Transcript
Unpublishables: We're Mark and Selene. This is the first episode of Unpublishables, latest and the only flawless addition to this wretched ecosystem of literary podcasts. We started it, I think, because there's surprisingly little in between ah PR, sort of cheerleading and talentless hatchet jobs. So even for quite talented writers, probing maybe where or how they didn't measure up to their own schemes can be just as interesting as probing what they set out to do at all style-wise. But I've said too much. So today we have on a man of very high style, Greg Gerke, publisher of Socrates on the Beach, taking, I'm taking someone else's words here, but unquestionably, the journal publishing some of the best work in the Anglophone world. I know because I'm in it. Aside from that, he's found time to be a first-class novelist, essayist, William Gass interviewer, and a dentist fan.
Unpublishables: Chorus. Chorus.
Greg: Hello. Thanks for having me on the show.
Mark: course, I thought you were the right person to start with for this pod for a bunch of reasons, but primarily you, I mean, the pod is unpublishable and you clearly have made it, you know, part of your mission to push writers that would otherwise struggle to find an audience and and to to give them that audience.
Unpublishables: Chorus
Mark: So I feel like the ethos of your magazines, Ocrasies on the Beach,
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: had something in common with what we're hoping to do. So it seemed like we start here. But the first thing I wanted to actually ask you if if is, before Socrates on the beach, how much editing had you been doing? I mean, I know you were the 3M Switzerland editor for some time.
Mark: Is that the first real editing gig that you you had, like consistent editing? Or were you doing it even before then? Because you were already a writer for for a long time.
Greg: Yeah, and i not too long, but no, I did do things before that. I was publishing.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: Actually, i worked, I was in living in Buffalo and they had an art journal called Buffalo Art Voice. And they had a like a flash flash fiction column in the back.
Greg: so i So a friend handed that over to me and I did that for maybe ah around a year. So I published some people in flash fiction. And then shortly after that, Big Other started, which is still going.
Greg: Bigother.com, which was, ah it was kind of to compete with HTML giant we way back.
Unpublishables: you
Mark: Oh, OK. OK.
Greg: This is like 15 years ago. um So I was one of the contributing editors there for some years.
Greg: and even as I did the 3 a.m. job. But I was mainly writing like small posts, but then ah there would be guest posts as well. There were guest posts. We did a Stanley Elkin week. We did a Wallace Stevens week.
Greg: And I found, you know, some pretty good writers like to to write about them. I think James Robeson, who's Mary Robeson's husband,
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: he he participated then
Greg: and then
Mark: I guess I'm curious, were you editing because the magazine, say Big Other, needed you to edit? Or was it like something that you took some relish in? Like, did you enjoy it? And maybe that's changed from now to now not? don't know.
Greg: I did enjoy it. It was more me of me posting, but there were, you know, there were like guest posts. And so i would find them or people would find me. And then, you know, we might publish ah review of a Sergio.
Greg: Chef sick. I'm mispronouncing his name. ah The, the novelist, uh, by a translator, Heather Cleary, um,
Mark: so So maybe you were doing more editing with 3AM then, like actually steadily having to feed a drip of pieces?
Greg: so we did
Greg: Yes, the 3 a.m. editing. but But here's the difference, that that was fiction.
Mark: OK.
Greg: I was the fiction editor. I was not editing.
Mark: Aren't you the fiction editor now, as as well as nonfiction, I mean?
Greg: Well, right, but I'm i'm getting to the... the bifurcation because there there really is one you know when you get to socrates and there's essays and fiction there's a real difference between how for instance i and you know I've had helpers.
Greg: I just want to make it clear, Socrates is not just me. there I often say we, because there are a few other little birds that I sometimes call on to help me to say, is this you know as good as I think it is?
Greg: Or is this you know not working like I think it is?
Mark: Right.
Greg: And sometimes...
Mark: But what about at the very beginning? Like, I it wasn't Socrates, I mean, Socrates just turned five, I believe. So it's kind of a nice period to sort of take stock in a way.
Greg: Yeah, soon. whom
Mark: Like, was it basically sort of a pandemic project? Did you start it? I mean, you you didn't have these helpers when you started, I presume.
Greg: No, no, no, no, no. But, ah you know, I started making, it really kind of opened a lot of doors, just the process of saying, I'm going to do this. And it it part of it was, i think,
Greg: I think I saw that the drift opened during the beginning of the pandemic, but then there was the onslaught of Substack and that really made me say, okay, i'm if people need to create substacks to publish their work, then we really need a journal that publishes long form work, whether it be essays or fiction.
Greg: Socrates doesn't do poetry. ah And so that was really the impetus to say, let's do this and let's let's tailor it towards longer pieces.
Greg: And so many of the pieces, not many, but I would say most have been, you know, over 7,000 and probably a good half dozen over 10 and maybe even a couple over 15.
Mark: So, but
Unpublishables: did you Did you expect it to survive this long off the get-go or stick to the curation of style that you have now, maybe due to the bird health?
Greg: I didn't know, i didn't know what to expect. I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I do think it's, it's changed a little because and initially it was a quarterly and then i just found it was harder and harder to find things to fit a quarterly, meaning it it's kind of become twice a year ah because there's just, there's just not always seven or eight great things out there.
Unpublishables: is
Greg: And, um, I was starting to more in the middle issues, having to reach out to people I know would give me quality work.
Greg: And you know, you just can't reach out to people that much because it just gets to be, first it gets to be tiring on your end. And it probably gets to be like, they're probably like, we've I've published there. i don't need to keep publishing things with you. Stop bothering me.
Greg: So I didn't want to keep stepping on toes.
Unpublishables: is
Greg: And so I found that when you only open like twice a year, you get much more quality submissions. And that has been the case in the last issues. um A lot of them have all, almost all come from the slush fund.
Greg: The slush fund, it probably is like a slush fund, the slush pile. ah
Mark: There's no difference.
Unpublishables: Try to rename our topics.
Greg: There's no money.
Mark: Yeah.
Greg: I should say that there's no submittable fees. There's nothing.
Mark: There's no money, that but there's also no money for you in this at all.
Greg: just
Mark: to And I'm wondering how much how much time of yours, because given the fact that you're a very much an active writer, how much time of yours it it tends to take up, and given that it is sort of a passion project and
Greg: I try, I've, I've learned to try to do it all at once to say, I'm not going to look at these submissions until they close, meaning at the 30th or the 31st to the 1st.
Unpublishables: okay
Greg: And then ah because I don't want people submitting twice because in and iev inevitably, if I would send a rejection back when the submissions are still open, I get, okay, I see that didn't work.
