Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Books A few alphabetized questions with Jamie Iredell
Posted by Wyatt Williams @wyatt_williams on Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:00 AM
This knack for formal play should be recognizable to anyone who caught Iredell's stunning 2009 debut, Prose. Poems. A Novel., which masterfully worked explosive vignettes into the arc of a drugged and fractured coming of age novel. Iredell continues to use the short form in Freaks - rarely does one of these entries extend past a single page - but the encyclopedic structure lets his bewildering imagination range across a wealth of oddities and surprises.
We caught up with Iredell this week to ask him a few questions about the book and somehow all the questions and answers ended up in alphabetical order.
A freak needs what to be a freak?
All People, including mothers, are freaks. I'm not convinced my mother actually thinks thoughts; she responds tot he world emotionally: love, frustration, happy, drunk, sad. She rarely gets angry, only frustrated, and the last emotion is happy, which is usually most if the time. Thanks god for her because I never would've tried to write anything without her genes.
Any last words?
Azores would be a nice island chain in which to eat sausage.
Did you plan to work with this encyclopedic form and then start composing entries? Or the other way?
Far better to go the other way. The encyclopedic structure came pretty late. I was just writing stuff without thinking about what it was, how it might work for really anything, much less a book. The book then evolved out of snippets that I noticed had certain similar characteristics. Probably when I'd written a third of what you see in the book I realized that I had a project, but even then I still did not know how I might organize it. That came after I'd written almost everything. Then I revised thinking in terms of a voice that might carry through the whole book, and the encyclopedic structure/character telling each "entry" seemed right.
Gustave Flaubert v. Ambrose Bierce: who wins in arm wrestling match?
Having vanquished all other foes, Ambrose Bierce remains arm wrestling champion, defeating Andre the Giant, and everyone else in history. But, Flaubert was the better writer—at least for the English translations; I don't read French.
How long have you been writing these Freaks?
I began writing these not long after I'd finished what ended up being the final draft of my first book, Prose. Poems. a Novel. I was still in a prose poem writing mode, or phase, but I didn't have any kind of real agenda like I did with that first book. I just started thinking weird stuff and getting it down on the page. The first freaks that came out were actual freaks. In fact, I think the first one was the entry now titled "Very Fat." My wife and I had cable television at the time, and we watched an A&E show about the world's most obese human, Manuel Uribe. I was mostly interested in his girlfriend, a woman who seemed tragically sensitive, full of compassion.
Influences?
¡Inolvidable! Here are three: Russell Edson, Italo Calvino, and Barry Hannah. There are too many to mention, really, and I'd forget some and feel bad about that later. Oh well.
Is that your mullet on the cover?
I've not a clue who owns(ed) that mullet. I have had numerous a mullet in my time, though. I had one as recently as last summer. I kept it for a week to weird out my wife. I drank a lot of beer during that time. I think that mullet belongs to someone in Portland, Oregon, a place mostly devoid of mullets. But you don't have to go far outside the city before mullet invasion.
Margaritas: what's your recipe?
More tequila than anything, the remainders being triple sec and Rose's lime juice. I always worry that I'll make them too sweet, so the margaritas are very strong and they make me talk funny.
Prose. Poems. A novel. felt real. How much was real?
Psychically, I distanced myself from the me that is the speaker of Prose. Poems. a Novel. But, I've never tried to pretend that that book wasn't autobiographical. I changed things enough to where I would still call it fiction. In some stories the characters you read about weren't the actual people involved. Sometimes I combined multiple "real" people to make characters. Things that happened in one place and time take place in other places and times in the book. I changed many characters' names from their "real" names. Others I did not; their "real" names were simply too good. But everything was very real in that I experienced it. A friend and I once locked a bar owner out of his own bar and the same night we found a guy who'd been stabbed. I broke my leg when a pal threw me off a balcony. A neighbor had a tackle box filled with drugs. I just talked to Bob on the phone yesterday. He still loves killing shit.
Would you call your mother a freak?
Wow. See "All People" (above).
The Book of Freaks by Jamie Iredell. Future Tense Books. $11. 133 pp
Jamie Iredell and Blake Butler read at the Highland Inn Ballroom, accompanied by performances by WIC, DJs Tom and Rusty, and others, on Friday, May 27. The party runs from 8:30 pm until 2:00 am. More details at Facebook.
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