Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (29 page)

Turn the tape off. [Break] … instead of is it true or not? You don’t even have to—I mean, just go, it’s in like the first twenty pages.
The Screwtape Letters
is really—it’s weird cause it’s a very
childlike
, simple book. But Lewis is incredibly smart.

And it’s, it’s weird, it’s one of the things I noticed, I don’t notice that you argue by analogy or whatever. But it’s like, if somebody
will say something to you, your reaction is very often to quote a line
similar
to it. Or to talk about whether that’s—whether that’s a good
line
or not. And I think the reason why it doesn’t
irritate
me, but I feel it and I notice it, is that there’s a similar component in me. It’s a writerly type thing.

But I guess my only justification for saying this to you is that I’m like, I’m really—there’s something else. There’s something else besides that. There’s also this, is it
true
or not. That, does it feel true, does it taste true? And like whether it’s
clever
, or whether, whether it’s well said, or whether it’s
fresh
or not, is only part of it. It’s like—ah, I don’t know. It’s … I can’t quite nail down just what I’m saying.

I think you would find that book
intensely
interesting. ’Cause it’s weird, I read it for the first time when I was thirty. I swear to God, I’ll read Renata Adler and Nabokov’s letters if you will check that out. I think you’d really like it.

[The tape side runs out.]

[Big build; big build plus bandanna. Like he’s going to ask you to play Hacky Sack, and if you say no he could be willing to beat you up.]

Part of social strategy. There’s still something basically false about your approach here. To some degree. Which is this: that I think you still feel you’re smarter than other people. And you’re acting like someone—you’re
acting like someone who’s about thirty-one or thirty-two, who’s playing in the kid’s softball game, and is trying to hold back his power hitting, to check his swing at the plate, more or less
.

You mean in the book?

No, I mean in your social persona. And you’re someone who’s really trying—

You’re a tough room.

You make a point of holding back—there’s a point, there’s something obvious about you somehow in a gentle way holding back what you’re aware of as your intelligence to be with people who are somehow younger or …

Boy, that would make me a real asshole, wouldn’t it?

[He’s driving.]

No it wouldn’t: It would make you a reformed person …

The parts of me that used to think I was different or smarter or whatever, almost made me die.

I understand that
.

[What he has also is a Midwesterner’s shy unwillingness about standing out.]

And I think it’s also, like, I think one of the true ways that I’ve gotten smarter is, I’ve realized that I’m not that much smarter than other people. Or that there are ways in which other people are a lot smarter than me. And uh,
boy:
but I am, like especially in Minneapolis, with like you and Julie and Betsy, there was no act going
on. There was one part of me holdin’ back. Makin’ real sure I didn’t say catty shit about anybody like public, that you might write down. Or that if I asked Betsy or Julie personal shit that you might … and that was like
it
. And part of it is I was just so tired.

But it, uh—I don’t know, it makes me feel kinda lonely that you think, that you think that I … In a weird way, it’s sort of like the lady from the Letterman show talking to her husband. [His story “My Appearance.”] Like there’s been certain stuff that I’ve told you that’s really true, and it’s been
brave
of me. Because if you want—and it’s also a gesture of trust, because if you
want
—I’ve written enough of these things, and I’m a good enough writer to know, that you could present that in a hundred ways. Ninety of which I’m really gonna come off as an asshole. But it seems like your read of them is, “Huh: what an
interesting
persona Dave is adopting for the purposes of this interview.” And it’s really just like,
uh
. There’s a couple of times I’ve tried to do it a little bit. And it seems like you’ve caught me every time, and then we’ve both just laughed. I forget what it was, but … [Flirting]