Greg: How about this?
Mark: How about this?
Greg: I don't want that. So it's like, that's one time only.
Mark: Right.
Greg: I want to make that clear.
Mark: ah Can i ask you how you how you see Socrates in relation to like other digital outlets, print outlets? like Is there a kind of conversation you see the magazine taking part in? Because you're someone who publishes a lot of short fiction essays, et cetera. So I have a feeling more so than me, like you have your eye on a lot of the magazines of the of any particular moment. What is there are there what are the ones that say even we' even tangentially an inspiration for you to start this.
Mark: Still, you undertook this. I'm i'm a little bit still wondering what was the motivation to say, i i need to add a magazine. I need to do this rather than, I mean, I certainly don't do that. So I'm too selfish.
Mark: Like it's like, it takes some work.
Greg: well Well, to circle back to the first question, there was The Rupture, which was Gabriel Blackwell's journal, which initially was called The Collagist from DeZank.
Mark: and it did
Unpublishables: you
Greg: And then they moved when DeZank had that whatever happened. And then he called it The Rupture. So I guest edited an issue for him, where i wherein I reached out to a lot of you know, good writers.
Greg: And that that was also an impetus to start this because shortly thereafter, the rupture closed.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: So I kept also seeing many places were closing around this time, even, you know, especially in the first maybe year of the pandemic, there were a lot of journals were closing.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: So that inspired me as well to kind of maybe try this but again it it wasn't going to be this big thing it was just going to be six to eight pieces four times a year or three or two times a year and so that's why i thought it manageable
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: um
Mark: But has it become something more than that and more also more time intensive? OK. Yeah.
Greg: Well, it was more time intensive when it was a quarterly, of course. But now now that I've whittled it to's twice a year, like I say, I tend to do it all at once.
Greg: I compress it. I can go through these submissions, you know, depending on how long I read them. I can do five or 10 a day, maybe even, yeah probably that's about it.
Greg: um But I mean, ah of course, I'm not reading every word. The ones I reject, I can you know barely go through them, because some of them.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: but um So it's it' it's not too time intensive. The most time intensive part is more the formatting, and especially if there's pictures or something, but that doesn't come up too often.
Greg: um so i'm just ah
Mark: You know, as far as your editing itself, though, like i always felt like when I was editing for 3am, the fiction, that the the the heart the the most critical thing was actually selecting the pieces.
Greg: Yes.
Mark: And that if a piece needed a lot of work, it was usually a good sign that probably this is not a piece to take. that Trying to change things that I think young editors especially feel like they want to be sort of heroic, and I can save this piece.
Mark: I can make it something. And oftentimes, it's like it sort of bears the trace of like being overworked, having too many voices in it, and a kind of patchwork.
Greg: yes Well, here's the bifurcation because it's very different between fiction and nonfiction.
Mark: So I'm wondering if for you too, like is the decisive thing your sense of taste and the selection? Or do you sometimes apply a pretty you know a heavy edit to some of these pieces?
Mark: and Sometimes they need them.
Unpublishables: Yes.
Greg: Fiction, usually there is not hardly, there's hardly any edits and they are only about like a phrase here or a word there.
Mark: Amen.
Greg: There, there never have been about moving, you know, let's cut this or move it or no, I've never done any of that. I think fiction is so much harder to do anyway, that it has to be, it has to be kind of all there and,
Mark: I mean, you just you just published Solène, so why don't we just use that as an example?
Greg: yeah it was you You mean if a piece
Unpublishables: I would ask a modified version of that.
Mark: What was it like? yeah to to Tell us, Solène.
Unpublishables: Oh, God, don't I know. ah Is there a bifurcation for you in terms of a piece comes, you know, no need for editing at any grand scale, but it's not at all to your taste. But regardless, you recognize it as worthy. Or is that Venn diagram for you more of a circle?
Unpublishables: In other words, are there are there often other readers sort of providing a with completely opposing taste to yours that you feel the need to run things by when it comes to vetting?
Mark: like you believe in their quality and their merit, though it wouldn't be a piece that sort of directly maybe moves you in the deepest center you connect with. You know something I have seen pieces where I'm like, this is good.
Mark: This is objectively good, though it happens not to dovetail maybe with my personal sense of things. i' more and Not every editor's like that. Some are like, no, if it doesn't dovetail, I'm not going to publish it. But um I guess, yeah are you sort of asking?
Greg: I see what you mean.
Mark: it
Unpublishables: Perfect, yeah.
Mark: yeah
Greg: I see what you mean.
Unpublishables: Okay.
Greg: But the little birds, I think, do have close to my taste. So that's kind of an easy out. the The little helpers, and they're actually big helpers, I should say.
Greg: But i do I see what you mean. i have sometimes thought that I was going to go with something but then And here's the thing about nonfiction.
Greg: there's a There can be much more editing in nonfiction, but I'm more of a type to say, let's not take anything out. Let's add.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: Let's add more. And i in my own dealings, I don't run run along ah run into many editors who say that they always are the opposite because they're always thinking it's got to be shorter or a word count.
Mark: Right, right.
Greg: And i just don't believe that because of the internet is infinite, infinite.
Mark: do Do you also... do you also make a sort of contribution to the, the, you know, streamlining or elaborating the argument, you know, that they might be, I mean, that's part of the reason, right? Nonfiction can often require a little more work because there's, there's more to it than purely aesthetics.
Mark: There's this other level in which, well, this doesn't follow from this, or this isn't a very good argument for, for a particular point, or do you, do you find yourself getting into sort of debates with,
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: the writer about, like do you really mean this? Or is this the best example? Or things like that. i you know
Greg: Only a few times, only a few times.
Mark: i OK.
Greg: And i think the level of trust was there that we could talk freely about this. And only a few times might I have said, i think this paragraph, you you you know, it's too much.
Greg: It's your your you're being a little too much here or too cruel.
Mark: Right.
Mark: The other thing is you you have a highly aesthetic take towards nonfiction anyway so in a way maybe you don't see it as like something you can say well here's the the core argument and we're going to tinker with it it's sort of like either you take the whole of of the piece it's rhythms and cadences and the meanings it sort of throws up or maybe you don't and so what i mean is yeah good
Greg: Yes.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: Right. when you see When you say argument, I have very little relation to that.
Mark: um mean i had a feel i i thought you would flinch at that greg i i didn't know that
Greg: Because master Gass's essays, I really don't think they're about an argument, really. They just kind of go their own way, and then they kind of flow, and then they're taking the reader away.
