Category / Bat Segundo

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Eric Kraft, Part Three

Eric Kraft appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #270.

Eric Kraft is most recently the author of Flying. This is the third of a three part conversation with Kraft about all of his Peter Leroy books, an epic of more than a million words which Our Young Roving Correspondent was insane enough to read. These podcasts tie in with a roundtable discussion of Flying involving numerous people.

(To listen to Part One of this conversation, go here. To listen to Part Two of this conversation, go here.)

segundo270

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Contemplating the stamina of listeners.

Author: Eric Kraft

Subjects Discussed: Writing about a location when not being at that location, intermittently returning to Babylon to absorb some details for Babbington, the limitations of revisiting place, having too many facts at one’s disposal, mysterious dark-haired girls, Peter Leroy’s muses, the gradual augmentation of swagger, seducing the audience, misheard literalisms, whether or not a meal has feelings, Boston Phoenix restaurant critic Robert Nadeau and B.W. Beath, the “warm and cuddly” label attached to Kraft’s work, perverse impulses and the telling of the tale, the source of the odd smell in Matthew’s apartment in Reservations Recommended, Kraft’s delivery of a letter to Jean Shepherd and a subsequent radio show based around that letter, dwelling more on the recent present, going to towns that have interesting names, Leroy’s influence on the memories of Kraft’s friends, efforts to make Kraft a famous writer, the effect that Random House’s purchase of Crown had on Kraft’s books, making a big score with a commercial book, dealings with Amblin, writing the Inflating a Dog screenplay, Donald M. Murray’s My Twice-Lived Life, the relationship of socks to a writer’s output, Madeline’s position on mismatched socks, self-congratulation and repetition, how to become an experienced tequila drinker, the semantics of “cult audience,” whether or not Kraft gets bags of cash in the mail, caring about an audience, the jokes that the Krafts wish they heard in bars, waiting for the dialogue to come, being in control, and the burden of holding onto scraps.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

erickraftCorrespondent: Has it ever occurred to you to try and make a big score in terms of writing a completely commercial book? In an effort to get people attached into the Peter Leroy universe? Or is such a thing absolutely impossible? Or did you, in fact, try to do this and it turned out to be so quirky and eccentric?

Kraft: (laughs)

Correspondent: I’m just curious.

Kraft: Where is it? I’ve forgotten which book it is.

Correspondent: Oh yeah. One of the books where there’s the publishing meeting. I think it’s the first one in Manhattan.

Kraft: It’s in Leaving Small’s Hotel, where Peter’s publishers want him to add more blood and gore to the Larry Peters series. And he can’t do it. It doesn’t work out that way. He keeps turning in quirky Larry Peters stories. And I’m much the same way. I don’t think I could possibly do it. I haven’t bothered wasting my time trying to do it. And the other way I’ve managed to shoot myself in the foot so very well is in the matter of film sales. When Herb ‘N’ Lorna was released and was reviewed on the front page of The New York Times, I got a call almost the next day from Amblin — Steven Spielberg’s company. And I spoke with people there. And we had a number of interesting conversations. And I think perhaps, in the second or third phone call, I said, “Of course, the one thing that’s of great concern to me is that, because I have plans for all of these characters, there are many, many other things I want to do with them. I would have to retain control of the characters.” There was a silence. And essentially after that, a click!

Correspondent: (laughs) Oh my god.

Kraft: It wasn’t quite like that. But it was almost like that. That the matter was at an end.

Correspondent: Wow.

Kraft: And there have been other little explorations from Hollywood and so on. And I’ve basically said the same thing. However, now that I’ve brought the characters along as far as I have, I’m ready. So…

Correspondent: Well, this makes me curious about a parallel universe in which you would open up a Happy Meal and get a piece of erotic jewelry. That would be very good for America, I think.

Kraft: I think that the marketing rights are something we’d really have to — yeah.

Correspondent: But simultaneously…

Kraft: And Leroy Lager, I think, would be launched as well. A poem on the back of each bottle.

Correspondent: Simultaneously, you did write a screenplay for Inflating a Dog.

Kraft: I did.

Correspondent: So you were actually trying to have a big score here. Or at least some sort of film out of the deal.

Kraft: Actually, that was a time when there was no work for us in educational publishing. I couldn’t find any work at all. And I had a lot of time on my hands. And I was thinking, “What can I do that might bring in some cash?” So there were two things that seemed to me like brilliant ideas. Write a screenplay based on Inflating a Dog. And approach Eli Zabar about turning the shopping experience at the Vinegar Factory into something like a treasure hunt, where I would write descriptions of the foods that would lead people from one thing to another.

