matchbook blog

New work at matchbook by Greg Gerke

Come one, come all.

Greg Gerke’s piece, The Iron, is now up at matchbook.

Folks, really.

Short story collection by Garrett Socol

Garrett let us know that Ampersand Books will put out his book of 21 short stories entitled EAR OF LETTUCE, HEAD OF CORN. His piece, And Then There was Scent, which appeared in matchbook in June, will be included in the collection. It’ll be published in 2011.

Congratulations to Garrett.

Short story collections rule.

New work by Jenny Gillespie at matchbook

Check out Jenny Gillespie’s new piece Bicycling into Town with Elisabeth now up at matchbook.

Stop sweating. Start reading.

A Conversation with Brian Baldi

Dzanc’s Best of the Web 2010 is out now. In celebration of this fact, I had a conversation with Brian Baldi, a writer whose piece, Ideally Learnt French for Eavesdroppers, was initially published in matchbook, and then chosen for Dzanc’s anthology. This was an online conversation in keeping with BOTW.

Brian Mihok: I’ve recently been partially consumed with the idea of surprise in literature. I’ve been trying to understand the boundaries between surprise for surprise sake and satisfying surprise. Are you finding surprise to be satisfying these days?

Brian Baldi: I am, but surprise probably shouldn’t get all the credit. There is, after all, little surprise without a countering condition of sustained, meaningful commonness. The more literature can render that, the more it benefits from surprise, I think.

It’s also possible to employ the techniques of surprise on a regular basis and without much accompanying commonness, but in doing so the surprises might lose their ability to actually surprise anyone. Instead, they become a stylistic mode of their own — a crowded, insisting lot of very noticeable details. Put to purpose, that mode can be great. But there’s also the risk that the writing will take on the idiom of a minivan adorned with 87 bumper stickers. I’m very lucky to know a few people who can write 87 stunning ones — not everyone can, though.

You mention boundaries, which I haven’t really addressed. I think about that all the time — how to amplify or surprise without crossing into over-practiced audacity. I suppose that line is located differently for everyone, and should be. I have a tendency to begin writing stories with an unlikely concept, and then spend most of my time trying as hard as possible to make the unlikely as plausible and relatable as possible. So maybe my own writing is more about diminishing surprises and unmasking goats. (I meant to type ghosts, but goats is probably more accurate, anyhow. Few things irk me more in literature than a goat trying to conceal its face.)

BM: The minivan/bumper sticker analogy seems right on to me. It reminds me of some current trends in literature, for better or worse (but really both). I also relate a lot to your mention of having a piece begin with implausibility and working against (or maybe not against, but toward) plausibility. I just today wrote something short about a guy who can’t hear anything on the telephone. He can hear just fine everywhere else but as soon as the buttons are pushed he can no longer hear the ringing or the person’s voice. This goes on his whole life. That seems implausible…and as that unfolds in the story, when I think back on it, I worked largely on the realistic ramifications of that fact for the character which, in a sense, could be seen as moving toward plausibility.

There’s been a lot of talk about goats recently. I’m all for that. And chickens, actually. I just went to someone’s house in the city and they had a nice backyard with chickens. In the city. I was awe struck, envious, and somehow vengeful but that might be an unrelated feeling. Do animals ever make their way into your work in any substantive way?

BB: I’m really drawn to this telephone idea of yours. There’s something very absolutist and iconic about telephones. They’re fairly simple items with a limited point of focus, yet they can open up — or shut down — so much.

I suppose I’ve included some animals in my writing from time to time. A few birds. The occasional squirrel. In my novel manuscript there are a great many pit bulls, but they are rendered as more of a condition or landscape than as animal characters. I’ve also written a couple of stories containing robots, which can operate almost like animals in fiction. By that I mean writers often project human emotions onto them, or use them as special talismanic entities. But at least with robots the artifice is obviously part of the project. Much as I’m fascinated by animals in real life, I try to be careful how I use them in my writing. I don’t want to name check herons to show how sensitive I am. Partly because I want to find other ways to convey sensitivity. And partly because using animals in that manner assumes so much about animal life. I suspect animals contend with quite a bit more Werner Hertzog-style fear and chaos than fiction and poetry generally indicate. Hertzog is entertainingly turgid, but at least he offers a counterpoint to those who only see animals and nature as profound and mystical. I doubt very much that anyone truly understands the animal experience. Which is fine, because animals probably don’t understand us, either.