Mark: Fair enough. I mean, you're talking to two philosophy people, so.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: You're taking the reader into the shallows, you know, from deep water, and they just kind of leave them there.
Mark: Fair, yeah.
Greg: And then he recedes.
Mark: So, i mean, maybe the bifurcation is and is, in your particular case, maybe not as deep as it would be to a, maybe when I'm editing and nonfiction, I become very, in addition to the aesthetic concerns, I can become very analytical and say, well,
Mark: I mean, this you know there's counterexamples abound. you know i would I get in there on that level. But I think for you, you'd probably treat it as ah as a whole, like the work, the the aesthetics of the work, as well as the argument are sort of one unified. I mean, the fiction the nonfiction I see published in Socrates is distinctive. it's not
Greg: Yes.
Mark: They're not like straight essays, if you know what I mean. They always have that other element, which is so interesting about the the magazine that it's, you know,
Greg: Right. And and to to say with your pieces ah that many of the writers are very particular about edits.
Unpublishables: There is a line. Go on.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: Okay, that's, I would think so.
Greg: As they should be. As they should be. And they, even for small things, Some of them, I'm not saying you did, but some of them might put up a fight.
Greg: And sometimes I'm not so attached and i you know to having my way and I relent. And it's just like, okay you know it's not some it's not really worth it.
Mark: Interesting.
Mark: If this is important to you, yeah.
Greg: Right. And they should be doing that. They should be. And then when you see it in the print preview or the preview before it's published,
Greg: you're bound to see other things because now you're seeing it, how it's going to appear.
Mark: Right.
Greg: And yeah I think a lot of the writers, they are strenuous editors, even before it gets to my sentiment.
Mark: That would be the type of writer you would even be interested in, I feel.
Greg: That's the type of writer sends and who, who are so scrupulous that, you know,
Mark: Yes. that That makes sense.
Greg: they'll see, oh, there's an extra space here. I'm like, yes, you're right.
Mark: Right.
Greg: I'm i'm sorry I missed that. But they...
Mark: But I don't understand how we ran past Selene's pieces so quickly. Like, did you not want to talk about that?
Greg: No, I'm trying to go back.
Unpublishables: Thank you, President.
Mark: I mean, that's like that's like ah that's like a good ex example. Like, how did how did that go? Was that pretty clean? Or was it, it was a debate or what?
Greg: From my memory, it was. i think you I think I just had a question about maybe two lines or so.
Unpublishables: I think one of the suggested edits was a comma, or so it was pretty minute.
Greg: Something like that.
Unpublishables: And you say that's the point when you know it's done, when you're quibbling over whether to make it a comma you know, it's something like that.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: It was a punctuation. All
Greg: right.
Unpublishables: There's a line from an interview with you I'd sent to Mark today. You set up this sort of bifurcation between observation and research and say you're much more beholden to observation than research, meaning really, I think the only things oriented approach you set out with is when it comes to your essays on art. Otherwise, it's more to see how it's done.
Greg: Yes.
Unpublishables: um But you've come quite a long way toward the long form, you know, from the flash fiction that you were ah
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Unpublishables: publishing with your first book 16 years ago when you mentioned HTML giant there was an interview that Sam Pink held with you then where he asked ah he asked you to explain what draws you to such a short form and you answered the shortness of the form am I lazy in few minutes you have something
Greg: Yes.
Greg: Yes.
Unpublishables: ah So how how the hell did you make this turn toward the long, you know, away from something more overtly Lishian, even if you are still very style oriented, it's not as impressed as it used to be.
Greg: Right.
Greg: Right. And probably Lish's journal was an influence on Socrates as well, I should say. But I mean, I did, there were stepping stones to even the flash fiction. I was trying to write longer pieces and a novel, a novel, you know, that was thrown away before that. So there were a lot of false starts and Alice Munro type ah imitations and novellas realistic until I you know went back went into the flash fiction, which I think I flirted with years before and never really did anything.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: And then I started doing something with it and then it seemed it seemed easier. So, I mean, it seemed, it was the right form for me at that time.
Greg: Right.
Mark: It still seems that like the short form and and prose that in some way approaches poetry
Unpublishables: so
Mark: seems very important to you and i know you have this long-standing interest in lyric poetry like almost sometimes when i'm talking to you i get the feeling the authors you you think most of wallace stevens or are are the the most cherished ones are poets for you whereas for me i'm very much a prose person fictional like that all the way the sentence and that type of thing but what is your relationship to what you don't write poetry do you or do you sometimes no but there's it's strongly influenced right
Greg: No, no.
Unpublishables: Quick note.
Mark: yeah
Greg: But I write about, yeah, i write about it. I've written essays about.
Mark: Certainly. And your own work, say, Suavity, the i mean thing it's it's perfectly I think it's perfectly obvious that your your prose is very poetic. right It's full of lush imagery, sensory impressions. it's It's not this sort of austere kind of conceptual kind of writing that maybe some others engage in.
Greg: Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it's just what comes out.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: It's been a long tortured process and,
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Greg: you know, I think there's been many refinements and certainly probably the the main Lish writers helped with teaching about how to scrape it down and, but also to keep it lyrical and,
Greg: Because basically, you know, gas is...
Greg: Lish, I'm sure, just, you know, took many things from gas and, and you know, just put them, up you know, you used to a different end.
Greg: But it's certainly the same types of things. It's the same types of things that, you know, John Hawks did you know,
Mark: There's the entire tradition of of very lyrical, you know poetically inflected fiction.
Greg: Right.
Mark: I just meant it seems to me that a lot of your work sort of you know has a certain resonance with that type of tradition and not, say, the man without qualities or something. That's not you know the natural, right?
Greg: Yes. I hope so. I mean, i yeah, that that is. that is the case
Mark: And Gass himself, of course, is it's a prime example.
Greg: Right.
Mark: whatever
Greg: That is the case. I mean, I'm not I'm more of like sleep Sleepless Night's Hardwick inspired than, you know, these long, you know, I don't even have them because I guess I just don't, you know, Saul Bellow, let's say, i just don't read them as much or am that interested in them.
Mark: Okay.
Unpublishables: so
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: yeah Can I ask you how how you think about, your taste in ah particularly in terms of being an editor and how you see it against some of the other, you know, forces that are out there in, in literature, but some of the more visible ones, say like the sort of outlet kind of online lit kind of movement, big five stuff.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: How do you, how do you, I know I'm interested, I'm interested because it it seems to me from our personal conversations that part of your aesthetic, and and that's true of me, certainly is partly defined against some of the,
Greg: Here's the page.