Correspondent: (laughs) It would confuse them.

Kraft: An astonishing day would be Eli Zabar whizzing around town from one shop to another. But he almost liked the idea.

BSS #270: Eric Kraft, Part Three (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Eric Kraft, Part Two

Eric Kraft appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #269.

Eric Kraft is most recently the author of Flying. This is the second of a three part conversation with Kraft about all of his Peter Leroy books, an epic of more than a million words which Our Young Roving Correspondent was insane enough to read. These podcasts tie in with a roundtable discussion of Flying involving numerous people.

(To listen to Part One of this conversation, go here. To listen to Part Three of this conversation, go here.)

segundo269

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Astonished by the celerity of interlocutor and author.

Author: Eric Kraft

Subjects Discussed: The notion of roles in the Peter Leroy books, King Lear, Peter Leroy’s alternative universe, the Muddleheaded Dreamers Motorcycles Club, Marlon Brando, the halfway house between the real world and the imaginary world, geek swagger, adjusting to contemporary folkways when writing about the 1950s, whether truth is findable within limitations, the old definitions of novel, Herman Melville, Pandora in the Congo, Perry Melville’s The Raven and the Whale, increased emphasis on formalist structure in the Leroy books, borrowing structures from other books, Raskol vs. Raskolnikov, being informed by other literary work, Don Quixote, on not knowing narrative details in advance, the risk of losing spontaneity, writing in the predawn hours, martinis at 5:00 PM, the North American Proust Society, the concern for construction in the Leroy books, Peter and Albertine shifting from hotel proprietors to hotel occupants, having twenty titles for future books, the Peter Leroy books on CD-ROM, uphill battles with publishers, why the Leroy books went out-of-print, cross-references and hyperlinks, the epidemic of vidiocy, Kraft’s changing views on online annotation, and the future of the book.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

erickraftKraft: Peter’s alternative universe at the time of Flying is located at something like 1960 in our universe and in our America. And at that time, the definition of the roles available to a boy his age were quite rigid. And the number of options was quite narrow. Things were not as fluid, certainly as they are now. And that’s one of the things. When I put myself back in the time from my life that was going to have to serve as the basis for Peter’s, it was something that I reacted against and found laughably limiting. At the time, it was frustrating and annoying. But now, from distance, in how much has happened and how many more options are open to a boy like Peter, it seemed laughable. And so it became essentially laughable. But you know, a lot of those roles were defined not directly, but by various cultural artifacts. You mentioned the MDMC — the Muddle-Headed Motorcyclists Club — and Johnny is the leader of that. Well, Johnny — the portrait of Johnny when you first see him — is exactly Marlon Brando in The Wild Bunch. I mean, there he is. With the same sort of cab driver’s cap and so on. So I very deliberately littered the ground with these references to the kind of cultural role-defining models that existed at that time.

Correspondent: But the MDMC is something of a halfway house between the real world and the imaginary world. It’s almost as if a swagger, which is a big component of this particular book, is something that is presented as an almost alternative form of swagger. I would call it “geek swagger,” which has come an increasingly acceptable notion in contemporary culture. But it also brings to mind what you just described in your answer. And that is you’re writing from your own memories filtered through Peter Leroy, and you’re writing from a time in which folkways are different, mores are different. The way in which we accept things are different. So is the artificial universe the way to find this halfway house? Similar to the MDMC? In order to create a “true” narrative? What’s the situation here?

Kraft: Well, this is the question I’m constantly asking myself. I know that there is an essential truth running through these books somewhere. If I could only find it. (laughs) There’s a time where I thought I was directly heading for it. That I knew it would be something that lay between Peter’s world and my world. And that I probably had a much better chance of success at displaying it if I focused on Peter’s world. Because mine would be an attempt at an honest memoir. And it’s impossible to write an honest memoir. It’s impossible to write a true memoir. As you said, every perception is a misperception to begin with. And from there, it just becomes more and more of a distortion. Can’t be done. However, if you work on the reflection instead, you may be able to adequately suggest the truth of the underlying facts. But finding them is the work of the reader. So because I’m so involved with this, I can no longer quite tell whether that truth is findable, is discoverable. I hope it is. And one aspect of it is, for example, this limiting effect of the roles that society was forcing on people back then. You saw it. So it was there.

Correspondent: Sure. But simultaneously, I might also counterargue that, because the form of this book is different from most novels, that truth, that verisimilitude, really shouldn’t matter so much. So, in a sense, you are both looking for the truth while also redefining what the truth is. And I’m wondering. This must create a dilemma for you when you’re writing any of these particular books. How do you go in and set yourself straight? This is the real I know, and this is the imaginary. We can go Lacan on this.

