|
|
by Jim Gladstone
Marshall Moore is one of those writers who comes up out of nowhere all of a sudden and takes over the world. Or at least that's how he likes to imagine it. The Concrete Sky, described by Australian novelist Neal Drinnan as "a wild, queer, and reckless ride through the flip-side of the American dream," was published by the Southern Tier Editions imprint of Haworth Press in May 2003. Marshall's second book, a collection of short stories titled Black Shapes in a Darkened Room, is due out from Suspect Thoughts Press in fall 2004. Another dozen or so short stories have been published, are forthcoming, or have been requested. He is at work on another novel and hopes to complete the first draft by the end of 2003. He also hopes his creative momentum doesn't grind to a halt. Even if it does, he expects to keep writing, just because it's what he does, and he's kind of stubborn.
Jim Gladstone: So, you're an ex-Californian now. How's Seattle treating you?
Marshall Moore: I've been in the Northwest for just a couple months now, and it's going really well. The people here are just friendlier. I mean, there's a lot of 'friendly' in California but it's like a big "Welcome to California!" and no real follow-through. It's sort of like an obligatory friendly. I don't sense that here. It seems more genuine. It's a subtle difference, but it strikes me as a profound one. Also, the loony quotient is lower. In the Bay Area, there are more completely crazy people running around. So many people in San Francisco are just fucking nuts.
JG: You moved just before your debut novel hit the bookstores. Any regrets at not having a shot at being known as a California novelist?
MM: To be honest, I'm starting to think of myself as a southern writer. I grew up in North Carolina, and while I was writing The Concrete Sky in the Bay Area, a couple of things made me realize just how southern I am. I started to recognize the importance of family in my work. I started reading Flannery O'Connor and Carson McCullers, and the thing that killed me was that I have that same approach to telling a story, the priority I put on place and relationships with people, even if you're not with them. It took moving out west to realize that I'm a southerner.
JG: So is The Concrete Sky a southern novel?
MM: In a way it is, but I like to describe it as an offbeat literary thriller. It's loaded with references ranging from Greek mythology to Tori Amos. Ultimately, what it's really about is the sense of falling down the rabbit hole, of having bizarre things happen in your life that you have no control over. You can't let yourself be crushed by circumstances. You have to figure out how to deal with the weirdest situations. You can freak, or you can figure out how to roll with it. So here's Chad who's got this mentally unstable older brother, but it's the brother who ends up having Chad locked up in the psych ward. Still, the story doesn't boil down to a good-guy bad-guy thing. Ultimately it's not a duel between Chad and his brother. His brother's not the villain. The villain is whoever is turning the wheels of the universe, to let things like this happen.
JG: Jonathan, the perplexing little hottie who Chad falls for in the mental hospital, is also caught up in those wheels isn't he?
MM: Chad is either getting involved with someone who is a murderer, or Jonathan is innocent and is down the same rabbit hole Chad is. So Chad's completely flummoxed by what's going on. It's hard for him to get perspective. Is Jonathan just one more twisted element of Chad's rabbit hole, or has Jonathan been thrown down a rabbit hole of his own?
JG: Without giving anything away, I think its fair to say that your book is pretty much brimming over with parricidal impulses. Where's that coming from?
MM: The book isn't autobiographical, but I borrowed bits and pieces of my own life to construct the plot. I'm pretty private about my family, but it's fair to say that I came close to a lot of these things that go on in the book. My early life was one really traumatic thing after another. I definitely can relate to the impulse that arises in Chad and Jonathan to ditch one's whole identity and not have to be yourself.
JG: You and I have talked about this book throughout the publishing process. You've always described it as being dark, but I have to say that when I finally read it, there were a lot of times that I found it awfully funny. The narrative voice is soooo flippant and cynical. The book is like a wicked collision of darkness and snarkiness.
MM: Ha! I love to hear that. It means I really hit what I was going for. When things are at their worst, I sometimes like to turn them inside out and laugh at them. It's about playing the shitty hands that you're dealt. It's about pulling Scrabble tiles that are all consonants. Life is such a black comedy. Humor is one of the ways that I move my life along, and its one of the ways I move this plot along, too. Chad's mother is dying, he's way over his head in debt, his brother is a psycho, he's locked up against his own will. You laugh or you shoot yourself. And Chad's a pretty misanthropic kind of guy.
JG: And yourself?
MM: I'm not that nasty as a person, but I do have my streak. I constantly fantasize about shooting the neighbors. I think I horrify my boyfriend a few times a day because of the things I make jokes about. I don't crack jokes or write fiction just to work through my demons, but there are really unhealthy parents and a lot of dark family relations in my past. I had the kind of upbringing that leaves scars. It's what I know. I think that aspect of the novel will be familiar to people who have read my short stories; family has a huge role. I didn't have a good family experience. There was a lot of trauma, a lot of really dark, bad stuff, and it comes out.
JG: Do you think that's an endlessly mine-able vein of material?
MM: I hope so. But having recently come out of a horrific long-term quasi-relationship, I've got another source of angst to tap into. I think that there's always going to be a lot of darkness in my work: either people are getting through it, or embracing it and deciding that it's not so bad to be a monster.