Mark: the the literature that you find for ah for yourself anyways, lacking in some things. And what what is it you find? i mean, what what's the governing sort of aesthetic of Socrates? Like, what do you, what are you thinking when you pick pieces? You know what mean?
Mark: And how do you see the magazine in terms of how it plays against some of the other online places, you know, that are out there? Like, I i suspect you have opinions about this because the the magazine doesn't read as it as a hodgepodge of, hey anybody should submit.
Greg: Right.
Mark: I publish all kinds of it has some ah sort of clear sort of delineation of ah of some kind of aesthetic. I don't necessarily have the words for it, but maybe you do.
Unpublishables: Rumor has it the next issue Pocrates is devoted to microfiction about Adderall shortages.
Greg: Right.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Greg: That could be.
Unpublishables: yeah
Greg: But it'd have to be 3,000 3,000 word microfiction only.
Mark: Trending topics.
Greg: Let's see.
Mark: but Right.
Greg: ah three thousand word microfiction only um
Greg: let's see
Mark: I'm just giving you a chance to sort of talk about your your your sense for aesthetics and what what what literature matters and which why you've made the sort of intervention that Socrates is.
Greg: yes
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: Because I will say the reputation of the magazine, okay, so just speaking of the people I talk to, and it's it it has a kind of aura around it of a kind of, oh, they that Socrates does things differently.
Greg: Right.
Mark: they're They're not interested in x Y, and Z. So I thought, might why not ask you directly? what How do you see what what makes your your magazine stand out?
Greg: I think that um a main thing with fiction would be I'm not really interested in a story.
Mark: you know
Mark: OK, right.
Greg: of And so anything and I often know in the first page
Unpublishables: Bye.
Greg: whether certainly whether I'm going keep, you know, rejected or not. But also i often know in the first page that, oh, I think this is it, or this could be the one.
Greg: And so there is something about the beginning and often in fiction, it's about, because I'm not into a story and I see so many where it's, you know, my aunt, my aunt Patty came over and,
Mark: Both, right.
Greg: blah, blah, blah. ah I want things that are, yes.
Mark: Iowa fiction, it sounds like, something like that.
Greg: I want things that don't sound like a story.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: They're very weird. Like in the last issue, there was a story called What is Irony? Which is kind of a takeoff by Michael Farrell, who's actually a poet, more known as a poet in ah Australia.
Greg: It's kind of a takeoff on a, you know, he was, the the character is trying to teach a class about irony.
Greg: So he's kind of in, he's thinking about what is irony.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: So it just kind of an unspools is this kind of Murnanian type of movement, you know, in like four or 5,000 words.
Greg: So that would be an example of like, this is not, this does not sound like, and sound has a lot to do with it too. This does not sound like a story, doesn't read like a story.
Greg: It's very, it's kind of on, yeah.
Mark: That's, it's so interesting though, that, that, that, um, I mean, that makes sense.
Greg: It's on, on set on ground.
Mark: That makes sense to me though, that like, you're almost like if, if you see too much of an obvious narrative, you're like, no, I don't think this is for me.
Greg: Yeah.
Greg: Right.
Mark: Right. For this magazine. Right.
Greg: And though I thought Selen's, you know, they hers do have a little of that. they They have many other things that a lot of stories don't have, like the sound, like not not imbibing in cliche or anything approaching to cliche.
Mark: Hmm.
Mark: Hmm.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: They're just very otherworldly. So that that was, you know in in in terms of that, how it it comes it comes at you very strangely, like you know like fiction and prose can come at you just like poetry, just like a painting, just like a film in very strange meteor ah you know meteor meteorite ways And
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: you know you just have to be ready And the more strange and unsettled it is, the more good it seems is is my experience.
Mark: Is there is there a reason why why you have opted for a sort of, for digital magazine, an issue format rather than just the rolling stuff that most of the sites do, whereas here's a story and here's another story.
Mark: Is there is there a meaningful sort of binding of aesthetics or conceptually or otherwise for the issues, do you feel like, or is it, do you find, them there it is, go ahead.
Greg: I think there is. Yes. I think there is because, you know, it's like it's all together as one and it it came to me like that way.
Mark: Right.
Greg: So it should come to the public that way. And I've gotten feedback that they do, so you know, a lot of the issues do have a coherence about them, even if I had nothing really to do with, and I don't have any, it just happens to be what's there, but maybe it's because, you know, the fiction and the prose all have coherence anyway in all of the issues.
Greg: So there is a ah coherence, but I think, you know, there there has been issues where Stephen Moore wrote about Cynthia Buchanan's novel and then,
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: we excerpted a ah bit of the novel with his essay on the novel. So, I mean, there's surface things like that, but there's also like in the last issue, there were a lot of foreign born writers, including yourself and just a few, I mean, writing some writing in English, but um only a couple American writers were in the issue.
Mark: All right. All right.
Greg: It was, Peter Honka, Farrell, as I said, Chris Eaton from Canada, So, you know, so that had a um and a little aura about it, a little mystique.
Greg: Like, here's, you know, here's something different. This is not, you know, you think of if you've read those best American short stories things, you would always have, you know, here's the John Updike, here's the Alice Munro story.
Mark: Right. Right.
Greg: Here's this, here's a George Saunders story. And so I'm kind of happy that this is not like that. And it's, you there's been translations, there's been writer who, a South African writer who is dead many years, who someone just sent me a translation out of the blue of his work.
Unpublishables: you
Greg: And I'm sorry, I'm blanking on his name, but he, I'm sure Coetzea knew him. ah but a fascinating kind of proto-Sebald work before Sebald.
Greg: um So these I've always kind of believed that in you know things happening for a reason. And I think most of the issues have have worked out that way, that they just kind of They come together and rather than, you know, i think i I also prefer the issues that, so you're not like, oh, here's another thing, you know, here's another, and another thing and another, oh, just like two or three or four times a year, here it is, this is it.
Mark: Right.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: Right.
Greg: And this should stand as a wall and you should be coming back to this
Mark: Yeah.
Greg: I mean, i don't I don't fully believe this. I'm saying this as, you know, I'm seeing this as ah as a dumb, I'm on a podcast moment.
Mark: I think I know what you mean, though.
Greg: You should come back to this wall.
Mark: Matt, please give us more of those, Greg. Yeah.
Greg: You should come back to this wall of these 10 writers or nine writers and read it. And you should reread it and and reread it.
Mark: No, I, yeah.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Mark: No, that makes sense.
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: big big Because there's this sense of a drip, endless drip of content.
Greg: And that should stand. Right, the endless drift, which I get, i get it, but I wanted to just, this is it.