Kraft: This is a delicious dilemma. This is part of the pleasure of making the books. And I hope it’s part of the pleasure that the reader takes from them. The way I play with verisimilitude is, I hope, a way of scattering treats for the reader. I think it’s what I call absurd verisimilitude. Let’s drop back a bit. Here we are in Edgar’s Cafe. Well, at the time of Poe and Melville, the word “novel” was not what we use it for now. A novel was a true account. A novel would be what we call a memoir today. When Melville wrote Typee, he announced, “This was a novel. It’s all true! It all happened to me!” The opposing form — what we would have in opposition to memoir now is a novel. What was in opposition to a novel was a romance. And what made a romance succeed was not so much the flights of fancy in it, but what at the time people called resemblance. Verisimilitude essentially. Achieved primarily through accumulation of minute detail. Well, that’s what I do. There’s accumulation of minute detail. But my details, I hope, are details that lead the reader to say, “But this is preposterous!” Sometimes, if it works really well, there’s a time when the reader says, “Yeah, yeah, this is real,” and then has that “couldn’t possibly be.” One of the most rewarding moments was at a book club when I was talking with people about Herb ‘N’ Lorna. And after all discussion was over, and we were having coffee and pastries, a woman said, “I just have to confess something. Because this is really hard for me to admit this. But until about ten minutes into your talk, I thought this was all real. I thought this was a biography of two people.” So that was success.

BSS #269: Eric Kraft, Part Two (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Eric Kraft, Part One

Eric Kraft appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #268.

Eric Kraft is most recently the author of Flying. This is the first of a three part conversation with Kraft about all of his Peter Leroy books, an epic of more than a million words which Our Young Roving Correspondent was insane enough to read. These podcasts tie in with a roundtable discussion of Flying involving numerous people.

(To listen to Part Two of this conversation, go here. To listen to Part Three of this conversation, go here.)

segundo268

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Searching for his alter ego.

Author: Eric Kraft

Subjects Discussed: The relationship between Kraft & Leroy, reexamining and reimagining biographical details through a fictional hero, MTV and the 1950s, acts of liberation and the shared mind, the Larry Peters books and the gaps between the chapters, references to other books, the love affair between Peter and Albertine, the stewardess and the dark-haired lady, alter egos, Matthew Barber and B.W. Beath, the many twins throughout the Leroy books, being taken back to an earlier conception of the work, Mark Dorset, characters who knock on the doors, Porky White, aerocycles that does not fly, being able to talk with machines, the burdens of memories and stories being tinkered with, aging and dreaming, memories that trigger events, whether misrepresented representations can be defended, maternal grandmothers and erotic jewelry, the importance of digressing, whether every dreamer needs a muse, Albertine as an enabler, exploring the possibility that Albertine doesn’t exist, strangers vs. maps, Phileas Fogg, the conflict between living life and getting it written down, finding the humor in losing people, “printing the legend” while taking a stance for truth, dogboarding accidents, life as “the first draft of memoirs,” and auditors vs. readers.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Peter sets up this journey early on. He includes a helpful explanation and a chart that indicates his need to digress. He writes, “To digress, you must begin by traveling a route that will get you where you intend to go. You must have a goal and a plan for achieving it in order to depart from it. You cannot digress from the right path unless you are already on it.” And yet Peter does acquire a number of maps obtained from gas stations. He then tapes this up on the wall. And then he decides to do away with these maps. And he writes, “Having no map forced me to ask directions of strangers, and along the way I learned that doing so leads to fascinating exchanges, exchanges that are, more often than not, useless, but fascinating nonetheless.” But then, he writes that if he has to take his journey all over again, well, he would do so without a map. Because he’s decided in hindsight that maps are more trustworthy than the advice of strangers. So it seems to me that there’s a conflict going on here. Almost a tragic conflict. Because on one hand, he wants to digress. He wants to meet these particular strangers. On the other hand, if he had to do it again, he would do it through this kind of topographical thrust. And he becomes just as trapped by living on that particular structure and avoiding the digression, if he goes that particular route. So what of this notion of revisiting a possibility in hindsight like this? When Peter buys the candy bars also, it’s Albertine who comes up to the clerk and expresses the magic of receipts. And it’s a wonderful little passage. But this leads me to wonder if Albertine is something of an enabler so that Peter can occupy this disparity between what he did in this past (allegedly) and what he’s coming to terms with in the present, which might also be further tinkering as well.

erickraftKraft: Yes.

