questions are taken from Bryan A. Garner’s 100-question grammar quiz used in Part I of his course, Better Grammar for Lawyers (available at: education.vitalect.com /LAWPROSE). Go to viceland.com for the answers.

94 | VICE EDWARD ALBEE

INTERVIEW BY CLAUDINE KO PORTRAITS BY ALIYA NAUMOFF

arrived at Edward Albee’s Tribeca loft at a beverage and, upon his return with our cups, Right. 10 AM. The playwright’s last name is asked the first question. You should eat something interesting. Last I printed clearly next to his buzzer. His Edward Albee: Do you know Tribeca well? night, I went to my local Japanese restaurant, voice rumbled through the intercom: Do you know how the whole thing hap- for the sushi I like so much. “Who is this?” I told him. Silence. I waited pened, how it became residential? It used to Which Japanese restaurant? several minutes but resisted the urge to buzz be the wholesale market district of New It’s a little place called Tokyo Bay. again. Finally, I heard him yelling my name. York, from 14th Street, where the meat mar- Did you go by yourself? He’d emerged outside from behind me, and kets are, all the way down to Canal Street. No, I went with a young painter friend of when I turned, I saw a spry octogenarian Coffee, food, cheese... And then they decided mine. wearing a hearing aid in one ear, white to move the markets up to the Bronx, of Reeboks, a grey button-up short-sleeve shirt, course. So this whole area became nothing So you’re fairly social? a Swiss Army watch, and shorts. He waved but deserted warehouses. And a lot of us I see people occasionally. I would never call me over and asked me where my bike was. I moved in and bought buildings. Then it myself social. I don’t go out to restaurants was impressed he remembered that I was rid- became residential, and here we have this with eight or ten people every night. I spend ing over to his house, and apologised for strange area called Tribeca. a fair amount of time by myself. I like being sweaty as we entered his building’s ele- thinking. And it’s difficult thinking when Vice: How did you feel about the onslaught vator. I asked him what name he likes to go you’re surrounded by people. Alone is just of upscale residences that started here in by. “Edward if it’s a friendly interview, Mr. as good. the 1980s? Albee if it’s an unfriendly interview,” he said. I like places where you don’t have to be a mil- What have you thought about today aside “Edward it is,” I said. lionaire to live, but all the poor artists were from Alzheimer’s, corn muffins, and coffee? Adopted by a theatre-magnate heir and driven out of here by real estate speculators. Whether this interview will be worthwhile or his wife two weeks after his birth, the even- tual three-time Pulitzer Prize-winning Are you a millionaire? not. Whether you would you show up on time. playwright grew up rich and rebellious in None of your business. I don’t think of myself Did I? Larchmont, New York: servants, tutors, in those terms. The point is that an area is Yes, you did. Exactly. It’s not nice to be chauffeured Rolls-Royce, multiple expul- better if it’s mixed income. It’s better for late. And I was thinking about rehearsals sions from a variety of boarding and everybody. Wall Street types, that’s what’s [for Me, Myself, and I], and the fact that military schools. He ultimately dropped out happening down here now. after we’re done here, I have to call my of college, became estranged from his adop- I’d like to get a better idea of what your life is director about some of my thoughts on yes- tive parents, and moved to Greenwich like. What time did you wake up this morning? terday’s rehearsals. Village, where he took odd jobs and wrote his first play, The Zoo Story, in 1958. Its Seven. I read an interview with you online where shocking ending still catches new audiences Do you have a routine? you, at the end, told the interviewer that and readers off-guard today. Albee has since I go out and get the New York Times. I have you hadn’t talked about the three most written 32 (and counting) plays, but is best my first cup of coffee, and I do all the blood important things playwrights like to talk known for good old Who’s Afraid of testing I have to do for my diabetes. I’ve had about, which is sex, money and food. And Virginia Woolf? (1962), his work about a it for about four years. You have to prick that’s why I asked if you’re a millionaire bitchy, drunk married couple, which was your finger. and what you eat. We haven’t talked about subsequently turned into a Mike Nichols- sex yet, but we’ll get to it. Every morning? directed film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Maybe. I enjoy it. I’m in favour of it, let’s put And every night. Richard Burton. Albee’s most recent work, it that way. Me, Myself, and I, opened in New York What was the most interesting story in Do you get much of it these days? City this autumn. today’s paper? One never gets enough. [laughs] The elevator doors opened up to his loft, These tests they had to determine if people which has 20-foot-high ceilings, walls neatly had Alzheimer’s and whether or not it could Are you dating anybody? lined with art, and a cushy seating area guarded be treated turned out to be failures. I’m get- Vaguely. I don’t know whether I’m dating by several aboriginal wooden sculptures. ting to an age where Alzheimer’s is possible. anyone or not, and I don’t want to talk about There’s a Kandinsky on the wall, hanging next it. If I am, it’s very foolish on my part. A lot How old are you? to a Jean Arp. His loft faces south, and in the of people in their 80s don’t have any interest 82. back corner a large skylight lets in the sun, so in dating. They’ve shut down physically, psy- the whole place has a soft, bright quality to it So, coffee, diabetes test, the New York chologically and emotionally. despite all the dark, warm woods. I could see a Times… spiral staircase in front of a kitchen entry. I sat A corn muffin or, usually, oatmeal with skim But you haven’t. down on a worn yet elegant brown leather milk and salt. Some of us haven’t. Since I lost my compan- couch next to the puckering head of one of the ion of 35 years five years ago, to cancer, I’ve That’s very bland. aboriginal sculptures. Albee has a natural been not involved, for a variety of reasons, Sugar is bad for me. charisma—one that brings Paul Newman grief being one of them. But I see a few peo- immediately to mind—along with that old Do you think much about food? ple now and again. They’ll remain nameless chestnut, “a twinkle in his eye”. He offered me Well, one dies without food. to protect the guilty. [laughs]

96 | VICE VICE | 97 and observing like a writer all the time—with “If you’re not willing to make a lot of strangers and with friends, always. mistakes, you’re not going to take any I read your play The Sandbox this morning, before I biked over here. chances. If you don’t take any chances, I like that play. I didn’t make any mistakes in that. you’re not going to do anything interesting.” Do you make mistakes? I make a lot of mistakes. If you’re not willing to make a lot of mistakes, you’re not going to What would you say if I asked you for some to be 30 or 35, their talents evaporate or they take any chances. If you don’t take any dating advice? become commercial hacks to survive. So I like chances, you’re not going to do anything If you’re unwilling to make a fool of your- to get people young and hope they develop as interesting. The Sandbox, being only 12 min- self, you’re never going to get anywhere. artists. It’s nice to be helpful. It’s a responsi- utes long—that’s just about perfect. It’s And if you have to worry about why people bility to help other people, isn’t it? absolutely right. Give it another two minutes, are seeing you, you probably shouldn’t be I think so. But not everybody thinks that way. and I would have fucked it up. seeing them. That’s one of the few disadvan- I know. They’re wrong. You wrote it for your grandmother, right? tages of having a name that people No, I didn’t write if for her, because she was recognise. You never quite know why some It’s said that you were a miscreant as a child. dead. I based the character of Grandma to a people are talking to you, but you can usually You didn’t follow your parents’ rules and you certain extent on my maternal grandmother, figure it out fairly quickly. got involved in bad behaviour… I was adopted. Those weren’t my parents. only I’m almost embarrassed to say the char- What kind of music do you listen to? Those were some rich people who took me acter I created is more interesting than my Classical, early jazz, gospel and folk music in. And if I had liked them, if we’d gotten real grandmother. from around the world. I listen to all kinds of along, I probably would’ve paid more atten- You had a good relationship with your music, but I’m most interested in starting with tion to them. But they had their own lives. grandmother? Bach and moving in both directions—earlier They were busy with all the junk they were Yeah, my adopted mother’s mother. She and I and later. doing, and I was allowed to develop my were the enemies of the family. They didn’t Do you have music playing when you’re own interests and thoughts and become me like her either. She was a pest, she was old writing? without as much interruption from other and cantankerous. She wanted her own way. Good God, no. That would get into the people as most kids get. Then eventually, She kept three Pekingese upstairs. She was rhythms of what I’m writing. When I write they said, “Well, my God, he might be turn- also fairly intelligent and sprightly and ornery my characters, I hear them talking. I have to ing into a writer or something. We’ve got to and I liked her. She was interesting. She also hear the rhythms of their speech. I can’t have do something about that. Why doesn’t he taught me how to play bridge. other music getting in the way of that. And want to be a lawyer or a CEO, a Wall Street Did you ever try to find your birth parents? also, I don’t think the serious stuff should be crook? Why doesn’t he want to be some- Back when I was adopted, it was impossible. listened to as an accompaniment to something thing useful?” But I had already made up my So you don’t attempt the impossible. And ulti- else, like, “Oh, I’ve got to eat now, so I better mind that I wanted to be a writer, and I didn’t mately, when I figured out who I was, I didn’t put on a string quartet.” Listening and eating want to be interfered with. And so I got need to know where I came from anymore. are two separate matters. You should concen- thrown out of that house, thrown out of trate on one or the other. college, and I moved to Greenwich Village Who are some other people you’ve liked, some mentors? What drew you to start the Edward F. Albee and things started getting better. But you I don’t like to be specific with names, but know all that. You’ve read the biography? Foundation, the organisation you have that people who interested me, people who could helps young artists? Yes, I did. Have you ever thought about teach me something, people who involved me. Two things. I’d been visiting friends at places adopting kids yourself? You make choices of who you want to be like MacDowell Colony and Yaddo, which are No. Why would I do that? with. Everybody has to spend a lot of time foundations where creative people come to Your residency programme is like short- with people who are a total waste of time. work and live. I thought they were interesting, term adoption. You take people in, you give When I was growing up, of course, I ran but for the most part, they weren’t taking peo- them housing. away a few times—didn’t do any good. ple at the beginning of their careers. Young Yeah, but people do that at drug clinics, too. talent. They were taking people with some rep- Where would you run away to, and what was utation, who really didn’t need the space. And So you would never consider being a dad? your plan? after I started making a bunch of money with No. If I’m going to have somebody living Oh, I was going to go to Europe. I had no Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, I didn’t want with me, it’s going to be somebody who money, but I figured out if I could find some to pay taxes. So I was told that if I could start a shares the bed. We creative people, we writers way to get on an ocean liner, that might be a foundation and do something useful with it, I and all, we do have to spend a fair amount of nice way to get to Europe. wouldn’t have to give that money to the govern- time by ourselves. More than a lot of other How old were you the first time you ran ment. So I bought the barns in Montauk where people do. Being a writer is not an eight-hour- away? the foundation is, and set up a place where a-day job. You learn very quickly that it’s a Twelve. 24-hour-a-day job. You don’t say, “Now I’m painters, sculptors and writers could live and Wow. And you were in Larchmont, New going to start thinking like a writer.” It’s more work. It’s been going for close to 40 years now. York? It was useful both for me and for young people. like, “Oops, I’ve been doing it for four hours, Yeah, and I went to New York City. I think I How do you choose the artists? now I can stop.” had $50 or something. I didn’t get very far. I just think they’re talented people—fairly But you don’t write for 24 hours a day. Someone called my parents, and they sent the provocative and original, and they have a You’re behaving like a writer. You’re looking chauffeur to come and get me. They didn’t future. You never know. By the time they get at things and looking at people and listening come themselves. [laughs]

98 | VICE VICE | 99 SHOT

You don’t remember a specific moment? “Kids should learn— as quickly as they learn No, no. It doesn’t work that way. It works anything else—that they’re dying.” that way only in bad fiction. BY Do you have a specific writing space? I do my writing in my head. There are tables Who do you consider your family? one if I have to be the last one. Life is really around for whenever I feel like writing some- I have a lot of friends. Most of them have short. I mean, God, 100 years? That’s not a thing down. I don’t care where I do it. It’s died. I just lost a very wonderful friend very long time. So you should always partic- called a manuscript, so I write by hand. named Joanna Steichen, who was [photogra- ipate in it fully. That’s why I wrote That’s pretty old school. pher] Edward Steichen’s widow. She was a somewhere that kids should learn—as I don’t believe in all those machines. good friend of mine for about 40 years. She quickly as they learn anything else—that And the internet? died a couple of weeks ago. She had they’re dying. I know it exists. I don’t use it. Parkinson’s. I was sort of taking care of her. How old were you when you knew that you Do you have a mobile phone? I realised I was going to have to put her in a were going to die? KERN home somewhere because she couldn’t live No. It’s a waste of time. I might as well watch I was pretty young when I became aware of television. I walk along the streets of New by herself—she was falling all the time and the fact that life was finite, and the result of she wasn’t making much sense anymore. She York and I find people bumping into each understanding that was: don’t waste your time. other, bumping into things, and they have was going to have to go into a home and Live it fully. Don’t spend it watching television that would’ve killed her, so I’m glad she these things in their ears or in their face. or voting Republican. I don’t believe in turning They’re not seeing anything of the real world. drowned in her swimming pool. off. One of my favourite things is my house She drowned in her swimming pool? out on Montauk. I love walking along the But it could be Bach on their headphones. That was good, I’m glad she did that. I’m glad beach. I just love being at the ocean. It never is. It never is. If I heard someone listen- that happened to her. She didn’t kill herself. ing to Bach on a machine, I would congratulate Would you ever consider a remake of Who’s them. I would ask them what recording it was Did this happen under your watch? Afraid of Virginia Woolf? on film? and I would tell them there’s a better recording. I wasn’t there. I was a few miles away. If they came up with a cast that I wanted. I’d Anyway, the older you get, if you’re wise, have to approve the cast and the director, Do you ride a bicycle? most of your good friends are older than you and I wouldn’t allow anyone to do any other No, I used to. I take the subway, always. You are so you can learn something from them, writing in it. Then I might consider it. Sure. can stare at people on the subway. You can and that’s why they tend to die before you The play is better than the movie was, but it listen to and look at people. Watch now on do. The number of close friends I have gets was a pretty good movie. [Director] Mike So you’re constantly eavesdropping. fewer and fewer each year. Nichols is not a fool. Yes, yes. And eyedropping. Eavesdropping is Do you want to be the last one standing? When you were 30, you wrote your first play, listening. I look at people too. Well, I want to be standing, let’s put it that The Zoo Story. What got you to that point? Is there a particular kind of person you like to way. I don’t have any eagerness to be the What was the epiphany? look at? last one, but if I do have to be the last one, Obviously, it was time for me to write a play. Interesting. ones. The boring ones I don’t I want to be standing. I want to be the last And to write something that was good. look at.