JG: How was writing The Concrete Sky different for you than the experience of writing stories?
MM: Novels are like the Bataan Death March. The Concrete Sky isn't the first novel I've written, and even on this one, there were times during the writing process that I absolutely hated it. I was like "Why am I doing this? Why am I making my carpal tunnel syndrome worse for this shit?" My short stories feel like they're flowing through me, but novel writing feels like a slog through the mire. But the payoff is bigger with a novel. The sense of relief at the end is just huge.
JG: So on the whole, you'd say novels are more satisfying?
MM: Actually, in some ways, short stories are more satisfying because I can get in and get out faster. I can get a sense of completion. With a short story, usually I can see exactly where I'm going from the beginning, it comes into my head all of a piece. In fact, sometimes the hardest thing about a short story is getting my beginning set up to reach the end I have in mind. With The Concrete Sky and the new novel I'm working on, it's really very much like E.L. Doctorow describes novel writing: he says its like driving a car at night with the headlights on, and you can only see a little bit of the road at a time. You just have to hang on to the wheel and be confident that you'll end up arriving at your destination. That's a very good description of my novel writing process. Except I'd make a point of emphasizing that my car is a thirty year old VW and whenever it hits 45 miles an hour, the whole thing starts to shake!
JG: Do you remember what novels first turned you onto the idea of writing?
MM: Well, at some point when I was a kid I decided that I was ready to start reading books from the grownups section of the library. I started with Stephen King, because I'd heard of him. I remember tearing through Firestarter in one weekend and feeling really excited by it. So I ended up reading my way through King--I still read all his stuff--and I feel like I've really learned a lot from his work, in terms of structure, and character development, and especially how if you have lots of very realistic details you can keep a story grounded and believable for the reader, even if fantastic things are happening. That combination of outlandish events with realistic minutiae is something that I can see having a considerable influence on The Concrete Sky. At times, even though it doesn't touch upon the supernatural, the book gets close to being a horror novel just because the plot has such extremes.
JG: What are you reading these days?
MM: Actually, the two writers who I'm the most fascinated by lately also have a similar blend of ordinary detail and extraordinary circumstance in their work. I'm totally into Haruki Murakami. When I was finishing his book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and The End of the World, I sat in my chair babbling "Oh my God oh my God oh my God" as I read the last page. Fucking brilliant. I was wrecked in the best possible way. I loved The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, too. He centers these stories around a totally average Japanese Joe Shmoe who takes everything in stride, no matter what kind of craziness comes his way. Jonathan Carroll, who you turned me onto, does something similar with American and European characters. I recently read his latest, White Apples, which was immensely satisfying.
JG: So, I'm really psyched because we're deep into conversation about your book and neither of us has felt a pressing need to touch upon the G word. Nonetheless, we must approach it. So, tell me Marshall, how does it feel to be a part of the cocksucking literary scene?
MM: Well, like we've been discussing, The Concrete Sky is not really about sexual themes. Chad and Jonathan are both gay, but that's not what the book is about. What's a "gay book" anyway? I'm struggling to work this through for myself. I feel like I'm splitting a hair, but novels and works of fiction don't have sexual orientation, people do. When I hear something referred to as a "gay book", I assume it's got an of-by-for perspective, and that a straight reader will be excluded by some of the references. I don't think The Concrete Sky is that kind of book. These are gay characters, but they're not gay ghetto characters.
JG: Yet here we are, doing an interview for and publishing a book that is shelved as "Gay Fiction."
MM: The writer sees a ghetto, the businessman sees a niche market. It's about publishing. This is the sort of thing that happens to actors and musicians, too. You get packaged as doing a certain type of thing. And look, I appreciate the fact that I'm asked to write for gay-themed journals and gay erotic anthologies. I'm still new enough to being published that I'm blown away and flattered when someone asks.
JG: Blown is good. So, before we part, do tell what's next for Mister Moore.
MM: To be honest, at the moment, I'm bored to death writing about gay men. After I finish a couple of projects I'm working on, no more fags for a while. Well, at least no more gay erotica. I enjoy erotica; I'm good at it. But I place a lot of value on autonomy and self-definition and that's why I have issues with this gay writer thing-because I feel like it's someone else's label, not something I've chosen for myself. There are another bunch of stories I have in mind that don't have anything to do with gay sexuality, or even gay characters. I'm ready to move on and write about something different. I want to flex a different set of muscles. I'd like to have a broad audience: straight, gay, male, female, U.S. and overseas, and my interest in the sexuality of my characters is really secondary to that. I don't even always want to write about people. I've got a story I want to do about demons in Hell!
read an excerpt from The Concrete Sky at Velvet Mafia
read more of Marshall Moore's writing at his Featured Author webpage
visit the Marshall Moore website
visit the Jim Gladstone website
email Marshall Moore
The Concrete Sky: an interview with Marshall Moore
© 2003 Jim Gladstone
The work featured in this journal is under copyright protection
by the individual authors and artists and may not be duplicated
or reprinted without their permission.
|
|