Correspondent: And what he insists he would do now if he had that particular chance again. I mean, could Peter even function without her?

Kraft: (laughs) No!

Correspondent: I’m wondering though if it’s your suggestion that every dreamer along these lines needs a muse? I know that’s a lot to throw at you. But go for it.

Kraft: Yeah. An enabler certainly she is, and muse she certainly is. She also grounds him. In the best sense. In ensuring that if his head is in the clouds, then his feet are somewhere near the ground at least. And she, at the same time, encourages him. She establishes for him a space within which he will be free to let his imagination roam. He wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything much in this life without her. Clearly, when he was a boy before they met, he attempted many things. Nearly none of them ever worked out as he hoped they would. Or even worked out at all. And that’s a pattern that is extended into his mature — can we dare to call him mature? Into his later life anyway. But Albertine, she smiles lovingly at his quirks and follies and the strange things that she tries to do. But she’s also there to say, “Peter, it’s time to calm down, sit down, and look at this rationally.”

Correspondent: But simultaneously, one might also consider that Albertine may also be a figment of his imagination. Certainly that’s what I thought.

Kraft: How dare you! (laughs)

Correspondent: Well, I’m telling you. You’ve been holding back on this whole meetup between her and Peter!

Kraft: You’ve found something that hardly anyone has even dared to suggest. But I have asked myself several times whether that could be the case. I’ll just ask the question. I don’t have an answer for this yet. Is Albertine Peter’s way of keeping himself under control to a degree? I don’t know yet.

Correspondent: It’s certainly possible.

Kraft: I don’t know if I want to explore that much more, but it’s certainly possible.

Correspondent: But since he is in the process of concocting composite characters like Raskol, his childhood friend, since Matthew Barber is fictive sometimes and possibly real in some sense, and since you have constantly avoided the question of how he met Albertine, this is why…

Kraft: Although, that’s coming up!

Correspondent: I know that’s coming up. I know you’ve settled that.

Kraft: But even if you read it, you’ll still be asking yourself whether he might not have concocted this. And I’ll be asking myself too.

BSS #268: Eric Kraft, Part One (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Charlie Huston II

Charlie Huston appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #267.

Charlie Huston is most recently the author of The Mystic Arts of Erasing All Signs of Death. To listen to our previous interview with Mr. Huston, check out The Bat Segundo Show #98.

segundo267

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Looking for an efficient and affordable cleanup service.

Author: Charlie Huston

Subjects Discussed: Huston’s concern for locative detail, unusual sentence structures, sequential details within sentences, the run-on sentence in relation to narrative action, the burdens of writing novels quickly, rhythm and alternating sentences, whether or not the word “motherfucker” haunts Huston in his dreams, sentences repeating and following a character demand, getting across pace without having characters describe the pace, working over sequences amidst restrictive writing conditions, pushing the story forward with aggression, trying to steer around cliches, being subconsciously funny with the books, the burden of the Joe Pitt books, masturbating on the page, avoiding violence directed at dogs in the most recent books, consciously playing down the violence, on “going soft,” slipping into habit, the typographical dash mistake in Mystic Arts, on whether John Wayne is the standard for the roundhouse haymaker, why almonds were chosen over pecans, agricultural hijacking, cockroaches, transcribed speech and fey okays, the culinary horrors of Slim Jims, and conducting research.

VIDEO CLIP:

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

hustonHuston: Sometimes, if you use the same words, you can put a little tinkle of irony into it. In the fact that you describe him doing it exactly the way the person just told him. So you use the exact same words. It’s hard for me to answer questions about the writing that are that precise. Because so much of the process is not that precise for me. So much of it is shoveling. And you’re not too terribly conscious of how you shovel while you’re doing it. Whether you’re good at it or not.

Correspondent: But you just confessed to me that the “heartbeat” sequence was worked over. I mean…

Huston: That one, yes, absolutely. But in general, I’m saying. Like if you’re asking general questions about the way I use rhythm and use repetitions and stuff, I can draw out an example like that. Where it was very specific and where I had very particular goals that I’m articulating now with much more depth than I ever articulated to myself at the time. But in terms of being able to generally say why those rhythms appeal to me, why I use them, I don’t know. I’m kind of making it up right now the same way I’m making it up as I write it. Well, I think it works like this. But does it? That’s kind of where I am with that stuff.

Correspondent: Yeah. But this is interesting to me because you have such restrictive deadlines. And here you are working over a specific sequence. This is why I’m kind of interested in how you’re developing your rhythm, even with these constrictive conditions.