100 | VICE MARY KARR

INTERVIEW BY DAVID JACOB KRAMER PORTRAITS BY RICHARD KERN

ary Karr has survived a medley of Vice: You write in Lit that the first thing your of a big company and he was great about it, hard times in her life, and she has mother asked you after reading a draft of The but sometimes I’d have to go to some black- M told the tale over the course of Liars’ Club was “How’d you ever remember tie dinner as the girlfriend, and I’d just stand three memoirs that begin with her all this crazy crap?” You recall the summer of there mute, dressed up, trying not to burst childhood and go all the way up to her 40s. sixth grade, which books you were reading, into tears. Luckily, a lot of his partners are Karr handles gruesome experiences with such and whose sleepover you weren’t invited to. Chinese, so they weren’t going to talk to me compassion, charm, lyricism, vividness and Writing three long memoirs, you must have anyway. Ha! mordant comedy that the work transcends developed some special tools for recall. The last section of Lit details your conversion mere horror story or freak show. Her story- Mary Karr: Have you ever noticed how to Catholicism. I’d imagine writing about telling melds scrappy Texas slang with poetic people remember details of their first sexual trauma is one thing, but trying to articulate a precision and is totally addictive. experience? You have so much adrenaline and newfound religious feeling—analysing and The Liars’ Club came first, detailing it’s so emotional that those memories are articulating it so it resonates for a secular Karr’s feral upbringing with two alcoholic stored in a different part of your brain, closer audience—might be even tougher. parents in an oil-refining Texas suckhole that to the amygdala or something. That’s where It was the hardest thing. Everything I tried to she calls Leechfield. Her father is a working you’d store memories if you were kidnapped write sounded like I was proselytising. It took oilman with a devotion to the union, mean- by Bedouins and sodomised. But I’m sure I a year and a half to write the final section of ing long strikes and family poverty. Karr’s don’t remember everything—I only bullshit the book, from when I started going to mother is the town anomaly: a painter and that I do. Those memories are vivid, albeit church. I rewrote over and over again. I devotee of French existentialism, as well as a static, and unreliable in a million ways. I have almost quit. Finally I realised that the end of pill-popping loose cannon in her seventh to keep asking myself something a spiritual the book was the moment I spent with my marriage. The Liars’ Club contains some adviser taught me to ask: “What is your mother right before her death, conveniently. monstrous scenes. Karr is raped by a neigh- source of information?” It’s a matter of pick- She was nice enough to die, which gave me a bourhood boy and molested by a babysitter. ing and picking at things. I’ll have a memory good arc for my memoir… I’m joking. But I Karr and her sister also witness their moth- of my daddy leaving me in junior high. I’ll try believe that God was trying to show me the er’s breakdown, her face scribbled with to think, when did he stop picking up when I way. I spoke to a lot of priests. Father Kane, lipstick, wielding a butcher knife, building called him? I’ll realise he never stopped. I’ll my priest in Lit, just died two weeks ago. He an indoor bonfire of the girls’ toys, clothes realise I actually left him. wanted to die. He was 90 years old and very and bedsheets. I can’t imagine how difficult it must have sick for years. Not a theological genius, but a Karr’s next book was Cherry, which been butting heads with traumatic memo- good, simple, humble Irish parish priest. detailed her adolescent, druggy misadven- ries, lingering inside them, and stylising Straightforward dude. tures, run-ins with the law, romance with them into narratives. poetry, and sexual awakening. Lit is her most People have this impression of religious My publisher was bitching at me for taking recent book, chronicling her own beeline into people, especially Christians, as smug and self- eight years to write Lit, a book they’d given alcoholism, breakdown, and the loony bin, satisfied, whereas in Lit you describe your me considerable money for. They said, “You then the struggle of sobriety and divorce. Karr spiritual growth as almost antagonistic toward know what happened, why don’t you just meets a young David Foster Wallace in an AA God. turn it in?” But the kind of things I’m writing meeting (he tattoos her name on his bicep Almost?! I was saying “Fuck, fuck, fuck God!” about, you could talk about in therapy for an before they’ve even kissed), and they are I still do sometimes. I don’t think that’s a bad hour a week and have someone hold your briefly engaged. Karr’s son makes her take prayer. It’s a very good prayer. God knows hand, saying, “There, there.” I was going into him to church, “to see if God is there”, and what you’re thinking! Are you going to hide the swamp alone, all day, every day. she discovers spiritual regeneration with that you hate his fucking guts? That you hate Catholicism, something that shocks nobody How did you cope? the way the world is unfolding? Father Kane more than herself. As I got older and made more money, I then was paralysed, sick for three and a half years, Karr’s poetry has earned her a Guggenheim threw money at it. I hired someone to pick bedridden, cancer growing out of his head, Fellowship and a Pushcart Prize, and she has my son up from school, so if I’d been writing bleeding, his skin splitting. Horrible! He was written four engaging, stunning volumes, for seven hours, I could lie down on the floor amazing. I asked him, “Aren’t you mad at including the recent Sinners Welcome. She is of my study and sleep. I’d order in yummy God?” He said, “Not yet.” “Aren’t you suffer- the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse food, go to the gym, get massages. I had to ing?” He said, “Yeah, but God suffers more.” I University and just got engaged to her make a deal with my fiancé that half the week said, “Joe, the cross is a few hours, and this is boyfriend of five years. I made no social events, didn’t answer the years, and this sucks.” He said, “I’ve had too I spoke to Karr on the phone, finding her phone or email or the door. If I broke stride, I much fun to be mad at God.” I love that. What to be as warm, vivacious, open, and hilarious knew I’d have to re-create that mindset. It’s a great way to look at your life. What I like as her books, as she cursed like a sailor with emotionally harder than poetry, as your about being Catholic is they accommodate the a Texas drawl. immersion is deeper. My fiancé is the president sinners. They assume you’re going to sin. I

102 | VICE VICE | 103 never knew a knuckle-rapping, ruler-toting thought my mother would run away. I wish accident. We’re also not the easiest people to glamour. But there wasn’t any. It was just church. I never had a lot of reverence. I wasn’t it’d felt more fun at the time. I was a look at, frankly. My publisher is always pushing dark, dark, dark for days. Ugly. “Bad memoirs try to make the strange afraid to say, “I don’t get Jesus, and I don’t get depressed kid. I have a sense that whatever I me to Twitter and Facebook. I’m interested in Were you surprised by how deeply people stranger, to provide something for people why everybody likes him.” He seemed like a have in this world, I crafted from my own the eternal, so I made videos of my assistant related to this dark stuff? sap to me. There are days when I still feel that clawing hands. People think of me as being and myself talking about poetry. Then I tweeted If I’m doing my job then I’m able to make the to gawk at.” way. Anybody else who says otherwise is a brave, but I wasn’t, I just didn’t have a lines from my favourite poems. The thing is, I’m strange seem familiar. Bad memoirs try to damn liar, unless they’re very gifted. choice. I never wanted to hitchhike as a not very interesting. I go get a doughnut, go to make the strange stranger, to provide some- I love the impression of God you give while teenager, but there was no other way to get yoga, cook dinner. I don’t want to read that thing for people to gawk at. I try to create an I remember adolescence feeling like primal sur- Well, how did you? about anybody. I can’t stomach putting on becoming religious in your essay “Facing out of Mexico. I was scared to fucking death. experience where no matter how bizarre some- vival, that there was less opportunity for You just start with a detail, and from the detail Facebook, “I had a pork chop today.” Altars”, published in Poetry: “God had come These days, people are barraged with phony thing is, it seems normal. I don’t want readers kindness among peers. You’re just trying to get the room blooms into place. So then John said, to seem like Miles Davis, a nasty genius ideas and images of how everyone else is liv- It goes back to a good memoir’s value, to balk, I want them to be in the experience. through it. There’s a scene in Cherry when your “I knew I should have married you.” I pro- scowling out from under his hat… on the ing. Do you think memoir is particularly because Facebook is just a gushing river of My goal isn’t for people to go, “Oh, poor little whole gang is on acid at this swimming hole posed to him when I was four and he was five. verge of waving me off the stage for the crap important now, maybe in helping people feel updates on what a good time everyone’s hav- Mary Karr,” but rather to have the reader go, deep in the forest and one dude gets stung by He said, “But whoever knew that you wouldn’t job I was doing.” less alienated? ing. Everyone’s on vacation or at a party. It “I can be an asshole too,” or just to have what is likely a scorpion and his feet start grow up to be crazy?” I said, “I know.” He The weird thing I found is that all of my I think we’re lonely as a culture. Memoir gives can give you a false idea of how happy every- enthusiasm for the possibility for change. swelling up and nobody helps him. Nobody can. said, “Nobody would have ever guessed it.” one around you really is. Everybody just stood there like, “Oh, bummer.” agnostic friends have an image of God despite one a window into people’s intimate struggles. Cherry is the only book I can think of that Doonie was your best friend and a lovable Yes. The world’s more beautiful if you see it not believing, and it’s a fucked-up image. I still It does serve a social function. Not that that’s delves into the hormonal extremes of adoles- They tried to get away from him so he teenage drug dealer with a penchant for show- through a memoirist like Nabokov’s eyes. I have it! I knew God wanted me to write the why I do it. I just gave a talk at a psychophar- cence from a female perspective. It’s so wouldn’t harsh their vibe. Somebody is like, ing girls his dick. What’s he doing these days? look at something like Girls Gone Wild and it memoirs. At the point I was writing Lit and it macology conference. I’ve always been different from the well-represented tradition “Maybe bury your feet in sand.” Doonie actually went on a book tour with me makes you think that if you’re not on a table was too hard, I was going to sell my apartment interested in neurology—as Woody Allen said, of male writing on sexual awakening, but no Yeah. “Throw some sand on it. Piss on it.” recently. I think he got more pussy than Frank pulling your dress over your head, you’re not and return the advance. Then I realised it was the brain is my second favourite organ. One less potent. The dude himself is kind of resigned to it. He Sinatra. No kidding. He was actually signing having fun. There’s this filthy cheerfulness. OK if I failed, and it became easier. doctor is doing research into people’s hormone That means a lot to me. It’s one of the rea- doesn’t even expect help. books. He has a big construction company now As a little girl in The Liars’ Club you are levels when they’re getting sober, trying to Have you been approached by Hollywood? sons I wrote it. I was teaching college with A bunch of fucking tripping individuals. You and he’s famous for creating a product I can’t acutely aware of your family not being nor- develop protocols for detoxing people with One network woman was saying, “I want you these great coming-of-age stories, like Stop- don’t want those hippies taking care of you at mention, because he doesn’t need the public mal. Your mother covers the house windows medication by doing functional MRIs. In 12- to come out here and sell us on this.” I said, “I Time by Frank Conroy and This Boy’s Life any fucking point. knowing he used to be a fucking drug dealer. in melted crayon so the neighbours won’t step programmes, and in community in don’t really want to.” She was astonished. I by Tobias Wolff. The girls’ side pole-vaults general, bonding with people and developing I haven’t done acid since I was 17. I’d rather Having a successful memoir, does it feel peep at you guys walking around naked. said, “If you were more excited about it, I’d from 12 years old to college, like Mary trust, or being in love with someone, you die than do it again. strange that so many hundreds of thousands Everyone eats dinner together in your parents’ come out. I’m not a complete asshole, but I McCarthy’s Memories of a Catholic release a hormone called oxytocin, which sears I was 19 the last time. Writers have too many of people, if not millions, know the intimate bed every night. Yet you didn’t write explicitly don’t really want to.” She said, “You don’t Girlhood. When I was writing Cherry I this person into a groove in your brain. It fucking frames per second to handle that details of your life? about your upbringing until you were in your seem that upset about this passing.” I said, “I realised there’s no vernacular libidinal lan- calms you and says: faith, trust, home. You drug. There’s too much inner life. Talk about I don’t think about it. In the midst of writing mid-30s. At what point did you stop being don’t give a shit about what people in televi- guage that’s childish enough for a girl. We secrete it when you breast-feed. I believe when a bad idea. the book I’m only terrified about how the embarrassed by your family? sion think. I spent my entire life not giving a don’t have “chubby” or “woody”. That people read good books, fiction or nonfiction, people in the book are being represented. I Until I was 30 I tried to look like I was some- shit what you think. You probably don’t give a made me sick. Now I see it’s for good rea- A more heartbreaking situation is when your the same thing happens. All of us feel like they have a lot of my mother’s don’t-give-a-shit in body different, more than hiding who my shit about what poets think.” But now I’m son. I realised I was superimposing the teenage best friend Meredith’s brother goes to know Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, or me. Strangely enough, I’m a very private per- parents were. I did know we were peculiar. talking to different people and it’s actually libido of a 40-year-old woman on a little jail for drug dealing, while his partners are let Holden Caulfield. Why do I reread Anna off because they can afford lawyers. Meredith son. I’m a writer. For anybody else, the Parents didn’t allow their kids into our home. going somewhere. I prefer that it’s television girl. I remembered what I actually imagined Karenina every 18 months? I go see people I is clearly so alone in her grief and helplessness. amount of time I spend alone would be My sister managed to be embarrassed by my and not a feature film, as it means more time, at the time: [my high school crush] John love. It’s a strange comfort. You’ve got to be a You write, “Part of you knows that with suffi- unhealthy. When people tell me they’ve read mother her whole life. A shrink once asked me, so we can make it a more complicated story— Cleary skating over to me with a long red complete freak to want to be a poet. You have cient heart, you might have marshalled some the books, I’m not even thinking about if my mother were five years old, how would I not as reductive as two hours. If it happens, I rose. That was as intense and vivid as the to love these poets so much who kept you comfort for Meredith other than oblivion.” what’s in them. I assume everybody has their treat her? And seeing my mother as a kid, think it’ll be really cool to have a priest as a other thing. Every now and then I might company at a time when you were young, dis- That was one of my big guilts. Meredith grew own problems. When I was single, there I couldn’t be embarrassed by her anymore. major character. But I’m not interested in being have fantasised about him actually kissing enfranchised, and crazy. So I don’t believe it’s up to be spectacularly insane. She was just were a lot of “bad boy” men who wanted to But I was always proud of my father—a young on television. I just want to sell more books. I me, but nothing pornographic. Now I solely memoir, but with memoir, you at least fucked. I didn’t refer to it in any book. She date me based on the books, essentially hippie girl can embrace a working-class hero. like books. That’s why I’m doing it. believe that girls have something that’s dif- have the idea that these people are emotionally was dead by the time Cherry came out and telling me they were assholes. Perceptions of My father, though he never read, encouraged Do you watch many of these TV shows with ferent in kind to boys, but of equal invested, passionate and sincere. Even Dave her mother had just hung herself in her son’s me from The Liars’ Club or Cherry meant my writing and was very proud. If I’d been novelistic elements, like Mad Men? intensity. I realised it was OK to be a little Eggers [in A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering house. See, I’d flown Meredith out to stay they thought I’d be sassily clever if they were born into privilege, it may have been harder. I watch Mad Men. And Real Housewives, but G-rated in Cherry. Genius], when he’s being jokey, obviously loves with me for a while, so no matter how I mean or horrible, instead of being like every When they were drunk I’d be ashamed of only the Atlanta version. his brother and misses his mother and father It’s not totally G-rated. wrote it, I couldn’t find a way without it other woman and telling them to go fuck them, but when I left home I stopped identify- and feels overwhelmed. Every memoir is a sur- What’s that like? It kind of is. My libidinal feelings weren’t being, “I’m such a good person for taking themselves. The truth is, I’m sensitive. I’m a ing with them. I didn’t think of them as being vival story. It’s triumphant just because the The show is normally skinny rich women about being boffed into guacamole. care of my crazy friend.” I couldn’t write it. candyass, in no way a badass. I grew up in a like me. I was always harder to embarrass than people are still breathing. being mean to each other, except in Atlanta. town that was really rough, but I was the my sister. I never had a sense of propriety. Cherry really captured a certain adolescent I’m interested in how your old childhood Now you can Google a character in a mem- They’re women of colour. I can identify better atmosphere, where you’re given a level of friends responded to their representations in kid trying to sound like T.S. Eliot. I was a You left for good when you were 17, pretty oir to see what they look like, and easily with women of colour. I had a lot of black freedom, and you’re curious, but you’re still the book. John Cleary must have read about nerd. I always dated nice boys. I had a much as soon as you could. follow them beyond the events covered in friends as a little girl and in college. African- totally naive, so you end up in crazy, often your infatuation with him from the age of four, daddy I liked. My now boyfriend of five I was desperate to get out of there. I felt bad the book. Do you think this adds to the American culture is imbued with Southern dangerous situations. and the super-intense experience you had mas- years didn’t know anything about my books. about rejecting them, especially my father. But compelling element of a memoir being a culture. Ebonics is essentially a Southern Which I chose. Nobody had a gun to my saging his legs after his football game, while He read The Liars’ Club and is the only per- when I left, I felt like I’d done the only thing I true story? accent on steroids. I keep waiting to see if this head. Though, I had extremely poor role watching television with his family. You talk son who has ever talked to me directly about could to survive. Tobias Wolff refused to have photographs in his character, Nene, is going to hit somebody. models. Nowadays I talk about this with [my about feeling like you’re on a flying horse. the books other than, “This is really well Despite all the trauma, you offer a portrait of memoir work because he wanted the people to You’re not afraid to show yourself at your low- teenage best friend in Cherry] Doonie all the That must have been weird for him to read. written.” He’s the only person I ever dated childhood that seems really free: riding horses be imagined. I used to feel that way but have est ebb. In Lit, you stop breast-feeding because time. Did we not notice that all our parents I just saw John Cleary. He and his wife came who ever said to me, “I feel so terrible this over mountaintops with your sister, exploring since succumbed to people’s curiosity. I think you’ve started drinking again. You describe were fucking drunks and drug addicts? How to a reading. I asked if the parts concerning stuff happened to you.” The truth is, I’m caves, sleeping outside by a campfire in your writers are hiding those media instead of yourself hiding in a closet with a bottle of did we never have that conversation? Every him were accurate and he just couldn’t believe kind of over it. I spent so much of my life father’s arms. utilising how they can help a reader connect. whiskey, a bottle of Listerine and a spit bowl. single household was in a pitched battle I remembered the seahorse on his shirt. It unhappy, and now that I’m happy I don’t It would have been great if I’d felt looked The thing with authors is, we’re innately It’s not a proud moment. The temptation in Lit fuelled by pills or alcohol. That’s what drew freaked him out. He said, “How the fuck did remember as keenly how it felt. I don’t. feel after. There was such a current of anxiety. I misanthropic. We sit alone in rooms—not by was to either make myself seedy or show some our group together as friends. you remember that shirt?” like I have a gaping wound anymore.