Mark: Yeah. Right.
Greg: i think there's something in our...
Mark: Right.
Greg: literary ecosystem, you mentioned, you know, how it's poisoned that it's always about the coming attractions, the new thing. What are you looking forward to? What do you, there's so many books that we've ignored in the past five years, you know, the past decade that like, I'm looking forward to reading books from
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: from 2019. I'm not looking forward to new books, you know,
Mark: and Exactly. You know even the aesthetic of your site, it seems to dovetail with that, like it's very austere, like, here are the words and don't bother me about, you know, the bells and whistles.
Greg: I
Mark: That's not what this is about. And so the aesthetic, how did you settle on probably the most austere website in the literary world that I've seen? i mean, it's beautiful. But it is very much like, there's no nonsense here.
Greg: i just didn't get on.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: We're not going to deal with imagery and We're not going to do a bunch of pull quotes. You know what i mean? Like there's something very distilled and pure about it.
Greg: Well, part of it was that I can't do those things. And it was the easiest thing to take from school.
Mark: Hmm. there
Greg: But mainly that's what I wanted, something very plain and simple from Squarespace. And that's what it ended up as. And I know that McElroy, Joseph McElroy, who had a piece in the first issue, he likes it that way. And I've heard about other people who like it that way, too.
Mark: And the name the name of the magazine is from McElroy, right?
Greg: Right, from from he has an essay called Socrates on the Beach about where he references the Paul-Valerie-Ippolynos dialogue, which has Socrates as a character, and there's a scene of Socrates walking on the beach and finding a piece of driftwood and how it filled him with wonder.
Unpublishables: Thanks.
Mark: I see.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: And that was the moment. that was the the the moment So yeah. um
Mark: ah Can you say something about like the other magazines you like?
Greg: So it.
Unpublishables: stick.
Mark: Like, because i have, i have a gut feeling for the ones that maybe you, you don't, we don't need to get into that, but let, let, but like the other sites that you look at and say, this seems like a peer in some way or, or a distant cousin to what I'm trying to do Say like minor literatures does some interesting stuff, or um I'm wondering if there's a set of magazines that like, that, you know, you sort of think of as like sort of stalwarts in a similar kind of,
Greg: The current magazines. Yeah. and anyop
Greg: young
Greg: Well,
Mark: movement against some of the fashions and trends of the moment, et cetera. Or do you just see yourself as a lone wolf? I don't know.
Greg: no, I mean, i I'm sure I'm building on things, but I have not been paying attention too much in the last few years. But yeah, there's there's minor literatures and 3am, you know, when they were doing more work.
Unpublishables: you
Greg: um I'm trying to think.
Mark: I have so many more. Come on. Yeah. Hmm.
Greg: I guess i think I think the Drift had a few essays that I thought were pretty interesting. i mean, you know, the LRB has certainly had... but theyre they...
Greg: they do more reviews as the new York review of books. So I couldn't name those because I guess Socrates is very apolitical.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: There's not, there's hardly ever been any cultural commentary or political.
Mark: Right.
Greg: It's been very impressionistic essays. um Liberties, i would say is one that's currently that I subscribe to.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: And I mean, of course it published me, but I said like i subscribed before I was ever published.
Mark: but Before I believe that I believe that though, very interesting magazine.
Greg: I think they run very interesting things. I mean, they're a little more political than I'd love, but still it's part of the story.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Well, I think cultural commentary is part of their remit in a way that it isn't really yours. Yeah, I know.
Greg: But their poetry and their essays are are wonderful. um
Mark: Where else are you seeing fiction that you like, or are you seeing it coming out and you know in in these either digital or print mags that you're like, hey, okay.
Greg: Well, Necessary Fiction, where Selen was published. That's how I found out somewhat about her.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: They've been around for many years.
Mark: That's true, yeah.
Unpublishables: I'd say relegation, but I was published there as well before.
Greg: they've put Yeah.
Unpublishables: I was subscribing before that.
Greg: they've they've put out They've put out a lot of things. um
Unpublishables: You made...
Greg: Which one?
Unpublishables: I was going to ask you something about your turn to the novel, but I want you to keep talking about...
Greg: Oh, um well, Sublunary used to do a literary journal. Do you remember that?
Mark: Firmament or, yeah.
Greg: Firmament, right. Firmament. I don't know if they're still continuing, but they that they've had a lot of interesting things ah for a print journal, you know, for for coming out.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: I mean, i've I've kind of lost track of the Paris Review and Well, Tin House closed. Those were some of the big ones. um So I don't, you know, to go along with that, I know you asked about Alt-Lit and I, you know, I still don't really understand
Greg: fully what that means, though, i you know, I can, I think I do, but it it doesn't really matter specifically. I mean, it doesn't matter.
Mark: Well said. Hmm.
Greg: it matters that I don't think there are genres like that. um Or all the writers that we've published, Selen included, i think they're outside of any of those labels.
Greg: They're just, it just, here is some great prose for you to enjoy. And that's, there's no, like you know.
Mark: Well, I mean, the outlet style, right, is kind of by design, this kind of low style, right?
Greg: labels.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Simple declarative sentences, ah subject matter that's very often sort of confessional or kind of scuzzy and maybe quasi-shocking, but not really in the in the grand scheme.
Mark: I mean, there's a kind of aesthetic to it. I just think it's something that you're, it's not something that you would think, um, you know, would have any place in Socrates. that nothing Nothing you publish ever strikes me as like, oh, that could also be at some of these other Forever magazine or something.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Forever is fine. i'm not you know
Greg: Probably probably not but i mean, We have this.
Mark: I think actually I like more of those down style people than you do. Like we talked about Scott McClanahan.
Greg: Right.
Mark: I'm kind of open to it.
Greg: Right.
Mark: it's It's A style. It's sort of like purposefully kind of primitive kind of like not thought out in a deep way. And I certainly wouldn't want my complete diet to be that stuff, but I'm sort of like, okay, you so tell me something in your in in this low voice that isn't is purposefully avoiding anything poetic or or higher.
Mark: So, um you know, in that way we can...
Unpublishables: It's hard to be a little when you're writing about going on Twitter, man. I think it's been done, but very, very rarely.
Mark: who
Greg: And isn't that funny? I was just thinking about that. And I wondered what you guys thought of this. You know, as people but bemoan the state of fiction, is it does it have a lot to do with what we're writing about? Like, I was reading Colette, and Colette is just talking about the beach and nature.
Greg: And so much of fiction was so wrapped up in fiction. physical things. And now if we're writing about going on the internet or checking our phone, like, can you really, is that really interesting even to begin with?