Huston: And that may also just be part of it. You know, some of those things. You know, Ed, I just don’t know, man. I mean, that’s really the bottom line. I don’t know how far I can penetrate into this and have it not just be bullshit at a certain point. I mean, it’s just coming out that way. It’s just coming out that way. And I don’t know if the time frame has as much to do with it. The time frame tends to play more into things that slip through the crack that might be messy. Like that long sentence that you had. And how it’s a combination of “I find myself making connections that I might not otherwise make because I’m writing clip clip clip” and also a situation in which “I find myself writing sloppy things that I might otherwise clean up if I had more time.” The time constriction tends to manifest itself more in pushing the story forward very aggressively. In sometimes making choices that, fifty pages later, I wish I hadn’t made. Because there were implications I hadn’t considered, but with enough time to go back and unchoose that choice. So I have to do some more tap dancing to make it all work. And it also plays a large role in the extent to which I will more willingly embrace some genre conventions and cliches that I might otherwise try to find ways to steer around if I had a little more time.

(Photo credit: Mary Reagan)

BSS #267: Charlie Huston II (Download MP3)

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by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Catherynne M. Valente

Catherynne M. Valente appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #266.

Catherynne M. Valente is most recently the author of Palimpsest.

segundo266

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Looking for a way into a secret city.

Author: Catherynne M. Valente

Subjects Discussed: Writing a novel with four character perspectives, how structure influences perspective, the importance of numbers, color theory, thriving on restriction, Neal Stephenson, the importance of flow and reading out loud, Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, synesthesia, the purpose of puns, being a child of the Internet generation, Italo Calvino and the literature of the new millennium, planning a book entirely in one’s head, PersonalBrain, on not outlining a novel, having semiotics for breakfast, writers with kinks, multiple topographies within Palimpsest, perceptions of New York, the individual relationship to a city in relation to one’s individual sensibilities, genre classification, New New Weird and mythpunk, thinking while doing other things, the factors that cause Valente to write very fast, fighting the forces of marketability, chick lit, a future project involving the myth of Prester John, the problems with accessibility, the addiction to story, geek outreach and the publishing industry, Lev Grossman’s article, the communal experience, novel patches, the book as a permanent medium, secretive networks, the Kindle and the Sony eReader, Cory Doctorow, the bridge between print and online, Eric Kraft, and the signal-to-noise ratio in e-books.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

valenteCorrespondent: Which number is your favorite? Or maybe one of your five favorite numbers?

Valente: Oh, my favorite number!

Correspondent: Do you do this on a single digit scenario?

Valente: I’m going to have to go with seven.

Correspondent: Seven!

Valente: Actually, a little girl came to one of my Orphan’s Tales readings. She came up to me after and said, “Why are there all those sevens in your book?” And I love seven. It’s a prime number. And it’s a typically mystical number. And it’s fascinating to me. But I almost never use it in structure. Because it doesn’t fit very well. It’s kind of an ornery number that way, which, I suppose, is why I’m attracted to it. Because I’m kind of ornery myself.

Correspondent: Well, you know, Neal Stephenson told me that seven was the ideal number of guests at a dinner table.

Valente: Oh, wow. I hadn’t thought about that.

Correspondent: What are the applications of seven? Not just to your fiction, but also to your general life?

Valente: Well, I guess it’s the number that I don’t use though. Seven is a number that doesn’t occur in nature very often. There aren’t too many seven-leafed or seven-petaled plants. That is why it’s a mystical number. Because it exists outside of the world. And so I don’t actually use it all that much. When I’m arranging things, I go with three. I go with four a tremendous amount. Of course, four is a very thorny number in Eastern culture. Because there’s four noble truths. But four also means death in Chinese and Japanese. And so they will often, much as our number thirteen, consider it unlucky, remove it from hotel rooms, and things like that. But I love the number four. I love the number eight. But seven is the number apart. So I use it in fairy tales all the time in terms of time. Seven days, seven years, seven months. There’s a character named Seven in The Orphan’s Tales. And that particular character deals with coins that have a seven-pointed star on them. But seven, I love, because it’s weird.

Correspondent: What’s your position on The Magnificent Seven or The Seven Samurai?

Valente: Well, of course, those come from Seven Against Thebes! Which is a wonderful ancient Greek play. I’m a classicist. So I always go straight back to that. And, of course, Seven Against Thebes comes from the seven dragon teeth that Cadmus planted in the earth. Yeah. Seven’s great.

(Photo credit: Ellen Datlow)

BSS #266: Catherynne M. Valente (Download MP3)

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