104 | VICE VICE | 105 AMY HEMPEL

INTERVIEW BY TIM SMALL PORTRAITS BY RICHARD KERN

irst, a whirlwind CV. Amy Hempel is I am. It’s very romantic. Seeing how this is an So do you think like, “I’m going to change this the author of four story collections, interview with a writer and seeing that I am, here. I’m sure Gordon Lish would love it”? F Reasons to Live (1985), At the Gates after all, in Paris, I was wondering what you [laughs] Well, I often have in mind Barry of the Animal Kingdom (1990), think of the traditional “writer’s interview” Hannah, and in fact when you phoned me Tumble Home (1997), and The Dog of the format as championed by the Paris Review. just now, I was working on some remarks Marriage (2005), as well as The Collected Do you think that it’s something that writers I’m going to make at a sort of memorial Stories of Amy Hempel, published in 2006 themselves can find useful? tribute to Barry, who died last March. This with a foreword by Rick Moody that starts, I think that sometimes there’s a useful collab- is something that will be held just outside and ends, with this line: “It’s all about the sen- oration there. I remember reading Joan Boston, two nights from now. A bunch of tences.” This collection was a finalist for the Didion’s interview in the Paris Review a long, writers who adored him, just paying tribute PEN /Faulkner Award, won the Ambassador long time ago and finding that she said some- to him. Barry Hannah was always on my list Book Award, and was hailed as one of the best thing that I had felt exactly—but of course of people I knew, writers I admired books of 2006 by every other news outlet that she said it beautifully. She was talking about immensely, and just thinking, you know, talks about books. Amy also won the Rea why writing fiction was ultimately more satis- Barry Hannah might read this, it seemed to Award for the Short Story in 2008 and has fying for her than writing nonfiction, and she focus me when I was writing. been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship and a said that it was because in writing nonfiction Writing is an extremely solitary activity, but Hobson Award. She teaches at Brooklyn the discovery comes during the research, but at the same time it’s also very intense. One College, Bennington, and Harvard. At least during fiction writing, the discovery came analogy that I always think of is swimming— two of her stories, “The Harvest” and “In the during writing itself. That seemed exactly it’s something that you do on your own, and Cemetery Where Al Jolson Is Buried”, are right to me. I like looking for gems like that the only standard of success you have is your among the most widely anthologised stories of when I read those interviews. last lap. the past 30 years, and for all the right reasons: And how do you feel about giving that kind I agree 100 percent. And yet there are writers Like the rest of her work, they are emotionally of interview yourself? Your own interview in who hold themselves up and compare them- powerful without being the least bit sentimen- the Paris Review was a good one. Do you selves to other writers. I think that’s useless. tal; they are filled with unexpected leaps of enjoy talking about your writing? As you say, you’re only trying to beat your intuition and are composed exclusively of I’m a great promoter of mystery on the page, own best time. That’s the only relevant com- microscopically precise sentences that talk and I think there’s a point, in talking about petition as far as I’m concerned. about big things like loss, loneliness, accidents, writing, where you just want to leave it alone, Is your past with Lish something that still has death and breakups while making you laugh when you can’t explain any more—because an influence on you? and still managing to move you to tears. They it’s a mystery. are, quite simply, extremely good. Amy is also You know, it was a long time ago. I was a beautiful and has bright white hair. You write precise, perfect sentences. You student of his at Columbia and then Together with writers like Raymond spend hours on a single line, and to then have privately and then his author back in the Carver, Barry Hannah and Mary Robison, to explain that in a few minutes within an early 80s. I did two books with him. Hempel has been canonised both into the interview might kind of disrespect the work. Working with him was a crucial formative “golden age” of the short story and as a mini- One has to understand that past a certain experience, but it was a long time ago. There malist writer. Whether these classifications are point it’s not discussable. You can go so far in are other writers who have sort of stepped correct or not, Hempel was one of the chosen talking about it, or explaining how something in. Interestingly, Barry Hannah was one and who worked with legendary editor Gordon came to be, but just so far and no more. Mary Robison is another, and they are both Lish at Alfred A. Knopf, where he was I guess it’s good that we started off with that his authors, too, and were at the time that I employed from 1977 to 1995. His gigantic question, just to lower the bar of our readers’ was being published by him. So, yes, [Lish] impact still reverberates today. Hempel is also expectations. had a terrific impact on my writing very one of the few authors—together, perhaps, [laughs] Well done. early on. I don’t think he’s writing any more, but he’s still present among writers who really with Carver and Grace Paley—to have built a Do you think about readers when you’re writ- do care about writing at the sentence level. rock-solid reputation without ever having ing? Do you personify them? His impact there has certainly endured. gone after the novel. But who cares? She can I do. I always have, and it’s always been a do more with 15 pages, in terms of affecting handful of other writers. Sometimes it has What about the so-called golden age of the reader, than with 150. changed, but yes, I really do think of a few American short stories? I don’t really know if I recently had the pleasure of talking to actual people. It makes it a little bit easier it’s accurate, or even intelligent, to define it Amy over a Skype connection that linked the since I know them, and I know that, well, if that way. flat I was staying at in Paris to her house in this person will find it funny, then I’ve suc- Well, I think it was a phenomenon in pub- New York City. She was extremely gracious, ceeded, or some such thing. It makes it more lishing, with a lot of critics rightly going to and never once commented on the rambling like trading confidences. I think it’s daunting Raymond Carver—who was also Gordon’s and pointless nature of the majority of the to think of writing for one’s readers, whoever author—and people like Mary Robison. questions of a nervous fan who was eager not they may be, so I bring it down to something You know—some of the story writers who to sound like an idiot. manageable—a few people whose standards I really, really opened things up again for sto- Vice: Hello, Amy. know and whose work I very much admire— ries as a commercially viable kind of writing Amy Hempel: Tim, hi. You’re calling from and that makes it more like, almost, a letter as well as something that was important to Paris? to the person. That helps me set the course. a lot of readers.