Greg: You know, like, what can you bring to that? And there's all these people that complain, oh, where's the great novel about today's technology? And like, why does there have to be one?
Mark: Right. Right.
Greg: if there isn't one,
Mark: Especially the one that that expressly focuses on that rather than it being of a background condition.
Greg: And maybe there isn't one foot for a good reason.
Mark: Yeah.
Greg: I mean, the backbone of literature for five, six hundred years has been the sunsets and forests and stones and rock and birds and nature, you know, from the cave paintings on even.
Mark: Right.
Mark: That's right.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: I think a lot of the these these, the fiction that we have now, even Big five, because Altlet at this stage has become a kind of feeder, right? It's it's now sort of an accepted form. It's not like early 2000s or something where it could still claim to be like, what is this? what what What is this offshoot of essentially the blog, right? So now I think a lot of big five and what falls under the online lit outlet is very much um influenced by the tone and the sort of the carelessness or lowness of the blog.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: It's personal, it's kind of unbuttoned, and that's its sort of selling point. Obviously, 25 years later, it's not looking like there's a lot more to mine there. And I think fiction is at a point where I think people are starting to write stuff that's a little bit more speculative, absurdist stuff, branching off away from that.
Mark: But it's still, ah i think it's still the core of what, you know, the outlet or the big five kind of sells.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: It's kind of this personal tale that, you know, I'm just going to tell you off the cuff and there's not going to be too many bells and whistles. and And I find it at this juncture a little bit stale. Now there was a time when it was kind of like a little, you know, had some a excitement to it.
Mark: But I think a lot of writers are kind of searching for a way beyond that, like into ah things that are maybe less realist, that ah that risk a little bit more, that don't mind seeming a little pretentious and not constantly speaking in the lowest possible language they know because, you know, they they want to be as accessible as possible or as honest as possible. Like, lowness is associated, ah the low style is associated with like honest, unfilteredness.
Mark: and And I just don't think that has to be the case at all. I think you'd be unfiltered in a very Baroque kind of style as well, but that, you know, I think certain readers can't can't accept that. They can't process that kind of layered, nested clauses. It just is too much. Please, you're you're lying to me. You know, there's something, I think, there.
Unpublishables: Yeah, nobody's pardon.
Greg: What you think, Sel?
Greg: What do you think?
Unpublishables: Nobody's virtuous by virtue of just being a bit of a crust punk, I think. You made me think of a Raymond Carver saying where he compares the short story much closer to a poem than a novel.
Unpublishables: And I'm wondering if that's even the reason that you've moved toward the novel in that there's less of a implied formal limitation on your ability to go from branching idea to branching idea in this flowery way.
Greg: That might be it. I'm not really sure. I just think I needed to...
Unpublishables: you
Greg: i think I did a not enough of the flash fiction and it was time to do something more... some something longer. And it took a while. But yeah. um I just... I guess I just... I had something to say. so i took the long route towards saying it and, and made it.
Mark: you know Is that suavity or or something else you're talking about?
Greg: Yes. Yes.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: The novel and made it longer than, than I initially even thought it would be.
Mark: what Why don't...
Greg: So I added to it. I'll a Proust. um
Mark: Sort of organically, like without...
Greg: Yeah. It was like a five year thing.
Mark: Because the material.
Greg: So it seemed to be like,
Mark: Hmm.
Greg: I don't know. for Maybe maybe as someone said, you know you don't not everyone has a novel in them, and maybe maybe you don't have a novel in you until you know you've done a few things or you know whatever you needed to do to do it.
Greg: not saying people in their twenty s can't write novels.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: They certainly can, and there's certainly great novels. It's just, in my case, I didn't... I didn't know how to come at it.
Greg: I think I needed to read more too. I needed to read. And I wasn't reading specifically to say, oh now I know how to do it, but I just needed to read longer works and, and get, get,
Mark: right. Well, maybe we can talk about what your your work now, right? so And the relationship, if there is any, between the way you think about editing and and maybe the self-editing you do in your own work. Your your latest project, it's you can correct me if I'm wrong, you haven't done a lot of writing on painting before.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: No, this is kind of the first.
Mark: is yeah So what what what sort of triggered this this new this new idea? Because it's clearly from just following your your Twitter and just talking to you, it's clearly become a like an all-encompassing obsession, which is was just beautiful. i mean that's what a writer should totally throw themselves into what they're doing. How did this how did this come about?
Greg: Well, I think just going to a lot of art museums in the past year or so, but also i was a couple years ago I found this Andre Malraux book, The Voices of Silence, and that was, I think that that sparked something, and i've been I read it, you know, over the course of a long time, because it's a very long book, and I've i've always been sort of fascinated by painting, though I wouldn't go to art museums so much, but
Greg: I just, it seemed like a new frontier to explore about all of the art writing out there. So I just seemed to go for it. And...
Mark: I mean, it does link to the fact that like your writing itself is very visual and very sensory. So it's not totally shocking to me that you would be like, well, let me look at something very, sensory and very very visual um and talk about it in these ways.
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: Like, what's this?
Greg: This is the book, the, the mile rope.
Mark: That's right. Okay. okay
Greg: Yeah, um I bought it. So, and then, and now I'm buying all these other things, you know, about Goya. ah
Mark: this is This is what I meant about the obsession. you You definitely, whenever I talk to you, whenever I meet you, it's like, all your you know it's it's it's rarely lately about fiction, really.
Greg: This, there is, yes.
Mark: It's mostly about, oh, did you see this this painting? You should come with me to MoMA. We need to see it. And i love I love the enthusiasm that you have for this now. But it does dovetail in a way because you are a a writer of of sensory impressions.
Mark: Why wouldn't you be interested in what painters have done in that realm in ah in a literalistic way? Which is this,
Greg: I'll just keep showing you all these books.
Mark: so question
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: It was like, on a and proust Proust was part of it too, because he writes about painters that may or may not be Monet or, you know, but he also, i went back and would find that many of these writers, Proust and Guy Davenport wrote about painting to to a, you know,
Mark: Do it.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: any a ah more Davenport, that there's fewer fiction nonfiction of Proust on painters, but Davenport wrote you know essays on artists and us in a book called Objects on a Table about still life and Keats and still life, all these different...
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Greg: So I've i've often... Ben Felsenberg 1 001 001 001 came back to it um and it just seemed the time i mean i'd always been fascinated by vermeer so and i'd wrote about vermeer in different forms mostly in fiction but then i I figured you know this would be a good a good thing to let's see who's you know who's written about Rembrandt.