I think there are different people on the page than in real life. I do six to eight drafts of everything that I do. Um, I am probably not the smartest writer going. But I also—and I know, OK, this is gonna fit right into the persona—I work really really hard. I’m really—you give me twenty-four hours? If we’d done this interview through the mail? I could be really really really smart. I’m not all that
fast
. And I’m really self-conscious. And I get confused really easily. When I’m in a room by myself alone, and have enough time, I can be really really smart. And people are different that way. You know what I mean? I may not—I don’t think I’m quite as smart, one-on-one, with people, when I’m self-conscious, and I’m really really confused. And it’s why like, My dream would be for you to write this up, and then to send it to me, and I get to rewrite all my quotes to you. Which of course you’ll never do …

So yeah, I think I’m bright, and I think I’m talented. But I also know enough, like … it’s one reason I’m uneasy about these interviews.
Is, I know that I’m a lot more talented alone, when I’ve got time. Than I am in the back and forth of this.

Although I’m not an idiot. I mean I know, you know, I mean I can talk intelligently with you and stuff. But I can’t quite keep up with you. [Patronizing? Flattering?] Whereas if we did it through the mail, and I had access to a library, and I could go look up the stuff you’re talking to. That you and I would be equals. And that’s as clear and honest an explanation as I can give.

[Maybe just painfully, humanly honest.

Later. We’re quiet.]

It’s not just “aw-shucks, I’m just in from the country, I’m not really a writer, I’m just a regular guy.” I’m not trying to lay some kind of shit. And I’m—

But you just did it again. You just laid it on me, I mean …

[We turn off the tape. He asks me to stop talking. David’s driving. I start to mumble-sing R.E.M. to myself, it’s so dark I forget I’m not alone. Then I’m embarrassed, and look over, and David is mumble-singing too, and we head down the road in the front of the car.]

[This is hello to the dogs. The dogs go crazy when Dave steps in. He kneels on the ground: they go after him like the boy in my dad’s old ad. Nudging, licking, batting, sniffing.]

(Elvis voice) I’m never leaving you again, baby. I swear, I swear.

[Looks around, a little rug check, some dog staining.]

(To dogs) Nothing wrong with a little shit on the floor, you guys. Happens to the best of us, hey guys?

[Can hear ice flow in the pipes, he says. He bangs around house, checking the pipes. He runs the water out, to stop icing and cracking.

“L.A. Times
called” … on notepaper.

“What do you know about yarn?” he asks me. I turn out not to know a thing about yarn.

We walk dogs down street; empty, soft breezes, street iced, long views. David with hands in pockets. We’re waiting on Drone’s and Jeeves’s pleasure.]

You get instantaneous production from the Jeevester. Drone’s a much tougher nut.

[On the neighborhood] People burn leaves when they want to, there’s a slaughterhouse close by, it’s kind of a savage area. There’s a couple trailer parks around.

[Looks for mail in box.
DFW
, the box says.]

Peeing in the snow, that’s a good thing. [We’re heading back inside; still feels weird in the legs and under the sneakers to walk, after such a long time in the car.] Now I’ve just gotta clean up some shit. That I can handle, cleaning up shit. God, it’s good to be home. Nothing like a little excremental work …

[Hears voice on tape: I’m checking the last one, to see where we left off.]

God, is that what my voice sounds like?

[Tennis case: Trophies. Unpacking. His beat-up shaving case.

Like many men who live alone, has a toilet seat in the upright position in the bathroom. The toilet seat is padded.]

I should check my e-mail. Can I …?

My phone line is your phone line. My fridge is your fridge. My spare blanket is your spare blanket.

[I say this, and then am sort of embarrassed, as we aren’t going to do an e-mail interview. I remember our earlier e-mail conversation, when I first arrived. His reason for not having a modem in house. David: “If I can get out, they can get in.” No info re who they might be.

Cans of pop by the case. Lots of vitamins on the trip.]

I end up drinking ten or twelve Diet Rites a day, and end up leaving ’em around—I used to drink Diet Cokes, but then a friend said that there was enormous amounts of
salt
in it. And that it actually made you thirstier, so I switched over to this. Which to me is a bit thin and overcarbonated, but at least it doesn’t make you—[Funny, he pounds them. Two six-packs a day.]