106 | VICE VICE | 107 a market for short stories with trade publishers, What I mean is that one can tell that each especially as debut collections. Authors are sentence, really each word, has been carefully “I never liked the term ‘minimalism’. I prefer still finding publishers for their first collec- considered. It’s almost like a prose poem. tion of stories. It used to be that publishers Well, that’s the highest compliment I can get. Raymond Carver’s term. He called Mary would say, “Have you got a novel back The most recent story I’ve published is a short there?” and they’d publish that and then short in Harper’s. It was a couple of months Robison and myself ‘precisionists’.” they’d tag on the story collection. But there ago. It’s about three short paragraphs, and it’s are enough story collections that still get called “The Orphan Lamb”. I’m going to be I remember first reading Raymond Carver’s comedian: Steve Martin. He’s somebody published in book form to suggest that there doing more pieces like that, pieces that are very short stories. When you read some of his final whose work I would pay attention to. I would are readers for them. much like prose poems. I love writing these sentences it’s just... it kind of feels like the go to see him at the beginning of his career, And writers of them, too. incredibly condensed pieces that just have one pressure in the room changes, you know? when he did stand-up in clubs in California. And writers. Like Jim Shepard. He’s one of swift kick in them. It’s very satisfying to do, I know what you mean. One thing he does that is so interesting is he and since my Collected Stories came out, all the best out there, and he’s an old, old friend It knocks you in the head. abandons the punch line. He says something the stories I’ve written have been short shorts, of mine. His last collection was nominated for I absolutely agree. like: if you don’t tell an audience where the National Book Award, and the three or maybe between 200 and 750 words long. I they’re supposed to laugh by telling them the four stories that I’ve seen from the new collec- find that I keep going back to these short And a lot of it is in the “music” of that last punch line, if you let them find out and tion that’s coming out here are, I think, some shorts, and they do kind of totter on the verge sentence. I know you’ve said that in other decide as you go where to laugh, it’s a much of his strongest work ever. of prose poetry. But I do have just the begin- interviews. That’s paramount to you. more interesting experience. He also said ning of what might be a novella, from an idea Yes. When I write a story, the acoustics of the something in an interview once about writing So, not all hope is lost for the short story, I given to me by Chuck Palahniuk. I’m excited sentences and the rhythms of the single sen- humour: “You have to say something that no guess? about that. That’ll be longer. tences are so important. I’m strongly one else would say, but it can’t just be any- Not at all. influenced by music. Mark Richard is another This short-short-story writing seems to be one thing.” He wrote a wonderful memoir, Born writer of fiction and nonfiction who does this But there still remains in the publishing world of the principal developments in American fic- Standing Up. the idea that you write short stories as a first so beautifully. He’s one of my favourite writers tion in the past decade. I know I can certainly It’s great. step toward writing a novel. of fiction. He went so far as to research autistic count you in that group, and I think there are And I learned a lot from another humour Some people used to think that way. children and the sounds that they respond to, a couple of other writers who do it who writer, Mark O’Donnell, who used to work Obviously, the more intelligent take on it is and he learned that no matter what the words are—maybe coincidentally—all female. I’m for Saturday Night Live. He’s a very funny that they’re entirely different things. One’s not were, the sound of the words would produce thinking about— guy. From him I learned about reversing a warm-up for the other. It’s a different form. certain effects. It’s certain sounds that are Lydia Davis? expectations. An example of his work that I I’ve never wanted to write a novel. I wrote relaxing, no matter what the words are, to all always think of is from one of his novels. He one novella, then I wrote another one, but Certainly Lydia Davis, but also a few other writ- readers. He took it pretty far. Personally, I just was writing about a man with two good job they are different things. And they do differ- ers like Sarah Manguso or Deb Olin Unferth, or know that music is so important to me that I options, and he described him as being ent things. even the stuff that Diane Williams is doing. This will substitute a word that gives a sentence a idea of extremely condensed, extremely short, “between a pillow and a soft place”. Speaking of Jim Shepard, I remember talking masculine instead of a feminine ending. They extremely stylised shorts. Do you think that it Was the intuitive link halfway through your to him about this. As you know, he’s written think about this in poetry more than in fiction, could be a new current in fiction? story “The Harvest” something where you a few novels, but he seems more and more normally, but I borrow a lot of poetry concerns I don’t think that it’s a current. I mean, the applied this kind of reversal of expectations? focused on the short story. He said that he when I’m writing. It almost doesn’t matter writers you name—and I know all of them— I’m talking about where you begin a new had basically lost interest in the idea of the what the words are, it’s the sound that pro- it’s just what we’ve always done. There’s paragraph by writing, “I leave a lot out when “moving of the furniture” that you have to duces the effect. actually an Italian writer who’s doing this, I tell the truth. The same when I write a story. get done before a novel. He liked the idea Wow. But this question of the importance of who is extremely good. Paola Peroni. She’s I’m going to start now to tell you what I have that with a short story you are just dropped the single sentence—opening or closing or oth- published in a lot of literary magazines, and left out of ‘The Harvest’, and maybe begin to into something and the reader kind of has to erwise—do you think it’s primarily a short she’s another strong voice in that realm. wonder why I had to leave it out.” figure things out quickly. story concern? And do you think this has That wasn’t planned. Tim O’Brien did the Yes. You know, a lot of short stories of Jim’s It’s interesting that all of the writers we’ve something to do with so-called minimalism? Is same thing in The Things They Carried, have so much research behind them and just named are female. there a difference in approach between a story which was published at the same time as my they’re very full. I think that he is one of Well, let me think, there’s a male writer— and a novel, in that in the story, you will leave second book, the one that contains “The those writers who brings the best of what a Ah, yes. There’s Gary Lutz. things out of a sentence, and in novels, you’re Harvest”. He did it in one of his Vietnam novel can be into a short story. Gary Lutz, of course. And, although Bernard playing a game of putting stuff in? stories. I think it’s just called “Notes”, and it It seems to me that your stories aren’t “novel- Cooper hasn’t written [this sort of work] in a Sometimes it just means taking things out, comes after a story called “Speaking of istic” at all. few years, he started out writing these too. He and it happens when you ask yourself, as you Courage”. He reexamines a story he just The story provides every challenge I could does other kinds of writing, but some of his go along, “Is this essential?” I mean every wrote and he takes it apart. want in writing, and endless possibilities. It best work in his first book, Maps to sentence, every word. It means leaping past Also, a lot of magazines would publish these The opposite occurs in Italy, where I live. How many times did you think, “I should cut comes naturally, and lends itself to the way I Anywhere, is similar to what we’re talking anything that would slow things down for the great short stories. The conditions existed for Magazines there have never considered the this”? Or, “I should leave this in”? Did you experience life—or, to make this more man- about, and it’s just gorgeous, gorgeous, gor- ideal reader. You know, embellishment that is short story as publishable and have never go back and forth, or was it just like, “I these works to be seen by hundreds of thou- ageable, the way I experience a single day. I geous. But yeah, I do think immediately it’s there just to be “writerly”. I never liked the really pushed them. They are not part of our know I have to do this”? sands of readers. don’t think of writing a novel for the same more women who write this. It’s interesting to term “minimalism”. I prefer Raymond Do you mean with the story “The Harvest”? It’s true. There were more magazines pub- culture, and therefore our readers simply reason I don’t think of writing a biography: see who’s doing what and to wonder why. Carver’s term. He called Mary Robison and lishing stories at that time. But even lately, aren’t used to them, and collections of short who or what could interest me for that long? When I think about the limited word count of myself “precisionists”. And that’s what he Yeah, I mean that famous leap. in the last couple of years, when there’s stories sell pitifully. I need to keep finding new points of entry for these stories, I remember that old theory was doing too, of course. Well, I wrote it separately. I wrote the first Oh boy. So you get them where? In the liter- such dire news from the publishing industry, the discussion, rather than working on one about keeping your best line for the last sen- Something that I glean from your writing, part, and Gordon Lish took it for his maga- ary magazines? there are literary magazines starting up and sustained narrative. That being said, a novel tence of a story and your second best for the especially in stories like “In the Cemetery zine, The Quarterly, and then a few days often flourishing. They are just using a dif- Not really. Not many of them exist here. But I such as Mary Robison’s Why Did I Ever first sentence of a story. Where Al Jolson Is Buried” or “Three Popes later I wrote a letter to him. That was the ferent sort of image and scale. But there are was wondering if we could talk about another makes me think that an associative kind of Well, often I would agree with that, but Walk into a Bar”, is that you pay attention to second part. ventures that are gauging the situation out renaissance in short stories, let’s say from novel might be worth trying. I love that book sometimes you get a deeper effect if you make comedy. That also has a lot to do with sound, Oh, I didn’t know that. there and accommodating people who around 2005 onward in America, when all these and reread it often. the best line the penultimate line, and you end and with the right placing of one word, like a I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned that before! still want to read short stories and can’t new literary magazines started popping up. You take your time writing a short story. Can on something very ordinary. It can strengthen punch line. But I wrote him about how I’d written that find them in the traditional markets, so Well, having magazines publish your stories is I say this? what I call the thunderclap moment. Sometimes One of the most eloquent people on this sub- story or, rather, how I’d changed it. I thought to speak. very important. And here, at least, there’s still [laughs] I think you can. you want to try that as an effect. ject is a very good writer and a hilarious he would find it interesting. He ended up

108 | VICE VICE | 109 publishing that letter, also in The Quarterly, among other things, Prime Suspect, which What happens to me is my jaws clench really in the Letters to the Editor section. So when it was then turned into a BBC show with hard, and then when I snap out of it, my face came out in book form, I ran them together. Helen Mirren. I love her. And of course Lee hurts. Does anything like that happen to you? That’s great. Child, who is a great writer. I recently wrote Oh yeah. One physical sensation is that my It worked out nicely! a story that people thought was very differ- eyes will get teary, will well up. And it’s not ent from anything I have done, and it because I’m oh-so-moved by what I wrote. It’s So the second part of the story—the letter appeared in a crime anthology, The Dark not that! It’s just a sense of... I don’t know, part—is truthful? End of the Street. That’s the first time that it’s just a physical response. Or it’s like getting Well, that’s the interesting thing I learned this particular interest has turned up in a a chill for just a moment, like a gasp, a short from writing “The Harvest”. People think story for me. intake of breath. And I feel like, “Oh my God that’s the real version, but in fact it’s an infi- that’s it, that’s it, that’s it!” And I trust that nite exercise. There are things I left out of the I think one could make an argument that most literature is kind of connected to crime physical response more than I would trust a so-called real version that I could have put in more rational reason. a third version. I’ve thought of revisiting that literature. If you think of crime in a less lit- story because in the years since I wrote it, all eral way—as an unexpected incident that So ideally, what you want is that kind of these other things have happened that stand then has consequences. feeling. out from the original. You could go on and Absolutely. I agree with you completely. I do I do, yeah. I think that started with Emily do that forever, you know? You could always a lot of teaching, you know. I teach at Dickinson. When she got something right, she keep amending the amendments to the story. Harvard, I teach at Bennington. And I’m said she felt like the top of her head lifted off. always saying: it’s not enough that something I think that was her description. Right. I guess there are some writers who do happens, but also, you know, what are the That’s perfect. But how do you then approach that, who will actually send to print a new consequences? What of it? That’s the question the rewriting and editing process? version of their book maybe ten years after that’s interesting. It’s not the situation as such, I think I go by something that one of my lit- their first version. Is that something that you but who is in the situation and what are they erary heroes, the wonderful Grace Paley, find interesting? making of it. That’s where the story is. That could go on forever. I would never redo used to say. Her idea of revision was that something I had done. When my Collected What are some other things that you tell you go back and ask yourself, “Is every Stories was going to come out, my editor, your students? word true?” She didn’t mean, Is it true in Nan Graham, gave me the chance to redo Well, potentially, the most fundamental fact? She just meant, Is it emotionally true? anything I wanted and I chose not to. It question a reader has, consciously or uncon- And I think that she meant every word. It’s seemed right to bring it out as it appeared. sciously, when they are reading is, “Why are like, “Is this essential? Is this essential for Anything I might do along those lines would you telling me this?” So, you know, I want this story?” Maybe there’s nothing wrong come as a separate new work. my students to think about that and also to with a line but it’s not essential to this spe- think about what they have to write about cific story, so out it goes. But I do so much Maybe today you would have written some that not everyone else does. I ask them an revision in my head before I write something things from Reasons to Live differently, but obvious question, but one that sometimes down that I probably do less actual revision one of the best parts about reading that book they don’t think of, which is, “Where is the than many other writers. I have a poet consecutively is noticing the evolution of your first interesting sentence?” If it’s not the friend, Timothy Liu, who once sent me a concerns and your style. first one, then that’s something to attend to. revision of a short poem, and it was stagger- Sure, it’s what I like doing when I read some- And I don’t want them to waste their time ing to see! I’ve never done that much body else’s collected stories. It is interesting to or a reader’s time. They have plenty to com- revision on a short story. But then again, I see the trajectory of what concerns the writer pete with, in real life, so get to it! Get right have—it just wasn’t on the page. It was all has at the beginning and what concerns the to it! in my head, before it got put down in the writer came to have later, and how they first place. reached them. That seems the correct way to When I read, what I really look for is that do it. state that you get to sometimes when you’re Grace Paley has been a big influence on reading something and you are really you—as I think she has been on almost every If you’ll forgive me for changing the subject immersed in it, and time seems to stop. good short-fiction writer, because she is so abruptly: I’ve read that you are a student It’s a trance. A friend of mine refers to it as absolutely fantastic. of forensics. Is this true? “the gaze”. Yeah, a tremendous influence. Oh yeah! This is a great interest of mine. I did enrol in a master’s programme in forensic I like that. In what way do you think she specifically psychology at a college in New York—the What is it that produces “the gaze”? That’s influenced you? College of Criminal Justice. It’s just endlessly the goal! It is like a trance, and you are She was one of the two short-story writers interesting. The psychology of criminality, you caught in it and you want to be there, you who made me want to write short stories. The know, and why some people break, snap, and are not struggling to get out of it. You want other was Leonard Michaels. In terms of pos- do things that the rest of us are not doing. It’s to stay in it. And how do you create that? sible influence, I’d say it’s the idea of voice. a separate interest, but it also bears a lot on It’s largely a matter of seeing who produces Reading Grace Paley, you hear a person fiction writing. It has so much to do with that for you, as a reader, and then finding speaking, not a writer writing. character—with characterisation and with the out a way in which you might be able to do She is a total master of that. psychology of people and characters. For me, it yourself. And the amazing thing was, she sounded in it’s not so much why do these people commit I don’t really write fiction, but even just writ- person just like she sounds on the page. I feel horrible crimes but rather, why aren’t we all ing an article I realise that the trance you can that way about Barry Hannah as well, and so doing it? That’s what my interest in the sub- achieve with writing is much more powerful for this tribute, it’s just wonderful, remember- ject is, and I’m quite, quite addicted to than what you can achieve while reading. ing the amazing things that he’s said. When reading true crime and watching true-crime Well, that’s when it’s at its best, I would we hang up, I’m going back to that. He said shows on TV. think. People say, “How do you know if something so great and simple once: “You I’m a tremendous fan of crime fiction. Is that you’ve really reached the end of a story?” For know, just be master of such as you have.” something you like to read? me it’s always been a physical sensation, not a That was his advice to anybody who was Yeah, I do, and one of the writers who is so rational one. You feel kind of transported for writing. Don’t try to be somebody else.. Just good at that is Lynda La Plante, who wrote, a short time. And then you snap back. be the master of such as you have.

110 | VICE SAM LIPSYTE

INTERVIEW BY ROCCO CASTORO PORTRAITS BY ANNABEL MEHRAN

his was Sam Lipsyte’s year. Or of “updates” written 15 years after gradua- before. With the previous book [Home maybe it was the year of Sam tion to a high school alumni newsletter by a Land], there was more of a slow build over T Lipsyte. At the very least, 2010 was lifelong loser in New Jersey. Home Land in a few years of people discovering it. This when fiction critics at widely read particular garnered a lot of praise from peri- was something else entirely. I think The Ask newspapers and periodicals decided to finally odicals and websites that are mostly read by got momentum very early because it was give the man the two-fingered whistles he people who already knew about Sam. reviewed everywhere almost instantly. Some deserves. Most of the excitement had to do Eventually it won a few nice awards, but were good, some were bad, but it got with The Ask, his third novel, which was dozens of publishers passed on it before its reviewed by all at once. Apparently, that’s an released in March. eventual release. And even then it was relegated important thing. For those of you who can still look to the UK’s paperback-only market until Has all of the attention made you anxious? forward to enjoying this well-crafted and Picador picked it up in the States. Venus Are you worried it will affect your writing? ferociously truthful book, The Ask tells the Drive, a collection of Sam’s shorts published No. I just do what I want to do. My strategy story of Milo, a disaffected, middle-aged in 2000, is tonally in the same vein as his is to try to get from one book to the next. Jewish man who lives in Astoria, Queens, longer works but is diverse in ways that hint The critical success of this book means that I with his wife and son. Milo fancied himself that his brain is sloshing with supremely get another chance. The industry’s pretty bru- an artist in his youth, but after failing to even unexpected tales recounted by unlikely narrators. tal right now, so a lot of people aren’t getting fail in the art world, he works as a project At 42, Sam is a creative-writing professor another chance. Even if their books get good developer at a crummy university. He and his at Columbia University and a Guggenheim reviews, sometimes they don’t sell at all. I feel colleagues try to procure big money from the Fellow. As many interviewers and reviewers really lucky. sort of philanthropists who want their names have been, um, perceptive enough to point You’ve also experienced the other end of the splayed across the awnings of fine-arts out, The Ask is his first hardcover and his spectrum. Your first novel was released on buildings. Not long into the novel, Milo gets first book with some serious marketing muscle September 11, 2001, and numerous publish- fired. After loafing around a bit, he’s rehired behind it (courtesy of Farrar, Straus and ers rejected Home Land. I have no idea how under cryptic circumstances that involve an Giroux). Considering the subject matter and this stuff works, but a lot of it seems arbi- old, obscenely wealthy friend from his college weirdos that inhabit Sam’s stories, perhaps trary. How did things align differently with the broader recognition for his work didn’t days. What ensues involves an Iraq War The Ask? really take so long. He is, by anyone’s defin- veteran with titanium legs, Milo’s separation I think I had been building something since ition, a successful writer who has carefully from his wife—partially because of her half- my first book, and Home Land really cemented and methodically honed his voice at his own denied sexual escapades with a gay male it. There seemed to be a group of people pace. And maybe now that the world is coworker—envelopes of cash, a dying interested in what I was doing and what I apparently doomed and no one will ever be businessman whose only joy comes from might be doing next. I’ve also been reading happy or have jobs again, we’re collectively locavore ice cream produced by a rogue tons in New York and elsewhere for years, dejected and self-pitying enough to accept member of the experimental preschool Milo’s and I know that people have taught Home Sam’s observations on a larger scale. Or per- son attends, near-constant forlorn horniness, Land in various places. That book was haps he just wrote an undeniably good and an aloof lesbian mother, and a wise kiddie- bought in the UK first because no one would important book that genuinely connects diddler. Crushing doubt oozes from every buy it here. It then had a good critical recep- with people. page. It’s the type of book that might best be tion over there. All along an editor named Sam’s writing is deeply funny. More impor- saved until you’re in a true rut, when nothing Lorin Stein, who now runs the Paris Review, tant—and this is his true magic—it somehow else seems to resonate or stimulate. If you’re wanted to publish Home Land, as did another forces me to be honest with myself even if it’s anything like most humans these days, this Farrar, Straus and Giroux editor named Ethan painful. Only a handful of authors have dilemma is perpetually imminent. Nosowsky. But they didn’t quite have the affected me in such a way. I recently visited Sam’s earlier novels and short stories slowly juice yet. Then, a year later, they did, and Sam at the Columbia campus to discuss all of amassed notice and acclaim throughout the Lorin was able to do it through Picador. So the foregoing things and more. past decade. His debut novel, 2002’s The there was a growing readership in the States Subject Steve, and 2004’s Home Land are, Vice: The last nine months were probably that The Ask was able to tap into. But that’s like The Ask, caustic and depressing in ways overwhelming for you. You must have known just one particular case. In general I think it’s that manage to give me a strange sensation of The Ask was something special, but the still kind of flukey. With The Ask—strangely joy (and not in an “at least I’m not that guy” response has been huge. Now that things have enough, or maybe not so strangely—I had my way). The Subject Steve is about a schlub who died down a bit, how are you feeling? home at FSG and everything was great in is diagnosed with what amounts to gan- Sam Lipsyte: I was thrilled with the attention. America, but I couldn’t sell it in the UK. It grenous boredom and Home Land is a series It was great, like nothing I’d experienced went around and around, and even the guy