What’s your position on fauna?

BM: Your precautions and tendencies about animals seem appropriate. I think namedropping herons is impossible to hide and should be avoided. Robots can definitely be useful. As writers it seems we must always be walking a fine line of how to further a story/form/plot using who we are, our experience, our wonderings (or wanderings) while at the same time, not making the piece about us. There are varying degrees of this, of course. Also, as sensitive as I am to writers namedropping, info-dropping, emotion-dropping, shock-dropping, whatever-dropping, I want to give them the benefit of the doubt as often as I can. I remember someone in a class years ago complaining about an author “showing off” or “having fun being a writer” in a passage. They clearly meant it pejoratively. I was sort of baffled by that comment. I assumed they meant the writer had lost track of the narrative or the characters, or that the passage wasn’t adding to the book, but taking away from it by derailing the mood or the story or the form. My problem with that is if that is what this person meant, saying the author is being, in essence, “too skilled” seems the opposite of what he/she intended. Where am I going with this? Is this related to it just being hard to talk about literature? About something we, at first, experience in a visceral way and then are forced to figure out how to express that intellectually?

In further regards to fauna, I probably haven’t successfully written animals. The pitfalls you mentioned are usually enough for me to shy away. I do have a poem with a bird in it, and one with a wolf, though the wolf is imaginary.

Also, spell-check always tells me to capitalize “internet” as “Internet.” This feels wrong, but is perhaps correct. What do you make of that?

BB: Yeah, one person’s whatever-dropping is another person’s virtuosity. It’s probably best not to worry about the distinctions. It’s best to sit down at a table and make something.

As for the internet, when the choice is mine I do not capitalize it. There are no other viable, competing internets that require us to have individual names for each one. It’s like a galaxy if there was only one galaxy. Some people might say that the internet’s uniqueness is precisely why it should be capitalized, but I’m not one of them. There is one sky, and we don’t capitalize sky. But back to galaxies. Have you heard of the Sombrero Galaxy? It’s quite beautiful. I would be amenable to the creation of a Sombrero Internet, which would definitely require capitalization. In fact, I am desperately awaiting the first coming of the Sombrero Internet.

What are you waiting for?

BM: A Sombrero Internet? What a place that might be. I do love that galaxy. That’s a real galaxy.

I feel like I might be waiting for a lot of things, most of them I probably don’t yet know exist. Probably expansive local rail travel. Or I should write Local Rail Travel. On the subject of waiting, I was just recently made aware of a matchbook submission that was unfortunately lost in the fray since October. Edward and I work pretty diligently to make sure that doesn’t happen, but alas, it turns out we make mistakes too. Another attempt at perfection thwarted. How long have you ever waited to hear back from a lit journal?

Also, the electric company tells me they need a copy of the first and last page of my lease to turn on electricity at my new apartment. The pages I faxed over, they tell me, are insufficient, yet those are the pages they require. Do you have any suggestions?

BB: About two years ago I sent a story to a couple of journals, and I still haven’t heard from them. I wouldn’t say I’m waiting, though. Lately I don’t spend much of my time thinking about submissions. I used to maintain spreadsheets and email things and go to the post office on a regular basis. The best part of that was hanging out in the post office, a place I love as much as I love libraries. Everything else resembled supply chain management, and I found myself thinking too much about distribution and not enough about writing. As an intern at the Massachusetts Review I saw the other side, too — the unceasing flow of manuscripts. I understand how a submission can get lost. I like that you and Edward care about it, though. In your roles as editors, the process is your art, so it’s wise to value it as much as the product.

You should fax the entirety of your lease to the electric company. But on top add the first page of Kafka’s “The Castle,” and on the bottom add the last page. That is the only way to deal with some people.

BM: It does seem that both sides of the publishing world can be a solid shade of gray with specks of utter defeat. In taking on matchbook those shades were deeply considered. In the end though, a sense of creativity won out. Still, I almost exclusively only send work to journals that accept electronic submissions. The thought of buying envelopes and writing a journal’s address and slipping in my work, for some reason, makes me want to cry.

If you were writing a creative piece and the first line was:

Toothpicks, I thought.

What might the second line be?

BB: The second line could be:

Or so I hoped I thought.

