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We were excited by the opportunity to publish I., and it's been great to see all sorts of new people discovering Stephen Dixon's work. Readers have been sending us questions about the book and the author, many of which we were wondering ourselves, and so we decided to get some answers. Usually, the first questions are from readers, and the follow-ups are from me. Dixon does not use email, so this interview was conducted over the phone. We tried to work in as many of your questions as we could; unfortunately, we sometimes get flustered, even when talking to someone as friendly and helpful as Stephen Dixon, and so some may have been botched or overlooked. Thank you to everyone who wrote. — Eli Horowitz, managing editor, McSweeney's - - - - Q: The first question is from Helsinki — the email-writer's name involves umlauts. She's wondering whether you want readers hearing your voice, your real voice. The style and plot of I. raises these questions. A: Well, it's not really my voice, it's just a voice that I've created. Q: Do you specifically try to hide your real voice? How much of yourself comes through in your writing? A: Well, a lot of my real voice comes though. But if you met me, you wouldn't say, "Oh, I know you through your writing…" although people have actually said that. Maybe there's more of my voice in my writing than I know. People always talk about the autobiographical nature of the book. I don't invite it, but I guess it's inevitable. You know, my wife is confined to a wheelchair, and I write about it. I do have two daughters, and I've been writing about them since 1985. And it seems like all my characters only have two daughters. Some stories take place in Maryland. I guess it's because that's what I know best. - - - - Q: A reader from Toronto wants to know how long you've been living in Baltimore. A: Since 1980, so this will be the twenty-second year. Q: For a lot of people from Baltimore — John Waters, Anne Tyler — the city seems to really shape their work. Do you feel like it's had a big effect on you? A: No, no. New York is a city that's influenced me. We had two residences up until last May. We maintained an apartment in New York City, but we were evicted, because we weren't living there enough. But if I have any voice, it's a New York voice, and if I have any geography, it's a New York geography. Most of my pieces, they take place in New York, they take place in Maryland, and they take place in Maine, the three places that I reside in most. But Baltimore has had no effect on me. I wouldn't even try to write about Baltimore, it's just not in my bones. I mean, geography has always followed me in my fiction. One time I was writing about a little house that we had in Baltimore, that became Frog, and then we moved on to the house I live in now, and I've been writing about that house ever since. - - - - Q: A reader from Brooklyn asks: You've written twenty-three books. Can you remember them all? Do you have favorites? A: Yes, I can remember every single one of them. It's a little more difficult to remember all the stories, but if I look at the title of a story, I know exactly what the story is. I even know how I started the story, what made me write it, the incentive and so on. But I remember all my work. The ones that are my favorites are the ones where I felt I made a breakthrough in my fiction, when I did something that I had never done. Q: Which are some of those? A: Well, for instance, "Milk Is Very Good For You", which went into a big collection of stories. "Time To Go" is another one where I felt like I had done something new. There's a story called "Dan," which was something of a forerunner for the kinds of novels that I started to write. Stories like that, or "Eating the Placenta," a very funny story, but stories where I did something that I hadn't done before, either in plot, style, structure. Those are the ones that are most memorable. - - - - Q: This is from Eric Kraai of Huntsville, North Carolina. He writes, "My grandparents, Floyd and Winnie Kraai of Holland, Michigan named their youngest son (my Uncle Frank) after Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His given name is Franklin Delano Kraai. He was born on or near FDR's birthday. My grandpa was a bricklayer and had a small flower farm. The depression was understandably quite hard on them, and this seems to have been a gesture of gratitude for the New Deal policies that probably saved their family. I think that is a beautiful way to choose a name. My wife and I are expecting a new baby girl in November. I was wondering if any of you have suggestions on what we should name her." A: Stephen Bruce Dixon [laughs]. Actually, I did know some people who had two children, and they named their daughter after Lydia Davis, and their son after me. You know, we had two girls, and we were going to have a third child but we lost it, but it was going to be a boy, and we were going to name him "Piers." So that's what I would name it if it is a boy. - - - - Q: You seem so single-minded about your writing, relentless. Your output is astounding. Do you see any signs of slowing down? A: No, I don't. Not at all. In fact, I've already completed two new books, two novels that are the sequels to I. And I'm close to the finish of the first draft of a new novel called Phone Rings. I only started it about two months ago, but the first draft came very quickly. The book only takes about a year and a half to two years to finish. I do write every day; the only days I don't write are when I'm travelling and I put away my typewriter. But I have a lot of fun writing — it's the thing that I'm happiest doing in my life, and that's the way it's been for forty years. And that's why I'm unstoppable, because it gives me so much pleasure. Q: So you do a lot of editing after the first draft? A: Well, this is an unusual way of writing. Usually I go from chapter to chapter and I finish each chapter completely, then go on to the next, but with this one I decided to just write the entire first draft out, and then work on the final draft. I just thought I would try a different process. Although I wasn't so much thinking