112 | VICE VICE | 113 she dropped a load on the sidewalk. I didn’t “I guess I’m just coming from a place where learn anything from that. I feel awful about it I don’t necessarily think happiness is a to this day. Much of your work touches on childhood and right. The pursuit of it is.” parenting in a very uncomfortable way. You don’t discount the joys of having children, but you also explore the agony that comes with it. who had been my great champion over there They were that stumped? My mother read The Ask because she’d seen passed on it. So you never know. Eventually it Yeah. [laughs] And then they ended up really some positive reviews. She told me that was published by this great, small British humiliating me. Finally, after an hour of talk- although she liked it and thought the writing press called Old Street. ing about my influences and all of these was excellent, it wasn’t the “type of book” she Do you think that FSG will be your home in literary arguments, they were like, “No, really, normally reads. I took that to mean that it the States for the foreseeable future? this doesn’t make any sense. What are we going made her feel uncomfortable, and that feeling is I’m doing another book with them now. I’m to tell the people about you?” I said, “I don’t not what she’s looking for in literature. And I very sad that Lorin left, but I love the people know. Dark? Funny?” Then the editor said, think that what bothered her most was how there. Now I’m working with an editor “We’ll let the critics decide that.” I got off the you write about parenting and marriage. named Eric Chinski, who seems great and has phone. That’s the last time I ever took any of There’s a lot of depressing stuff about having an incredible reputation. As long as they’ll that seriously. My publisher has put up a kids, as I’m sure there’s a lot of depressing have me, I’d like to be there. Facebook page, but I don’t have a Facebook stuff about being lonely. I guess I’m just com- of my own. They had someone tweeting lines ing from a place where I don’t necessarily How do you feel about digital books and from my book, but I don’t do that. I’m sure think happiness is a right. The pursuit of it is. iPads and all the ways publishers are trying it’s hurt me in some ways, but I have to create I’m supposed to show you a picture of my to reinvent their products? Is there hope that and maintain that distance. kids and tell you how wonderful they are and e-books will put a little more cash into authors’ pockets? Does your age have anything to do with it? I be kind of humble about it, but I’m not sup- I’m still in the “publishing is really in a hor- feel like a few years ago, when you were posed to tell you that I feel overwhelmed and rible place” mentality, but then I go out with shopping around Home Land, there was some I’ve lost my sense of who I am. All of those agents and editors. They feel they’ve turned sort of publishing purgatory authors had to things happen, but it’s also not the case all the a corner and they’re starting to figure out deal with if they weren’t a twee 24-year-old time. It’s just about being honest. how it’s going to work electronically. They who had hang-ups about their ethnicity. Is I’ve always said that I don’t want kids. have, out of necessity, created an optimistic that still a thing? Everyone tells me that I’ll grow out of it. Would picture of how it’s all going to work. But I’m I don’t know that it’s as popular as it was, it offend or disturb you to know that your still not sure. but there was definitely a run of signing kids, books reaffirm my revulsion at parenthood? giving tremendous contracts to people in their One thing we can count on is that marketing How old are you? early 20s. What makes sense about that, from departments will have even more of an influ- Twenty-eight. their point of view, I gather, is that for one as a kid. Let’s just say that I’m on my own giving about using stuff from our lives, even moment a writer is born into a family that ence over what’s published once there’s a You’ve got some time. thing the sale itself creates the marketing bigger digital marketplace. And that brings us spiritual path and that I don’t practise any when I’m mining the present moment. Maybe a family is finished. And my parents were writ- excitement. And as an editor—if you sign up Fair enough, but I can guarantee it’s not going back to Home Land. It arrived when this new religion that is institutionalised. couple of times I’ve overstepped a little bit and ers so my family was destroyed way before I someone who doesn’t have a publishing to happen for a long while. I’ll only do it if I way to sell books was on the rise. I get the The honesty is what I like best about your she wasn’t happy about it. came around. [laughs] record, a track record—you can’t be criticised can afford to hire people to take care of all feeling marketing departments didn’t know work. It’s a particular type of honesty that How about other family members and for poor sales. This was a problem with the shitty parts, leaving me with nothing but You just dance on the ruins. how to sum you up in a blurb, and that many people are afraid to explore because friends? I’m guessing they aren’t so forgiving. Home Land, because my previous book was the joy. I might have to freeze some sperm to I inherited the postapocalyptic landscape of scared them. your characters’ faults may mirror their own Yeah, I think I’ve lost some friends. It’s never The Subject Steve. It came out on 9 /11, and buy enough time, but that’s my plan. my family. That always enters the picture. As a writer and make them feel like scumbags in the been stated to me outright, but it’s pretty it died. So they said, “Whoa, look at his last I didn’t want to have kids, because I was In my perception, Venus Drive, Home Land, you think, “If it’s good, they should publish process. But everyone should feel like an ass- clear. I’ve had family members get a little book. It didn’t sell anything.” Obviously if never thinking about it. I was never one of and The Ask follow a loose pattern. Exempting it.” That’s not what an editor thinks. An edi- hole sometimes, or else you’ll become an upset, but people will recognise themselves in you pay a lot of money to somebody who those people who had a philosophy about it. The Subject Steve, your books have flowed tor has to go through two processes. One is, asshole all the time without knowing it. things that may or may not have to do with hasn’t sold books, then when that book doesn’t It wasn’t like, “If you want to go out with chronologically from one that’s mostly about “Do I like it?” And, two, “Can I sell it?” As a That was really important to me because I them. In one story from Venus Drive—the sell a lot your superiors say, “You’re an idiot. me, you have to understand that I will never childhood to a second about the byproducts of serious writer you’re not thinking along those hadn’t read that much fiction that dealt with first story, “Old Soul”—the guy goes to visit Get out of here.” But no one’s going to blame have children.” I didn’t think about it. It’s not sustained and stubborn adolescence to a story lines. You assume that if you write something fatherhood this way—the sea change that his sister in the hospital. In kind of a loving you for taking a chance on a young fresh about wanting to have kids as much as wanting about a man coming to terms with his failure that kicks ass and is clearly better than the happens, the terror and confusion that go way he tries to give his sister—who’s face. Which is fine. Some of those young kids to have kids with a person. If you’re not with at adulthood. stuff that’s getting published, of course it will along with the joy. For instance, in The Ask comatose on a hospital bed and very near are great. They should be published. Some of that person it’s not really an issue. And one I didn’t imagine a trilogy when I was writing get published. Often it does, but sometimes it the only thing Milo really loves is his son, but death—a little pleasure with his hand, his them need more time to develop. may want to have kids more than the other, the stories in Venus Drive. But you’re correct doesn’t. With Home Land, there were a few being a parent with someone else is also a knuckle. He knuckles in there, under her but it’s about wanting to do that with some- in exempting The Subject Steve because people who didn’t get it or who didn’t like the Do you have any regrets from your youth? source of anxiety. It opens old wounds. gown. My sister, who has never been sick and body. That’s why you can’t ever tell. humour—but most people said, “I don’t There are things that I regret, but they changed has nothing to do with that character, said, that’s a different animal. It’s obviously the Does your wife get pissed about some of the know how to sell it. I don’t know how to stuff for the better. I remember spending a couple Are you religious? “Well, that was pretty disturbing.” I said, least autobiographical book. But yeah, things you write? market it.” At one point I had to get on the of days in jail. It didn’t wake me up right away This is funny because I was just on a panel of “Which part?” She replied, “The part where absolutely, looking back, Venus Drive is No. She’s really tough. She gets angry if it’s phone with the publisher and do some bizarre but it gave me a sense that things were not Jewish writers at a Jewish community centre you put your knuckle in the sister.” She was about childhood and teenage years and a little stupid [laughs] but she’s pretty much my main song and dance where I had to explain how going in the right direction. There was another in San Francisco, and I didn’t go over that saying it was me, not a character in the story, after that, Home Land is about dealing with reader before I let it out into the wider world. they should position me from a marketing time when my sister was very young. We were well when I started talking about my faith. I who knuckled the sister, but then it wasn’t being 33, and The Ask is about finally being standpoint. I had to pitch ideas for how they playing in the yard and she had to go to the think I said something along the lines of, I read somewhere that she trashed the first her, it was “the” sister. To me that had some- what this culture calls an adult but failing at could talk about me. I’m very sorry I did that bathroom. Out of pure cruelty I convinced her “I’ve always been more interested in anti- draft of The Ask. thing to do with the way people negotiate it. Maybe I just have no imagination, but it’s phone call. It was one of the lowest moments that she wasn’t allowed back in the house so Semitism than Judaism.” My only real Yeah, she did. It wasn’t even a first draft. It was that kind of trickiness, where they might be in very possible that I need to stay close to of my writing life. whatever she did she’d have to do it outside, so connection to the religion was getting beat up just a draft. [laughs] I think that she’s very for- the story. Of course there’s the saying, the what I’ve just processed.