Greg: And then I ask people and they say, well, did you read the Hélène Cisois essay? no I haven't. And then you know if you find that.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: So it is kind of it is also about this discovery thing and finding Lola
Mark: Can you tell us a little about the structure of the book?
Greg: move hold
Mark: Like what?
Greg: Well, the structure's kind of weird. I mean, i guess I envision it that I'm not into gimmicks, but I guess I realize that the the gimmick of the book to maybe interest so certain publishers would be
Mark: Okay.
Greg: saying this book started on the subway, you know, as in I'm looking at two people talking,
Mark: Okay.
Greg: in a seat right in front of me. But of course, when you're on the subway, you're aiming straight forward and you're not really looking at each other as you talk. So these people reminded me of how people in talk in Carl Dreyer films, allow where they're not looking at each other, but they're looking straight ahead and they're talking intimately, but they're not looking at each other.
Greg: So I just thought that was interesting and That's where the book begins on the way to the Met to see Rembrandt and Vermeer.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: And then, you know, there I am.
Mark: So are you cataloging like a series of of paintings? Are the essays mainly targeted on specific works or or just painters painters more broadly like figures?
Greg: More figures. They're they're they're and more interested in figures. And so I would say, okay, I went to the Met and there's Rembrandt. And then I take the subway back. And as I take the subway back, I remember that, oh, there's the MoMA where I saw Carl Dreyer's Bordette or something. And then there's the Dreyer piece. And then I take the subway back to Brooklyn and wherever I read, you know, where I read Henry James and there's a Henry James essay. So it's kind of like that.
Mark: No, right.
Greg: um The gimmick part, I'm not going to concentrate on too much.
Mark: oh that's just that's not
Greg: It's more the you know i went to Philadelphia to look at for the Cezannes in the Tuse Philadelphia Museum. So here's the Cezanne chapter. And then it's kind of in in order.
Mark: and And you were in in France recently giving some talks.
Greg: Yes.
Mark: I take it that was another opportunity to imbibe some of the, you know, right?
Greg: Yes. Yeah, I wrote a little about, i added on to the Poussin piece I wrote in the summer. and then a little thing about the Louvre, which I think I'll include in that book.
Mark: Okay. And to tell us about what else you're working on right now, fiction-wise. i I read your recent story that I i think at Hobart.
Greg: Yes.
Mark: And what, what ah do you have another novel cooking or are you thinking of a short story collection or, because I know, one thing I know about you, Greg, is that you're a pretty relentless writer, unlike myself, who takes his time and is is often you know stuck and ah having to deal with other things, ah battling myself.
Greg: Oh, I'm not wrong.
Mark: you you You stay productive, and so i which I admire very much.
Greg: Well, I try.
Mark: the what What else are you working
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: i try. There's a lot of stop and starts. so
Mark: on? What fiction are you working on now? Is there a longer project in the works or?
Greg: Well, there was an older novel that I've been looking at, but I'm not sure. and There's always like new little things. And I thought about, you know, i had I had actually written some short things in the past few years, but I'm not sure about if there's enough of them for a collection or not.
Greg: or whether it even be interesting.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: So yeah,
Mark: i get I get the sense right now your thinking is not so strongly because of the obsession that you've developed with the visual art that right now it's it's a it's more of a back burner thing at the set at the moment, right?
Greg: it's more in non-fiction category.
Greg: Right, I want to get the art book done first.
Mark: Gotcha. That makes sense.
Greg: So I'm more concentrated on that. And circling back, I wanted to say that, you know, Socrates has published the this kind of sacred fount of alt-lit in Gary Lutz.
Greg: So the whole thing is like, if you're going to have the exemplar, you have the exemplar.
Mark: Right.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: That's interesting.
Greg: So why why, you know, the imitators can can wait for another day.
Mark: And what what maybe you could say a little bit about what I have my own thoughts, but what you you think about what she does better than the imitators.
Greg: Well, I mean, there's a lifetime of writing. i mean, she's in her 60s now. So, I mean, there's just there's just simply that.
Greg: i mean, there's simply all that experience.
Mark: And also, at the set at the sentence level, though, the material is often very domestic and sort of small scale and small bore by design, which would dovetail with sort of outlet's idea of taking on the small scale.
Greg: Right.
Mark: The prose, on the other hand, is is very finely worked, right? It's like very, I mean, the famously meticulous.
Greg: Oh, yes. Okay.
Mark: So that's the that's a big, I would say, big difference. Though often, I suppose, that the diction and syntax is kept like relatively unrarified on purpose, or maybe at least the diction, but the syntax is where the interest is, like unusual juxtapositions of everyday words, that type of thing.
Mark: So that's a great that's a great example of a way of being complicated and simple at the same time in a way.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: um
Greg: And very funny. I mean, it's just, um it's hard to, to top that, even though it's not a competition, it's just, well, here, you here you go.
Mark: And very funny.
Mark: Oh, it is. No, I'm kidding.
Greg: Here's Henry James said, here's the real thing. And I mean, i think a lot of those people are striving for that, but it seems to come out of her in a very heartfelt manner.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: And with a lot of, you know, a lot of care and compassion toward the world. Even if, even if there's, it doesn't, it and it never feels bitter.
Mark: That's true, right?
Greg: It's always light. Even if it's heavy, it's not bitter. It's very, it's very um comforting almost and caressing those stories and and fictions.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Greg: It's, it's, it's,
Mark: Or even or in the newer right the memoir, that I mean, that that's interesting because that does, in a way, you could you could sort of sell that to an outlet audience.
Greg: Yeah.
Mark: Like here's memoir, but it's done at such a ah finer degree of of of just like linguistic polish that it is sort of like when you look at the other stuff, you're like, wow, you could have worked on this longer.
Greg: yeah
Mark: You really could have. you know and And this is the they the authentically precise, you know precise
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: And I think a lot of precision is sacrificed in a lot of the outlet stuff. It's kind of ah sort of vague.
Greg: Right.
Mark: they The images are not very very distinct. and And it's just, you know whereas with Gariel, the precision is always there. However small bore the topic or however domestic it might be, it's sort of charged by the language itself.
Greg: Right. Absolutely.
Mark: It is made into something grander and greater.
Greg: right
Mark: And as you you often mention, that's just the sonic element, right? Like when you read her stuff aloud, it has a significance that a lot of alt-lip when you read aloud or you hear at New York readings, it's just like, this is some of the flattest stuff I've ever heard in my life.
Greg: you
Mark: And when when you listen to to to Lutz and you you read that even aloud to yourself, it's just a very, you know, it's so obviously different. So interesting.