[But he thinks he ought to just accept that his intake is massive and start buying in quantity, instead of multitrip days.]

I should buy six cases, as opposed to just buying one and constantly running out. I leave ’em around, can’t tell which ones are fresh and which ones aren’t.

[Tells me he read
Lord of the Rings
five times as a teenager.

Gets an idea, walks to the kitchen. “The cookies we bought the first night are still in there.”]

You loved Tolkien. Is it a pleasure to have written a book long enough so readers can lose themselves in your world, same way you did in Tolkien’s?

I think it’s different though. ’Cause this is a harder book, and it’s more in
chunks
. I mean, the thing about Tolkien is, it’s a very long linear narrative, where you feel like you yourself are on a voyage. And this is much more …

But on the Web boards I’ve visited, people
do
speak about it as if entering a different world …

That would be very neat.

[We’re chewing the chilly cookies, from a plastic take-out container. Jeeves pads over and drops down directly on the carpet in front of us.]

[About Jeeves] You see, Jeeves gets very obedient when there’s food around. You sit, Drone. You know, it should be clear by now that you’re not getting any of this.
Good
dog.

[I ask him what he listened to when writing the novel.]

In Syracuse, I didn’t listen to anything, because I didn’t have a tape player. But when I was here, I was listening to Nirvana, because a grad student gave me that. And then this woman named Enya, who’s Scottish.

[David pulls his tapes out, fires up the stereo, sits on the floor. First he plays is Bush. “Glycerine” does come from the Brian Eno song, as he demonstrates. Dave is singing along.]

The song is “The Big Ship;” it’s off an album called
Another Green World
.

You researched for about a year and a half and then you wrote for about another year and half?

Nah, I think I started researching this thing—there’s a real funny
thing, I don’t know, did you read Sven Birkert’s thing? Sven had this whole argument about how, he went back and read this
Harper’s
thing that had names of characters in it, and there was clear evidence that the tennis stuff in the book was autobiographical. I can’t understand why Sven would make a mistake of that size
…

Let’s go back. You saw your name on the Esquire rising-star “Guide to the Literary Universe” thing in
’
87
.

So that was the summer at Yaddo. And that was also the summer that I—it was an interesting summer, because I wrote the first half of this novella called “Westward,” which was a big deal for me. Anyway, I wrote the first half of that, and then went down to New York for this abortive
Us
magazine shoot, that’s where I got to meet the fabled Tama Janowitz. And then like walked out of the shoot, it was just a terrible thing, ended up spending the night at a friend’s house near Washington Square.

And my car got broken into. And the half of the thing was just all handwritten. The first half was real different. The trunk got broken into, it got stolen. It was really funny, because they clearly took this airline bag out, looked through it, and then threw it away. And I
found
actually the bag in a Dumpster, about two blocks away. The thing was gone. And I figured they used it to, I don’t know, light their crack pipes with or something.

So then I’m in terrible—anyway, so I go back to Yaddo, I rewrite that thing. And then for the next two months was like typin’ that manuscript, gettin’ it ready. And then, when I was at Yaddo, I got a job. I got an offer to teach for one semester at the university which I’d just graduated from. So that fall I go and I live at Amherst and I teach. Very bizarre, because there were students in that class who’d been in classes with me as a student, when I was, like, a senior and they were freshmen.

Weird
.

It was very weird. And then what all happened?

Wait—how is that possible? Had they taken time off?

No—I graduated in spring of ’85 and taught there fall of ’87. So one year had passed.

No, two
.

Yeah. So they would have been freshman my last year and now they were first semester seniors.

When you were walking around looking for your bag, were you thinking, Fuck, this is what happens when I get big ideas about myself and do press appearances? Symbolic in a way
.

God, no—all I could think of was: I mean, I’d spent three months writing the first half. And it’s weird, I went back to Yaddo, and wrote a first draft of the whole thing in, like, a week. No, I don’t think … I don’t think I
read
my life very effectively then.