114 | VICE VICE | 115 I don’t want it to be too jokey, I don’t want like that. I don’t at the moment, but I did— edits. That’s why you’ll often see, if you point out until you recognise what “In my work the funniest thing is usually the it to be making claims for itself as funny, but people who have been into those things. It look closely at a collection of short stories, you’re doing. most devastating thing...” then you must laugh because it is a funny seeps in. My brother-in-law was getting a list somewhere of where they were first What kind of tics do you watch out for in moment. I pursue… something strange, usually, addicted to one of the games where you’re published. It’ll often say, “This story your own stuff? in every paragraph. It may be funny, or it may building your house and fighting warriors appeared in slightly or partially different I don’t have any. [laughs] be something I don’t think is that funny. I’ve and burying your treasure or whatever— form in Harper’s” or something, because The other common thread is the dangers of Another thing I’ve noticed is the way you use had people come up to me and say, “That growing your crops—I don’t even know, I things change. I have new ideas about the Good answer. I’d like to close out the inter- institutions, these intangible oppressors that dreams in your stories. They seem to have was so funny!” and I think, “Dude, that’s the don’t play. I remember my sister came down story. So I’m including some stories that I view by asking a few very specific questions influence our lives in so many ways we can- their own parameters within the scope of the most devastating moment in the book.” I’ve to him at three in the morning and said, may have published three or four or even about your books. The first one is about a not control. larger narrative. realised that it’s both. In my work the funni- “Are you coming to bed? What’s going on?” five years ago. When I look at one of those scene in The Ask. At one of his lowest That idea actually connects The Subject Steve When I write a dream I try not to make it too est thing is usually the most devastating thing, And he looked up and said, “You don’t for a collection, maybe that’s not the story I points Milo is fighting with his wife and back to the rest. There’s the medical-industrial dreamlike because that can be really boring. and that’s where they play with each other. understand. I’m getting stronger.” [laughs]I want in the book right now and maybe I ends up spending the night at a young col- complex and the institution of a cultish But then dream logic is really interesting. You know I could get there. That’s kind of why I want to rewrite it and revisit it. league’s place in Bushwick, which is organisation in that book. I think that you’ve can somehow get the jarring juxtapositions that Who do you think is funny? basically a flophouse with stalls separated I can name a bunch of writers who make me don’t go in. I’ve seen ads for games that look What sorts of short stories do you recom- hit on something. In my books there are actually are following some strange logic within by chicken wire. Milo is awoken by his laugh: Barry Hannah, Stanley Elkin, Martin so good to me, and I’ve thought, “I could mend to your students? always characters pushing against and being the dream, which can be quite effective in fic- coworker, who is fucking a girl from behind Amis, and Thomas Bernhard in his wacky give up the job and the family and abscond This year my undergraduate class focused on folded into—and their anxiety about being tion. I was talking to someone about lucid in the next stall. After watching them for a way. There’s stuff by Gordon Lish that has me with what little is left in our savings account short stories. I started them off with funda- folded into—these institutions. dreaming, and he told me, and I don’t know if second, Milo sticks his finger through the on the floor, but it’s also emotionally ruinous. and just hole up somewhere and do this. mental stuff, some Chekhov and early this stuff is true, but if you look at your watch chicken wire, up to the girl’s face. When I Most of your protagonists are truthful in a He’s incredible in that way. There’s a play- And then die.” I could see myself doing that, Flannery O’Connor and some Isaac Babel. I in a dream it’ll either not have numbers on it or first read this it made me laugh harder than way that’s detrimental to them, but they still wright named Will Eno who is amazing. His so I just steer clear of it. gave them some Katherine Mansfield. I really it’ll have one number. Look at it again, it’ll be I had in a long time, but it also majorly can’t help themselves even when they come to work is also funny and devastating. And then I had a creative-writing professor in college like her stories. We’re doing an eclectic bunch five hours later. Maybe that’s what Dalí was creeped me out. Where does this kind of this realisation. Lying and passive-aggressiveness there are actual comics like Marc Maron, who I really liked, but he went on and on of stories. Some are older, some are more after with The Persistence of Memory. But you stuff come from? have always seemed like wastes of time and who’s a friend of mine. He’s so good at bring- about how the art of the short story died a recent—it’s all just stuff I’ve liked. don’t want to have a dream sequence where That’s something that just sort of happened energy to me. Yet I feel like you have to be a ing the audience to their lowest point, where long time ago and no one cares anymore there’s a melting clock or things are too halluci- I get the impression that you thoroughly while I was writing. I’m not sure I can explain good liar to write successful fiction. they’re ready to attack, and then carrying except other authors. While that may have natory or demented in a mannered way. enjoy teaching. Was that surprising for you? I it, but it felt right. Well, fiction involves lying. You know how them to these heights. Louis CK’s stand-up is been the case 20 years ago, I think we’re Writing dreams is tricky. There’s a saying: write know you didn’t do the typical MFA thing It felt right? they say the best lies are the ones closest to sharp stuff. I think one of my favourite people headed the other way now. Short stories are a dream, lose a reader. But I still like to write after graduating. What I’m most looking for is the thing the truth? If you want to try to get away is Chris Morris, who’s a British comedian. becoming more fashionable as people’s atten- dreams for my characters. I like to use the logic I like teaching a great deal. When I got out that’s right because it’s wrong in the right with something, and you have to cook up a Although I guess he’s not really a comedian. tion spans get shorter and screens replace without the clichéd iconography of dreams. For of college I didn’t want to go the MFA way. I just tried to think, “What would I do story to cover your ass, the more it has to do He’s more a comic writer and television paper as the preferred reading medium. What instance, the stuff about the character who is a route. I didn’t want to see myself enslaved in that situation?” with the truth the better the lie will be. maker. Shows like Brass Eye have been a do you think? professional masturbator in Home Land. It’s by some goddamn institution, you know? There’s maybe some parallel with fiction. great influence. I don’t know. Everyone’s been saying that the The most disturbing part is that Milo’s unclear whether it’s all part of a dream or a “That’s not gonna be me, man!” So I did a But you have to make things up to get to the narrative form of the future is going to be the intentions—and now I can safely say your supernatural visitation. That was kind of fun to I want to talk about “The Dungeon lot of other things. I worked at FEED for greater truths. short story because nobody will have the intentions as well—were left mostly unex- do, operating in that territory. I never resolved Master”, a new short story of yours that ran years and freelanced and did other odd jobs. patience for a novel, but that doesn’t seem to be plained. What was he after? A delicate What’s your daily level of honesty outside of it. Except that he did leave a token puddle of in the New Yorker in October. For those But at one point, about seven, eight years the case right now. When people buy a video suckle? your writing? jizz, which was my homage to a Twilight Zone who haven’t read it yet, it’s about a group ago, I was invited to visit Ben Marcus’s class game they’re locking in for 70 hours to play it. I guess he was just searching for some kind There are different kinds of honesty. I don’t go type of thing. “It wasn’t real, but here’s the of high school students so uncool they’ve here at Columbia and I liked it. I liked talk- When they buy a book they’re locking in the ing to him. Then I got the chance to teach a of connection. I think he wanted a nice around and scream in everyone’s face about his boot buckle he left behind.” been shunned by the Dungeons & Dragons same way. Novels are still the beast, the thing charge. or her hypocrisies because I don’t think that’s club and forced to play at the house of an class as an adjunct. I’d been doing a little Every critic mentions the sharp wit and humour that sells. There is a home for a lot of short fic- necessarily useful, and who am I to talk? But, aggressive and mentally deranged senior. My teaching before out in Queens, at this kind OK. I think I might be even more conflicted of your writing. Making someone laugh out tion because of the internet, and that’s great. you know, I really don’t lie, and I don’t think it’s younger brother was addicted to World of of art space, and I was discovering that I about the whole thing now, but we’ll move loud using words and ink on a page is a very Some of it is wonderful and a lot of it is horri- out of some innate goodness. It’s total laziness. Warcraft for three years, and I’m not using liked teaching. So I got a real job here. I on. The other thing I wanted to ask you difficult think to do, and you do it very uniquely the A-word lightly. I know video games are ble, just like the stuff that’s in print. But, yes, was lucky. It’s hard to get your own work about is from Home Land. Lewis and Gary, I wonder if compulsive liars feel exhausted all and well. But the thing that really amazes me is a bit different, especially because they usurp people have the chance now to innovate a little done during certain points of the year, so two of the main characters, use the word the time. your timing. You don’t have nearly as many any type of imaginative aspect traditional bit with the form. The key is no one is going to summers are my big time. But I think that if normie a lot. What does that word mean It’s just not that stressful if you’re not lying. tools at your disposal as an actor or stand-up RPGs require, but it amazed me how spot- make any money doing any of this. If every- I made tons of money from my writing and to them? I’m so precious about my ability to focus on comic, but you consistently pull it off. Is this on you were with the kids’ behaviours. I one’s cool with that, these things can flourish. didn’t have to teach, I’d still keep my hand They talk about normies like they’re outside my work, and the time I can carve out to do sense of timing something that can be taught thought you might have slipped a camera During the photo shoot before this interview in. I would teach a class. the oppressive system and cookie-cutter life what I want to do, that the added anxiety of and all the bullshit that everyone else is eat- and developed or is it innate? into my brother’s bedroom at some point. you mentioned that you’re working on your How do you beat tics out of a writer? trying to maintain some domestic lie would ing. It’s a way to bolster their egos and The page is very different than what a stand-up The Dungeon Master’s tantrums and the next book, another story collection. I always The hardest thing is recognising your tic. In really make me unravel. I couldn’t handle it. create some distance between themselves comic does. A comedian has a physical body— way he talks to his father were so on point wondered how these work. Your stories have a way, that’s what workshops are good for. It’s much easier to tell the truth, as long as and society, but Gary’s girlfriend, Mira, gestures, vocal intonations, double they spooked me. What was the inspiration? appeared in the New Yorker, McSweeney’s, You recognise the tics in other people. Then you haven’t committed a major crime. calls them out on it. She says, “You guys takes—whatever they’re going to do to bring Do you know people who are into this type Harper’s, and lots of other places. What’s the you say, “Oh, I do something like that.” I are normies too, so you should stop using Lying to authority figures is the only instance across the comedy. They can make a phrase of stuff? editing process like when it’s time to compile think that’s useful because to a writer it’s the word.” when it’s acceptable. That’s my rule. funny just by the way they say it. Authors don’t I just got an email from somebody about it them into a book? Do you just slap them in not necessarily a tic, it’s your game. It’s your Or if you’re dealing with a large institution have any of those tools at our disposal, so we saying, “Your story nauseated me.” That there the same as they ran in the magazines, strength. You think of it as your go-to The last question was just a setup for this that doesn’t have your interests in mind. have to find lingual ways to do it. So much of it was the first line, and I think it was because or are there serious revisions made? move. Other people may think of it as a tic, one: if you had to guess, what kind of books I’ve had various sorts of institutional mani- is how you build to something, how wide you it resonated in some way. It takes place When you get the collection together you’re but you think of it as the asset, the thing do you think normies read? . festations where I’ve had people say, “Lie make a loop of description before you veer off before video games were a big deal. So still taking it to your book editor. So what- that’s going to put you over. And then there Well, I hope they read Sam Lipsyte books. about that. Otherwise the paperwork won’t and land somewhere totally unrelated. You they’re just lost in their graph-paper-and- ever happened to the stories beforehand, are tics that are more unconscious, but I The paperback edition of The Ask will be available in go through.” You should also lie to insur- have to learn how that rhythm works in prose. pencil-and-dice world, but it’s kind of the that editor has a chance to look at it as a March 2011 along with a new edition of the currently out- guess by definition a tic is unconscious. of-print The Subject Steve. Buy them both and enjoy, ance companies. It has to be something you feel. same thing. And, yeah, I did know people whole and make suggestions and give some These are the ones other people have to normies.

116 | VICE VICE | 117 JOHN RECHY

INTERVIEW BY STEVE LAFRENIERE PORTRAITS BY TERRY RICHARDSON

n 1963 Barney Rosset’s Grove Press hit the young. At eight years old I was doing stories, What bravado it took for you to say that. publishing world with yet another ground- and I also drew. I loved drawing. With the I had never, never intended to write about I breaker. John Rechy’s City of Night writing, believe it or not, my first novel was that world. Never. remains, almost 50 years later, the essential about Marie Antoinette. [laughs] Well, you did, and it was not written quite novel of the neon-drowned world of rough- How old were you when you wrote that? like anything else at that time, obviously. It is trade hustlers, 24-7 drag queens, and the I started it about age 11. I was living in the a highly original book, especially within the gentlemen who crave them. As Naked Lunch is poor section of El Paso, and yet I was writing nascent world of gay literature of that era. I to lit hipsters, City of Night is to successive about Marie Antoinette. I did research, I mean, it does not read like The City and the generations of young fags and dykes bored with mean pages and pages of it, and then I wrote Pillar at all. What kind of larger literary zeit- Andrew Holleran. In the book, an unnamed something like 500 pages of Time on Wings, geist was going on that made you want to narrator—based on Rechy, himself a male which was the Marie Antoinette novel. write in that almost generational way of prostitute—wanders deliriously from El Paso to speaking? Were you into Kerouac at all? Manhattan to Hollywood, tricking with a page- That was the title of it? I don’t want to be ungrateful, but no. turning succession of kinky customers, before a Yeah. Unfortunately, I destroyed that along Kerouac I didn’t read until much, much later. final harrowing meltdown in New Orleans dur- with my other early stuff. When I came back But I admire him a great deal. ing Mardi Gras. More than the sum of its from the army, I just wanted to start over and people and scenes, City of Night is one of the I destroyed all those things. It’s just terrible. But you can see why I ask that. City of Night, most powerful books ever written on the It would be nice to see your juvenilia. City of in much of its language, is very “Beat”. themes of narcissism and loneliness. Gus Van Night started out as a— Oh sure, absolutely. I’m often grouped with Sant pretty much based My Own Private Idaho Letter. the so-called Beat writers. But I wasn’t around on it, and it’s what that closet queen Jim them, no. I met Allen Ginsberg later, but A letter, and then it expanded into a short Morrison is referencing when he repeatedly that’s something else. story and it was published in a magazine. Can snarls the book’s title in “LA Woman”. you talk about that development? So did you just invent this way of writing and Rechy went on to author more than a dozen I’d fled to El Paso, where my mother lived, speaking? more books, while for some years continuing his and I couldn’t sleep, and that was where I No. [laughs] One of the main stylistic influ- other career as a street hustler. From that era, wrote the letter that ended up beginning City ences on me is Winnie-the-Pooh. Numbers and The Sexual Outlaw are equally of Night. It was my salvation, really. fearless takes on lust and obsession. More [laughs] That’s a pull-quote. recently, his novels have begun to examine some And did you hear back from the person you That’s the truth. It really is. of these same subjects through a hetero lens. sent this letter to? Is it the absurdity of it that inspired you? One of them, The Life and Adventures of Lyle No. I hadn’t sent it. I thought I had, but I Not exactly. There’s a stylistic thing in Winnie- Clemens, is an excellent picaresque based loosely hadn’t. the-Pooh of using capital letters very oddly to on Fielding’s The History of Tom Jones. Its sex And you read it later. emphasise a word, and I thought, “Geez, that’s scenes rival those of City of Night, but its heart I read it later and thought, “It sounds like a really great,” and so I used that. And then also is somewhere altogether further along the road. story.” John Dos Passos influenced me very much. I Rechy insisted on being interviewed in per- read a whole lot when I was a young teenager. Wow, and you hadn’t actually written any- son. I generally prefer a taped phone conversa- thing at that level yet. Were you writing against anybody? Were you tion, but I wanted to meet him. Thus I found No, I hadn’t. And so I sent it to Evergreen rebelling against anything? I mean, the char- myself ringing his doorbell somewhere Review, and I sent it to New Directions, and acter is a hustler, but he’s also sort of a JD. above the Hollywood sign on a hot, dry both of them wanted it, and Don Allen at Were you a writer-rebel? November afternoon. Grove asked me if it was perhaps part of a I’m sorry to say that I wasn’t, and the reason I Vice: Let’s start with, of course, City of novel. I said, “Yes.” say that is because it would be so terrific to Night. I never quite understood what your So you were just getting letters back in El say, “Yes, I was.” But without Don Allen’s background as a writer was before this book. Paso from all these big New York people? encouragement, I don’t think I could’ve gone You worked for a newspaper, right? Yes. on to write the book. After the Mardi Gras John Rechy: As a kid. I mean, as a teenager. chapter, I wrote a chapter about the drag That’s amazing, isn’t it? What section was it? And this was in Texas? queen, Miss Destiny, which became pretty Yes. I got a $50 journalism scholarship to go It’s a section called “Mardi Gras”. famous. I didn’t realise it, but it really became to Texas Western College, and part of it was The ending of the book. quite famous. I thought I’d never go anywhere that I could get a job as a copy boy for the Yeah, but it was rewritten for the novel. It with it. Like Evergreen Review—Barney local paper, so I did. I was a copy boy. I think actually still seems to be the letter, and you Rosset turned it down for that. I got $15 a week or something like that, and can tell that it’s addressed to someone. The Really? Was it that the subject matter was too that was the extent of it. But I did learn a lot. fact that Don, who was the editor at Grove out there? When you’re a copy boy, you’re really work- Press, suggested it was part of a book was the No, because Grove Press was doing all kinds ing with everybody else’s writing. When did catalyst. That’s how I got an advance. of things. But anyhow, Don Allen was you start to write yourself? Did you take any So when he asked you that, had it never annoyed that Barney had done that, so he classes, or are you self-taught? occurred to you that it might be part of a said, “Rewrite it and do this and that.” So I I took classes much later, but I was writing novel that you could write? rewrote it and then I sent it out and Barney when I was a little kid. I mean, very, very, very No, it hadn’t. rejected it again.