Is it the immediacy of online submissions that appeals to you? Or is it a general comfort with non-physical forms? I get along with technology quite well, but still very much need to print out my writing at some point so I can make a fact out of it. For some reason, writing that resides only on a screen seems tentative to me — possibly because a single computer screen is used to view so many things. I harbor the desire to give writing its own designated physicality. What are your feelings about electronic texts, creation, and singularity?

Also, we haven’t covered the weather — a significant oversight. What’s the atmosphere like in Buffalo? Around here some tree — the cottonwood? — is shedding white tufts that float through the air. There’s a strange, hot dreaminess about. It’s shoegaze weather.

BM: At heart, for better or worse, I have found that I am a man of practicality. I completely agree that holding your work on a printed page is different (and quite possibly better) from reading a digital copy. When I finish a piece my first inclination is to print it out so I can read it on the page. Bear with this oft used analogy, but it’s like the screen is a window to a different world and when the work is printed it gets to exist in our world instead of us looking into a different one to experience it.

In that way since I love the printed little guys so much I feel disrespectful or wrong to slip them into envelops I’ll never see again to await what could turn out to be a response that never comes. Since the digital copy means slightly less, sending it away digitally keeps the stakes feeling low, even if they aren’t in the end. I suppose it’s a perspective thing. I don’t mean to dump on electronic lit, I run an electronic lit journal forgodsakes. So it’s a combination of hassle and a little “my poor babies” that prevent me from doing physical submissions. Scott Garson’s Critical Thought to his piece for matchbook really hit the nail on the head for me as far as electronic publishing. I think our discussion here is different, but related.

As far as creation and singularity: I’ve been writing both in notebooks and on the screen for the last few years. I wrote a novel in a notebook(s). But a book I’ve just completed a draft of was largely written on the screen. It seems my method is to do whatever works in the moment. I’m still working out the scope of the term “singularity” but in terms of technological advance, it’s terribly interesting. Also there is a Singularity University. Do you do most creation on a computer?

In terms of weather, Buffalo likes its shades of gray. It’s hesitant to give the sun a proper outing, but the sun does triumph occasionally and then Buffalo is wonderful. The wind is significant. Buffalo could also be “The Windy City” if anyone cared. Lake Erie does its bidding.

Also, did you watch Lost?

BB: Scott Garson knows how to accept fully a new form. I love that story. Another total creative immersion in an electronic form is The Physical Poets Home Library Vol. 4, edited by Edward Hopely as part of Lawrence Giffin’s series. They use the full, feral capabilities of the .pdf.

I write both by hand and by computer. My poems generally begin on small notepads and bookmarks, and get rewritten almost entirely when I type them up. My fiction and nonfiction often begin the same way, but quickly migrate to the computer, where most of the actual writing is done. I occasionally print out manuscripts and carry them around — partly to see them as facts, partly so I can muck them up with handwritten divergences, and partly because I get sick of carrying my computer around.

I haven’t seen Lost, but I’ve been tempted by all the recent attention. Already I can feel the temptation lessening, though. From what I’ve been told, a lot of people stuck with the series out of duty and hope that it would at some point regain some of its earlier merit. But like I said, I haven’t seen it, so what do I know.

Your feelings about French flaps?

BM: I’ve never really seen Lost either. Maybe three episodes total. I feel happy for all the people who enjoy(ed) it.

I think French flaps can really lend class to a paperback or chapbook; although, because all hardcovers have them they seem less special on that type of book. Though they can be informative. I would like to see some more creative use of the French flap. It might be great if they were used as space for other poems or stories or something altogether different. For a contemporary writer, whose biography probably isn’t going to lend itself to any New Historicism critique quite yet, the French flap might be better utilized in some more exciting way. Any ideas?

Also, Dzanc’s Best of the Web, in which you have work, is out now. Do you have any secret plans once you lay your hands on a copy?

BB: I don’t know if I have any constructive thoughts about French flaps — I just like to say and type “French flaps.” French flaps. French flaps. They sort of look like little appendages hugging the book, don’t they? I seem to recall a novel — I can’t remember which — beginning on the flap. I bet it was something published by McSweeney’s. They never miss a formal opportunity.

My secret plan for the Dzanc Best of the Web is to sit down with a tall glass of seltzer and read everyone else’s great stuff. I’ve even come up with a reading system so I don’t lose any of the je ne sais quoi of the web.

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