that I wanted to try a different process, the work just seemed to demand it. It seemed to just want to come out, and not be stalled by my writing a chapter, and working on it for two months, and then writing another chapter. It seemed to demand that I write it straight through. So I'm only two chapters away from finishing it. - - - - Q: Do you have certain rituals or schedules you use when you are writing? A: Not really. During summer I can go to it after I see to my wife for a couple of hours. But during the school year, I get all of my schoolwork out of the way, all my family duties out of the way, and I even get the salad out of the way in the morning, and the dinner mostly cooked, since I do all the cooking in the house, and then when everything's out of the way, I feel it's free and clear, and I can work one, two, three hours, whatever hours I can work, sort of without interruption. - - - - Q: And you write using a typewriter? A: All on a typewriter. I write some things by hand, notes, paragraphs, dialogue, when I'm away from the typewriter, but I compose on the typewriter. And the typewriter is just what I'm used to. You know, I started as a newsman when I was twenty-two, and I've never even really tried to work with a computer. It just looks too perfect for me. There's something about a typewriter that just works for me, and I'm a very fast typist even though I only use three fingers. I like the keyboard action, I like that it's sloppy, and that I have to perfect the page, rather than the machine perfecting the page. - - - - Q: I heard that I. is the first part of a trilogy, and the next two are titled Two and Three. There's been some confusion about whether the current book is pronounced "One" or "I." A: It's "I" but it's supposed to look like "One." The original title of the second book was going to be I-Patout, which means "everywhere" in French. It was also an homage to the French who have been very generous to me, and who have kept me afloat for a while. But one of the pieces in I-Patout became Two itself, so that became the new title. - - - - Q: What can you tell us about Two? A: Well, it's a different type of novel for me. It takes place in thirty years, and it's done chronologically from the beginning to the end. The same character is in I., Two and Three, but the family doesn't play much of a part in Two. It's more about friendship, about two writers. There's someone who has a theory that everything I do is in two's. Q: What about Three? What is that one about? A: Three is more like I. There are eleven non-chronological chapters. - - - - Q: Ed Page of Seattle asks: How is being published by McSweeney's different from being published by a big-time corporate publishing concern? What are the pros and cons of each? A: Well, not to be mercenary, but it could wind up that I'll make more money with this royalty arrangement. Nobody wants to hear that, but usually I make very very little… It's just a very different experience, it's much more personal. There's a staff in San Francisco, there's a staff in New York, and everybody seems to be working for the book. It sort of rejuvenated me in some ways, working with a whole bunch of young, ambitious, energetic people rather than a big publisher that puts me at the bottom of the pile, and doesn't really do anything for my book. The truth is, I've never had so much fun working on a book as I have with McSweeney's. Everybody is intelligent and friendly and helpful. Q: That's awfully nice of you to say, Mr. Dixon. I will take that last compliment personally. - - - - Q: Reader Gregg Grose was curious whether you consider the stories in I. to be meta-fiction at all. Do you think the distinction is important? A: You know, I keep on being called a metafictionist, and they always seem to define my work as the writer being aware of the writing, but I don't consider myself a metafictionist. I consider myself a serious fiction writer. I don't think the distinction is very important, though. I don't think I fall into any category. - - - - Q: Who do you read these days? A: Well, right now I'm reading the second volume of Hershel Parker's biography of Melville. Melville is a literary hero of mine because of the triple life that he led, and also because of the greatness of some of his fiction. But I'm always reading a lot of things. During the day I read Melville, but when I'm waiting for my wife to do during certain things in the evening, I sit in this great chair that I'm sitting in now, and I've been reading a book called James Joyce and the Making of Ulysses, by Frank Budgen. So that's always there, and then when I go to bed, I've been reading two things: a book of collected French poetry over the last two hundred years, both in French and English, and also the Jewish Publishing Society Holy Scriptures, called the "Tanakh." I've been reading that for a number of years, particularly so since my brother died March 10th. I'm not religious, I just like to go through it. I don't read any junk. I just don't think there's any time to, and I don't get any pleasure out of it either. You know, I've recently finished a biography of Thomas Bernhardt, the only one I know, and I like it a lot because he's a character. With fiction, I've started a couple of things, but I didn't like them so I put them down. Q: So you're willing to start something and not finish it? A: Yeah, it's a waste of time to finish something that you don't like. I don't read a book to say that I've read it, I read a book because I want to read it. I don't read my own work once I've published it, but recently somebody wanted me to do something with some stories from "Quite Contrary," a collection of mine, which is really a novel, written in 1979, so I had to go through that. And it's funny reading your work after about twenty years. It seemed like I was reading a different writer. Q: Did it bug you? A: Oh no, I liked it. I liked it, but it isn't the way I write now. But it was very lively, different. It was just strange. It was a very autobiographical book, so it was sort of sad too, to read it. Q: Sort of like looking at old photos? A: Yes, that's a good comparison. |
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