118 | VICE VICE | 119 Really? “I told her the story of Desdemona in drag And that’s what attracted me to her. She was not, however, glamorous, the way I had to terms. Desdemona was a way-out queen, and paint her. I wanted her to assume a grandeur within the milieu so that she merged with the then there was her stud black husband.” ragged grandeur, as it was. There’s the story that I did put in City of Night, when we were sitting there with other hustlers and queens in One thing that I find fascinating about this You’ve got to read it if you’re a young, hip this draggy bar on Main Street, and Miss book—and a lot of other people do, too—is gay guy in the city, especially. Destiny was getting very nervous because the the depiction of sex in it. Back when it came Some young people write and say it opened other queens were being solicited and she was out in 1963, the only gay sex in books was in the world for them again, so I think it’s still getting left behind. She turned angry at all of us those little paperbacks at porn stores. But the contemporary. who were sitting there. And I sat next to her, writing in those was so perfumed and silly. Well, I’m going to tell you something that I and she said, “I don’t know what’s the matter City of Night came along, and it set the tem- wasn’t sure I would, but now that we’re sit- with these people. I’m out of place.” She had plate, even to this day, of writing about sex ting here and I’ve had half a glass of wine… gone to college and had read Shakespeare. I between men. There’s this quality to it that A year after I read City of Night, I became a was drunk and, apparently, so was she. And describes exactly, especially, that kind of inter- hustler in Denver, Colorado. we’d been smoking. I said to her, “Don’t tell change, what that kind of dirty hustler sex is All right. [laughs] anybody, but me too.” I told her the story of like. And, I mean, you were hustling in real Desdemona in drag terms. Desdemona was a For ten months I was a street hustler, in life. Were you just writing what it seemed like way-out queen, and then there was her stud Denver in 1972, in the Capitol Loop, around to you? black husband. Miss Destiny was stunned, and the Capitol Building. They called it Fruit I was writing what I was remembering. When then that’s when she poured out to me that she Loop or Sodomy Circle. the Miss Destiny chapter didn’t get accepted, I longed for a wedding. I embellished that a bit Oh my God. was in Los Angeles, and I got romantically in the book, but the bare story was wonderful, moved and sad and went up on the roof of They’d drive around, pick you up, and it was I mean, the sadness of it... amazing. Drag queens on the street… the this four-storey building on Hope Street and I It’s very authentic. downtown section of Denver was seedy but started smoking some grass, and then the Subsequently, she gave an interview—the real really fun. I had a wonderful time. I don’t bells of a nearby church started to [imitates a Miss Destiny gave an interview to a magazine. regret it at all. Another book that comes to bell tolling], and damn it, I went downstairs, I just loved this. They put her on the cover. She mind when I think of that time is Last Exit to and I broke away from what I remembered said, “Oh, yes, I remember. He was kind of Brooklyn, which came out a year later. What happened and started imagining, instead, cute, and I did him for trade.” [laughs] I didn’t did you think of Hubert Selby’s book? what should have happened. What the story mind it. She contacted me years later. She It’s great. It’s a great novel and he’s a great had needed was a kind of poetry, and that would call me. I don’t know how she got my writer, but he had a problem with me: was what those bells suggested. phone number—it wasn’t listed. nasty, nasty, nasty. I was sent galleys to That’s when you were pulled from memoir blurb, and I was bowled over by that book. Oh, drag queens have their way of getting into fiction, maybe. It was so brilliant, and I gave a blurb and phone numbers at 3 AM. What would she do, I rewrote that story, and it appeared in Big they were going to use it, and fucking Selby call up and say, “Remember me?” Table and aroused Norman Mailer, James said no. He didn’t want a blurb from me. It No. It was so sad. She would call up and Baldwin—who wrote me—Ken Kesey, all of turned out that he had been very angry she’d say, “Oh, John? My new husband is them. So that was really good. because City of Night had come out first. here, and he doesn’t believe that I am Miss It’s sort of like it had to become a little more He didn’t want my endorsement, so fuck it. Destiny. Can I put him on the phone?” And cinematic and romantic to encapsulate what But then, years later, he was having a really then I would say, “Oh, yes, yes. That is Miss was really happening. And I’ll tell you: when bad time of it, and I was teaching at USC Destiny.” And I even attributed to her some I first read City of Night, that was the quality and I got the director to hire him there. So of the things that I had put in. She absorbed that grabbed me in 1971. I was 18, and this he taught at USC, and the students loved them. She became the character. She became almost punk feeling of in-your-face that novel him. He didn’t believe in grading and all the Miss Destiny that I wrote about. has, and how real it feels, really grabbed me. that, and I don’t either. I give everybody A’s. I wondered about that. There was a queen I It was set within this perfectly romantic, but They have too much to cope with in life knew in Chicago 20 years ago, this young, not overly romantic, world. Like a really without having to cope with a fucking bad really funny drag queen who named herself good 50s JD romance. grade. But apparently he gave all his stu- Miss Destiny after that character. But it is romantic. It is. dents C’s, which of course is failing in Oh, really? graduate school. Oh, yes. Yeah. But she wasn’t like Miss Destiny. She One of the things that stunned me was that it That’s true. just liked the character. So, Gus Van Sant has became such a shocker. First of all, there is [laughs] Then he was told he had to reconsider. mentioned over the years how much he likes not one sex scene. I mean, there is the end of He only wrote a few other things, and they City of Night. one at the end of the book, but there are no weren’t known. He’s a wonderful director, wonderful. graphic sex scenes. And then when that book But they were wonderful. My Own Private Idaho of course owes a finally developed and came out, I thought I Anyway, I was just curious if there was some heavy debt to City of Night. would be praised as a writer, but I didn’t kind of connection. I only have a couple more He even plucked out one of the best lines: think it would sell. The opposite happened. questions about City of Night. Miss Destiny’s “Once you stop going for money, you start It was one of the best sellers at Grove. And it the best-known drag queen in postwar litera- growing wings.” It was fun. [laughs] still is a pleasurable item. I know 20-year-old ture, I think. Whatever happened to her? She Are you interested in porn as a subject? guys who love it. was a real queen that you knew, right? Not overwhelmingly. I’m very interested in I still get letters about it, and there are a lot Yeah. Look, she was Miss Destiny. She had porn as far as how mysterious it is, how brutal from young people. the name Miss Destiny. it is, and how exciting it is. I see it very much

120 | VICE VICE | 121 in terms of the kind of hustling that I did on Yeah, right around there. The Summer of Love. to generalise, but I think that women want the But she didn’t know what you were writing the street. It’s very similar to it, except now And it’s only now that I’m getting pub- admiration and don’t provide it for the male. right then. “‘I believe in God. I believe in the Holy it’s on the internet. lished, for example, in Spain. Spain You’ve called Numbers a “sexual horror Not at all. It was quite dramatic, quite dra- Ghost,’ becomes, ‘I believe in S&M. It’s everywhere. withdrew from an international competition story”, which is extremely apt, I think. matic. As we were leaving, in the rearview when City of Night was being considered I empathise so much with some of these kids Nothing I’ve ever read has come as close to the mirror I saw Los Angeles, and it was cov- for the Prix Formentor. They wouldn’t par- I believe in the leather.’” who think they’re going to be big stars, and monstrosity that’s found at the edges of exis- ered with smog, all dirty, and it was almost ticipate. And now my books are getting they’re not. I was thinking of writing a collec- tence in that book. I mean, not even Heart of a biblical city, and I felt almost a biblical published in Spain. experience, and so, yes, I started it right tion of these stories about hurt. Darkness. Did you set out to write it that way, Thirty years ago. That’s fantastic. And you chose that particular book—the Spain is pretty much the cutting edge of gay or do you even agree with what I’m saying? there. With my dear mom with her pretty Like about people who’ve been tossed away hat. It was wonderful. She held the pad, I gave him my telephone number, which was darkest book you’d done. [laughs] culture right now. It’s like, if you push some- I began with the title, and I wrote it in three No, I said, “Which one?” And he said, “Oh, once they’ve been used? one of those lawyer pads, and I was steer- also very rare, and the son of a bitch didn’t thing down that much, it’s going to pop up so months exactly, whereas City of Night took The Fourth Angel would make a great play.” Exactly. There’s one I saw, with this one kid ing. I was a very good driver. By the time call for about ten days. And when he did call, who performs and this disembodied voice of a much more eventually. Once you were a years. I wrote Numbers in the kind of frenzy I wanted to put him down: “Now, who are So I wrote it for him, and what’s her name writer, you didn’t stop hustling. This is one of we reached El Paso, the first few pages director. It’s in a tacky room. It just got to me. that I wanted to put into the book. And, my you?” It was nonsense, but I was still playing played Shell… Joan Allen. the most interesting things about your career. God, just weeks ago I wrote a letter of were written. This kid—slender kid, young, butch haircut, dumb, because I thought that that had been Wow. Where was it produced? Yes, I continued hustling. I was fond of call- protest to The Observer in England because And they were the actual—the beginning of baby-face marine—after he was through, oh, the attraction. Later on, we were in bed and I It was an experimental production in New ing myself the oldest hustler in the world. they called Numbers a pornographic, mean- the book as it is? I mean, obviously— God, it just broke my heart. He asked the was still playing Dumbo, and then he said York for all these people. I forget. They were spirited book or some fucking thing like Yes. I put it as “leaving Phoenix” while I was director, “Well, do you think that I’ll make it You were only 23 or so. that he and his sister had gone to a terrible all well known. in porn?” and then this voice, with no emotion And I withheld my identity. I wouldn’t tell that. It is a very serious book—very, very actually leaving Los Angeles. movie. I said, “Oh, what movie was it?” and Like a showcase type of thing? or anything, says to him, “Oh, I don’t know. people who I was and if anybody said, serious, and it was really about being A writer named Jonathan Kirsch wrote a he says, “Buñuel’s That Obscure Object of Yes, exactly. Then we brought it here to LA, There are a lot of models out there. You’ve got “You’re that writer,” I’d say, “Hmm.” haunted by death. The man who’s cruising piece about you in the Los Angeles Times, Desire.” Buñuel happens to be one of my Johnny Rio all throughout the book, he and we did an experimental run at a small to be really outstanding to get into it.” And, oh It becomes a hall of mirrors at some point. and he brought up something I think is essen- favourite artists. I thought, “This little son of becomes more and more attractive, and I theatre. And you won’t believe who played God, oh God, what horror! But the kid persists Once I got asked for an interview from an tial to what you do—this almost a bitch is saying that about Buñuel?” And wanted him to be Death. I don’t think Shell, the evil young girl. and says, “But do you think I could make it? international magazine, and it was arranged otherworldly passion that your characters then I dropped the pose and said, “You’re anybody saw that. I’d like to do that again, and I hope people like that I would go to the journalist’s house. And possess. You’re known for all this expression saying that about one of the great directors!” Karen Black? [laughs] No. Too old. Too old. It was Sarah Jessica Parker. me.” And this man says, “We’ll find out.” So he opens the door, and he’s a guy that I had Just for those who haven’t read Numbers, it’s of raw sexuality, but it’s almost like that’s Michael is fond of saying, “I saw a different you see this kid, who for a moment was just been with, had made it with. He said, a book where a young man decides—for no emanating through a need for the ecstatic. So person then.” And I was. I marched him into You’re kidding. exalted and being loved—you see him “Well, I don’t have to ask you if your work is stated reason necessarily—that he’s going to many of your characters are fighting against my study, and I said, “I wrote all those And she was wonderful. I’ll show you pictures. shrinking. This kid was trying so hard to be the fact that their lives aren’t something more. books.” He said, “You wrote Numbers?” autobiographical.” [laughs] have sex with 30 men in, what? A weekend? Your book Rushes ends in what might be sexual, to be desired, and boy, could I relate to Or a week? Most of my characters are looking for hope, “I can dispense with that question.” But you Oh, my God. Let’s talk about The Fourth Angel. called an S&M sacrifice. That book came out it. Then he puts on his clothes—and this, to I forget. I did it in a day, but that was after which I think is an end within itself. I believe kept hustling for many years because this I think that’s one of the most interesting books in ’79, which was the same year that William me, was the awful epiphany of the whole Numbers. that the ability to hope is the mightiest goal. really was you. You weren’t just trying to be you’ve written, but it isn’t very well known. Friedkin was making Cruising, in which Al thing. He puts on his clothes, and now he is an It keeps one going. Pacino plays a cop who goes undercover in ordinary kid. Loose, baggy pants and shirt. authentic. Did you always take money? And you thought, “Let’s see if I can do this”? I’ll tell you, that book is about as autobio- How long have you been with your the leather, S&M world in New York. What He’s an ordinary kid, going to school or the Because the whole money thing was so inter- I wanted to compete with Johnny Rio, truly. graphical as anything I’ve ever done. boyfriend? is your stand on S&M? beach or whatever. esting in the hustling world, I recall. Compete with my own character. The Fourth Angel? Wow. Talk to me about it. Michael and I have been together for 30 That it’s entirely negative, but it is there. I At first, it was always hustling, being gay. Then That’s fantastic. It’s a book about kids. I know exactly what you mean, and it’s prob- years. I was never looking for someone. I didn’t don’t fault it. I just say that it is very clearly it branched off, wonderfully, because I became God’s truth. He does it in ten days, and it I am the character Jerry in it. My mother had ably why I got out of hustling after ten two people—multiplying the performances. want anyone. an ode, a ceremony, to our oppression, and months. I never made porno movies, but it’s actually ended up being 37 men. just died, and I was despondent, and then I fell And I was a good actor. I was very, very good. I believe you. that S&M reenacts the oppression that the the same kind of thing. But just switching But that’s not really the theme of the book. in with some friends: a girl, Marcy, and her So the earlier part of the night I would go to I told you about the section on Santa Monica gay world receives from the so-called straight gears here: you speak out pretty vociferously That’s just the setup of the book. husband, Steve, and another guy, who had hustling turfs and have money. Then the sec- Boulevard, where it was either hustling or world. But Rushes was actually a Mass, and about the whole subject of the ghettoisation But, see, look at the title. Numbers. loads of cocaine. Marcy was very, very rich, ond part of the night I’d go to cruising turfs, cruising—that limbo. Michael came into that was very closely constructed. It has 15 chap- of minority writers in bookstores, where Numbing, n-u-m-b. And then of course it’s and had cocaine and acid and everything. So and then it wasn’t money—it was attraction. area, and I looked across the street and saw ters, which are the Stations of the Cross. there’s black lit, women’s lit, gay lit and so also from the Bible, the collection, and then, each one of those people becomes a child in Hustling and cruising are two separate things, him. He was 22. He looked like an angel. He I was raised Catholic, too. on. But what about at the other end, in the in gay parlance, “He’s a number.” So, all the book. Marcy became Shell. Steve became… but I can say from my own experience that parked, and then there was a man who was So you know. If you read very, very carefully 50s and 60s, when there weren’t any gay those things come to play in that book. It I forget the kid’s name, but he was the very they became confused in a way. about to pick me up for hustling. For the first the references to some drawings on the walls books in the bookstores at all? How hard was could’ve been a better book. It’s very good, mysterious one, and there was also Manny— Well, fortunately there were turfs. time in my life, I walked across the street and [of the bar] in Rushes, every one of them is it to get City of Night or Numbers into a but it could’ve been better. Sometimes City of So you took these adults and you wrote them left the man who would be paying me. the Stations of the Cross. store in the beginning? Right, specific places for each activity. Night irritates me, too. as teenagers. The book is kind of a Lord of There were problems. I seem to remember it There was an actual demarcation, and in the Seriously? It really worked like that? [laughs] How did I miss that? I’m obviously lapsed, You mean it irritates you when you try to the Flies of the S&M era. I mean, it’s pretty was in New Orleans that bookstores returned middle, at Santa Monica Boulevard, was a I’ve believed everything you’ve said until now. but… read it? rotten. It’s a frightening book. their copies, because they didn’t want to sell limbo area, which I loved because if a cus- It’s so romantic—too perfect! And even the bar is constructed like a church, No, no. It irritates me because it seems to I intended it to be frightening. Those children, them. City of Night was seized at the border tomer came by, fine, but if somebody who Yeah, it was really that way, and he didn’t and the cradle is voiced by the character of have taken up a life of its own, beyond me, led by Shell, the young girl, are out to make of Australia. It could not be brought in, and was attractive came by, that was good too. even know about sex, and he did look like an Chas in terms of S&M: “I believe in God. I and I feel competitive with it. City of Night is what I think is the most terrifying decision angel. I thought, “No hustling tonight,” and believe in the Holy Ghost,” becomes, “I then Canada could not bring it in. And And if you went to hustle early, you’d have you can make—that you’re not going to feel. beloved—much more than I. [laughs] believe in S&M. I believe in the leather.” I Numbers, in England, when it was known your money in your pocket when you needed it. the man drove off angrily. They can do anything they want if they don’t Oh, my God. I think you’re a bit insatiable. was trying to make the connection that the that a company was going to publish it, a Yeah, but I didn’t need the money. I needed And then you went and talked to Michael? feel. That’s where the horror of the book I mean, yeah. I competed with Johnny Rio, origin of S&M is in religion—especially group called the Festival of Light got up a lot the affirmation. Yes, and I was still performing street—though comes from, that once you decide that you’re my own character. Catholic people looking at that beautiful fig- of money and threatened the publishers. This not hustling. I didn’t want him to just dash not going to feel, everything is possible. Let’s talk about that. Homosexual men, I ure of Christ naked. I mean, to me, that’s was ready to go to court. Is it true that you wrote Numbers while dri- away. But I was still performing tough street, think, are able to get affirmation more quickly And this book was made into a theatre piece. eroticism. One time I got into trouble in some Oh, they were Christians? ving across country in a Mustang and your to the point where I told him that he could than straight men. And all men need affirma- Michael had been in New York at the lecture I was doing when I said, “Jesus—that Of course. The publication was held up, and mother was holding the writing pad? come over because I was watching a friend’s tion from other men. Now, being paid is also American Academy. He was studying with all guy’s beautiful, and not only that, but with Yes. That’s one of the memories that I cherish then they redid the book so that it looked like a very different sort of affirming, because apartment. It was really my apartment, but it these big people. He became involved with a his abs he must have to do 100 sit-ups a day.” of my mother. a textbook. then it’s concrete. Straight men don’t really was very elegant, too elegant for the street. play, but then they got somebody else to In my book Our Lady of Babylon, there is Now, this was about ’67 when Numbers have a version of this. You were thinking up this book with your I did that once when I was hustling. Oh, man. replace him, a movie actor, and Michael was the most beautiful love scene between Jesus came out? That’s one of the difficult parts about hetero- mom sitting there? Did she read English? And then he came over. It was wonderful utterly despondent. I said, “What if I write and Judas. I retell the story of the betrayal. I think so. sexual relationships as I see them. I don’t want No. But she was told what I wrote. from the beginning. you a play?” The sex scene is told by Mary Magdalene,