Greg: I've read it. I've read some of those bits out loud to my daughter and she loves them.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: And even if she doesn't get it all, there is something that comes across that it's so funny, you know, you know, like diagnosing a car or something and, you know, and diagnosing it like,
Mark: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Unpublishables: The one with diarrhea-induced colic in the professor sort of switches between what bathrooms to use at various times of the day.
Greg: Yes, that's in the first book, right?
Unpublishables: julia yeah Yeah.
Greg: I think.
Unpublishables: Surprisingly, given how packed and populated with bodies these stories are you know coming in and out of the narrator's narrator's lives, ah character itself seems to play a very minor role in Lutz's considerations, at least, which I'm sure you have lot in common with.
Greg: Well, yeah.
Unpublishables: Meaning there's kind of one character and it's different style.
Greg: i I didn't want to, right. it In Suavity of the Rock, i I resisted trying to name the narrator or name the main character as much as I could. And I think in her work, you know, it's it's often, it's the other people.
Greg: Let me tell you about the other people's names and the other people's and my, I shall remain, you know, different people.
Unpublishables: that's
Greg: And I guess that can be tricky and off-putting. ah so I think when it comes from me, not when it comes from her because she's a master, but when when i I did it, I don't think it was very, you know, people don't know what to make of it, which I've gotten a lot of of that type of response to my work anyway.
Greg: It's it's to to the fiction, not the not the essays. and some people complain about the essays too that they're too personal but you know that's
Mark: I mean, that is it that is a signature of your style, though. Even when I read them, I always think, sometimes we have these little debates on Twitter when you, you know, in a friendly fire, but when you cut down so something that I've said, and it's it often hinges on this difference between us.
Unpublishables: Thank
Greg: you know friendly
Mark: but You... treasure impressions, subjectivity, this sort of thing, whereas I, maybe because of my philosophy kind of orientation, tend towards the the objective, the the factual, what's what's actually happening in the situation. you You really revel as a poet, as a lyric poet, might in the impressions, you know, and I think that's a signature of your your nonfiction just as much.
Mark: that's that's In a way, that's where it's almost more unusual. It's like, how is this, though it's technically nonfiction, it is so sensory and so lush and never really leaving behind texture and feel for ah sort of a ah more rarefied, purely conceptual kind of writing.
Mark: And I think that's, I mean, that's one of the things I come to your writing for is that it's it's so heavily weighted
Unpublishables: Observation without research, and I mean that in the best way.
Mark: Yeah. I mean, it's like it's like no no no no i no ideas but in things kind of thing, right?
Greg: thing.
Mark: It's like that you you ground it very much in the sensory, whereas, say, in my own writing, I'll sometimes allow that the conceptual to become its own thing and have its own sort of gravity.
Mark: But your writing sticks very close to surfaces, to to feelings embedded in in things and and perception and...
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: That's why I always think of you as, in a way, as a kind of poet in that sense, in spirit at least, you know.
Greg: Thank you, though the the the painting is the is the outlier because I do have to read a lot about that in order to really teach myself.
Mark: Okay.
Greg: And so that that has been,
Mark: More research driven in that way, right?
Greg: it tend not some of it has been, and so I you know i worry about using too many quotes, but I was just talking with a friend and she's kind of writing the same types of things.
Unpublishables: so
Greg: And she's saying, you know, if the quote, why paraphrase, you know, if you have something beautiful that you want to quote, just quote and not, why use your own words?
Mark: Right.
Greg: Because you can't beat their words. You can't beat, you know, Arthur Danto's words or Malraux's words or Merleau-Ponte's ponte's words.
Mark: Right.
Greg: So
Mark: Especially if it's just for the sake of like translating it and and ultimately like debasing what is a more purely expressed thought. I also say, just, just do the quote, you know, you're not proving anything by, you know,
Greg: Right. Right. Yeah. But I mean, I'm I'm I maybe you guys I know Mark does more research for his fiction.
Greg: I don't know about you, Stellan, but I don't.
Unpublishables: It's been a while since i was into nonfiction art writing. It was also visual art, I think more painting than architecture, Rothko specifically.
Unpublishables: Well, both.
Greg: hmm.
Unpublishables: in Rothko Chapel is probably the thing I'm proudest of, but I was thinking it's easier to be out of time in a beneficial way when you're writing about monuments past as opposed to, a guy I think it was in the 3 a.m. interview with you and Lutz, you'd said you'd had a piece you'd written on Louise Gluck that an editor refused to see because you took your time with it and she got her Nobel six months ago.
Greg: right right
Unpublishables: You know, nobody's gonna say that the Rembrandt exhibition's done. ah Get out of here.
Greg: exactly that's it's so but it's so topical out there that it's hard so i guess these are more to be you know like the issues you know these are supposed to be hopefully they can stand on their own for a while and they're not like topical little
Mark: Right.
Greg: articles about the the Monet exhibit at the BAM or something.
Mark: Exactly.
Mark: but had't Didn't you tell me, Selen, that you, the Welbeck story even, and involved a certain amount of research, that some of your fiction, like you dig into some, or tell me, i don't know.
Unpublishables: Well, yeah, I mean, i I like Welbeck. He wouldn't be anywhere near my list of favorites, but I'm charmed because he's so easy to ape. I mean, I just started out, you know, doing satirical things that didn't come up to
Mark: Oh, I meant that I think it was, wasn't it part of the research um of just like all the, I mean, that the story is so full of texture of just about like contemporary technology, message boards.
Unpublishables: To be honest, it took about two weeks of attending the worst, most demonic Peter Thiel sort of of parties you can possibly imagine, just to get a sense of that old space.
Mark: That's what I mean. That's research. yeah So yeah, even fiction can, yeah.
Unpublishables: yeah earth Anything I read is probably against my better judgment or deliberation, but yeah, I would call that research.
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Mark: Interesting. Yeah. So I think, ah ah I think we can wrap up here, Greg. I think it's been lovely having you on.
Greg: Great.
Mark: You were definitely the right place to start this.
Greg: Thank you.
Mark: Your, your magazine is sort of a beacon to a lot of people, including myself about the types of fiction that ought to find a broader audience and fighting against some of these other forms that feel a little bit stale now.
Mark: So I'm certainly thankful to just the existence of your magazine, the time you put in, and and also, of course, to the fiction that you're working on and these other things. So I'll be looking forward to that.
Mark: but Thank you so much for coming on.
Unpublishables: Thank you. Bye.
Greg: Thanks for having me. i'm glad you guys are doing this.
Mark: Thanks.