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going wrong or what is going really right, “I was tanned and oiled to a sheen. And and then they can pursue it. But I stopped teaching just a month ago after suing USC I had faded Levi’s—but not Cloroxed.” for exploitation, and winning. What happened? who’s looking down on it from a hill. Talk thought, “What is this? Why has God Very briefly, I was an adjunct, and that’s about artistic decision! I know that it would brought this kid to do this sacrificial act?” exploitation enough. An adjunct professor- be very difficult to say, “And then Jesus went Was this before AIDS or post-AIDS? ship is when the universities hire down on Judas, and Judas went down…” Right at the time of AIDS, right at the time. well-known people in order to pay them because it would be an outrage. But I wanted very little and not give them tenure or bene- a full sex scene. So it’s Jesus, Judas, and Mary Well, people, would they know what it was fits. Hubert Selby was one with me. Richard Magdalene. She’s in the middle, and they yet? Yates was one, Jerome Lawrence, Shirley begin to kiss her, and then she moves slowly Not yet, not yet. Thomas, William Goyen—big people get- away, knowing that this is what it’s all about, Did you join in? ting paid a pittance and no benefits. And and then they come together and then they I did not. It seemed there was some kind of writers always need money. At a certain kiss, and then Magdalene moves away to a brutality involved, though the kid was still point I realised that I was not getting any hill. And then from the point of view of smart enough to reject people that he didn’t retirement, nothing. I don’t want to go into Magdalene, so that I don’t have to get vulgar, like. People that were too old. I took a it too much, but there was a big brouhaha. I describe their movements. So there it is. I’ve friend of mine, from El Paso, for God’s I was just thinking about an earlier brouhaha done that one. sake, there that night and we talked there of yours. You once said that you were the I’m not into S&M. Fetishes are far stranger away from the scene, and he said, “Have first man to walk down Santa Monica than just dressing up in leather. You have to you heard about that illness? Do you think Boulevard without a shirt on. have your own. But I do know that there are it’s true?” I said, “I don’t know, but if it is I was. people who would say, “But to me it’s release in true, something terrible is happening back This was in the 50s when everybody was the end.” What do you think of that argument? there.” That’s the origin of The Coming of wearing grey flannel suits. It’s like you were Do you know who Fred Halsted was? the Night, and it takes place in one night almost naked, right? that gathers all the people who will line up Sure, one of the original, iconic gay porn It was in the 50s, repressive times, and this in the park. stars. He committed suicide after he lost his was so bold, so stunning. looks, is what I hear. I’ve been that guy, when I was a hustler hired Did you have a t-shirt in your back pocket? He became an alcoholic, and he had to take for a party. I still to this day don’t know why Yes, of course I did. And I was tanned and medication to stop himself from drinking. He I liked it, and I don’t know why they liked it oiled to a sheen. And I had faded Levi’s—but and I became friends, which was so incredible. and everybody else wanted to join in. I was not Cloroxed. He was interested in doing the play of Rushes, also hired to beat guys with belts and all that which I had written. Fred heard about it and stuff, and more. It was very interesting to Faded hadn’t really come in so much then. It contacted me, and he had terrific ideas on how explore, and I wouldn’t do anything horribly was still Lee dungarees. to do it. I liked him, which was strange, violent, but you do understand why people This was sensational. It was sensational, because he was the iconic figure of S&M. maybe want this stuff. because the pale blue against the brown body He did really odd porn stuff, too. Strange Now these activities are usually done by older and boots… fetishes, like fucking a motorcycle. [laughs] men. I don’t mean old old, but in their 40s. Engineer boots? And also there was a very sad story with his There’s a place here in Los Angeles. I haven’t Engineer boots or collar boots. been, but I know of it. boyfriend, Joey Yale. They were involved for I still have those. [laughs] I had to order engi- years. The kid turned against him. He found Do you think it’s dying out? Is it a genera- neer boots for years just because of you. So this kid on the street and put him in a movie, tional thing like leather? I don’t really see was Santa Monica Boulevard a hustler place and then when Joey got AIDS, he turned much leather anymore. at this time? against Fred and accused him of having done No, you don’t, and I think that it moves into No, no. that to him. Oh, it was very tragic, very sad. other rituals of hating. Also, Fred agreed with me entirely about S&M. What made you take your shirt off? It’s like One of my favourite things in your work is me taking my pants off and walking down He probably agreed but said, “And? What’s your refusal to attack the idea of narcissism. Fifth Avenue. the problem?” There’s a lot of that in the worlds you’ve It wasn’t even like, “I’m going to do this.” It That’s it exactly. That’s how he put it. written about, but there’s a kind of narcissism never was. I just was walking along the boule- You have morals in your writing, but your that is aware of itself. My good friend is very vard. It was very hot, and I always had my morals are more about, “Look at this right much that way. He’s one of the kindest people body oiled and everything, and that was mak- now. Look at beauty. Look at death.” You in the world, and then he makes homemade ing more heat… don’t have a big ending, generally. self-porn movies to sort of worship himself. And you were wearing like a tight, white t-shirt? Have you read The Coming of the Night? You would love this guy. Yeah, and I just took it off. No, I haven’t gotten to it yet. That’s great. I think that narcissism makes Did anybody call you out? Maybe they couldn’t That one is from the beginning of the 80s. I great human beings. really think beyond, here comes a vision was in a park in West Hollywood at night, a Do you still teach writing at the college level? down the street. place that became the site of orgies after 2 Nope. No more. But when I did I would say Yeah, none of that. Nobody even drove by AM. I was there one night, a hot night during to the students, “I’m not a teacher; I’m a A film by Andy Capper and Leo Leigh like, “Faggot!” the Santa Ana winds, and there were fires all guide. I’ve been through it and I’ll try to Coming to VBS in 2011 over the city. This kid, a young kid, a really guide you from my experience.” I don’t like Well, they wouldn’t really connect that any- beautiful young man, plastered himself naked anything arbitrary, like sitting there and say- way. Not then. against the wall of that place in the park, and ing, “That’s wrong.” I honour the writers. I No. But listen, if you look .good, people are people lined up to fuck him. I saw that, and I present a very good view of what may be going to call you a faggot.

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SATURDAY 11 DECEMBER TUESDAY 14 DECEMBER SATURDAY 18 DECEMBER THURSDAY 30 DECEMBER SLACKERS ONDRYLAND PRESENTS T-SHIRT PARTY FTWB & STREETS OF BEIGE Amp and Deck Dj The James Cleaver Quintet Live Stan Still Dj Ronojoy Dam Dj NYE WARM UP Slutty Fringe Dj &U&I Live Sweet and Sound Dj D/R/U/G/S live Tas Elias Dj Kylie Dj Tangled Hair Live DDF Dj Jon Rust Dj Martin Kemp Dj Bare Girls Dj Strong Look Dj Shoes & Socks Off Live Entry: Free Entry: Free Adrian Storry Dj Entry: Free Entry: Free MONDAY 20 DECEMBER FRIDAY 31 DECEMBER WEDNESDAY 15 DECEMBER ROUNDHOUSE 30:30 LAUNCH THE OLD BLUE LAST Lele Saveri is the photo editor of Vice Italy. And where are the photos in the zines taken? York art-book fair, I decided to use some of SUNDAY 12 DECEMBER VICE ISSUE LAUNCH Out Like a Lion Live NEW YEARS EVE HOUSE PARTY He also happens to be one of our favourite The pictures in the zines were taken every- those images. Plus the fair was in November, KILIMANJARO LIVE Necro Deathmort Live My Single Line Live Pariah Dj Girl Unit Dj photographers. We spoke to him about his where I have been in the past five or six years. the month of the dead. Sonic Boom Six Live Lasers From Atlantis Live Pocket Satellite Live No Pain in Pop Dj new trilogy of zines, horror films, and pirat- They’re mostly photographs of monsters and Do you think a photo needs to tell a story? Subsource Live Standard Planets Live Ellen and the Echo Live Skill Wizard Dj A Rebours Dj ing videos in Rome. ghosts I see (or imagine) in the street. To me a photo can be very pretty with com- Entry: £7.50 adv Vice Dj Entry: Free Entry: £8 early / £12 advance Entry: Free Vice: So, Lele. What are your new zines about? I take it you’re a big horror fan then? position, lighting, aesthetics and all that stuff, MONDAY 13 DECEMBER WEDNESDAY 22 DECEMBER FRIDAY 7 JANUARY but I come from a very documentary-based Lele Saveri: They are inspired by a trilogy of I’ve been into the horror film genre since I OLD BLUE LAST PRESENTS THURSDAY 16 DECEMBER SURF WAX AMERICA THRASH HITS PRESENT films by Lucio Fulci called Gates of Hell was ten years old, when I first watched background, so if that picture doesn’t say any- Boy Mandeville Live SNOWHITE Jumping Ships Live The Ghost of a Thousand Live which he directed between 1980 and ’81. I Profondo rosso by Dario Argento. I’m from thing, I’m often not that interested. At the Real Fur Live The Bishops Live Punktastic Dj Turbowolf Live same time, I don’t like to see a photographer’s called them Trilogia della Morte, which Rome, so for my 12th birthday I had a little Daytona Lights Live The Chutes Live Big Scary Monsters Dj Bastions Live point of view too much, like those pictures translates as Trilogy of Death. The movies day trip to his shop in town. I lived in the Entry: Free Entry: Free Entry: Free Entry: £8 are called E tu vivrai nel terrore (or The suburb and for me town was really far. that are somehow forced into a meaning, like Beyond), Paura nella citta dei morti viventi Around that time I also used to duplicate hor- a portrait of a cop with graffiti in the back- (City of the Living Dead) and Quella villa ror videos and rent the copies to my friends. ground that says “scum” or something like accanto al cimitero (The House by the I had, by then, started taking pictures of that. It’s too easy. I really like pictures that are The Old Blue Last is closed from 25 December to 27 December. Merry Christmas. Cemetery) and they kind of cover the three everything that seemed scary in any way, and more elusive, that make you wonder. key different aspects of horror movies: zom- when I got the chance to make some zines E tu vivrai nel terrore, Paura nella citta dei morti viventi For full listings visit www.theoldbluelast.com and Quella villa accanto al cimitero are out now published bies, ghosts and monsters. that Dashwood Books would sell at the New by Dashwood Books. For more, visit dashwoodbooks.com. Free Jukebox & Wi-Fi

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128 | VICE VICE | 129 Photo by Brian Lynch Sandycove, Co Dublin). /Irish Board. Courtesy of the James Joyce Museum (Joyce Tower, Tourist “Does nobody understand?” —The last words of James Joyce, spoken on his deathbed in Zurich, 1941

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