Transcript
Mark: Hi, this is episode two of Unpublishables. um I am Mark, this is Céline. I wanted to add, Céline started with a sort of introduction last time to some of the things we're doing here, and I think I want to take a crack at it too. So I would say we want to but we want to deal with stuff, books, fiction, et cetera, that has a hard time finding a place and a hearing and ah and and a venue.
Mark: But beyond that, we also want to deal with questions that maybe are not normally posed to authors, being willing to joust a little bit with the guest being willing to to get into what's maybe not positive about something, and to deal with those sort of interstitial spaces. so One thing I was thinking about is that, so therefore we're not just talking about fiction, we're also talking about criticism, right? The negative review, for instance, which is something that has been sort of, I think, a topic in the last few weeks online about the idea, what what are the risks? What makes a review somewhat unpublishable? For what reasons?
Mark: And I was thinking, There's obviously the gatekeeping kind, right where the editors are the ones who sort of stop the publication of something um because of whatever, let people enjoy things, poptimism, that sort of thing.
Unpublishables: Amen.
Mark: right and So we have that. But then there's also just like the social repercussions of ah of a of a negative review, particularly a professional negative review, which I think are like, maybe deeper now than they were in the past and the in the stickiness of the internet. right you The review, whenever you look up the target of that, say, the hatchet job or the negative review, it's there. It's it's there with that person's name. So there's a kind of social consequence right that maybe in the old days, oh, you blow somebody up.
Mark: And couple of months later, nobody's thinking about it. right So i'm i'm I'm sort of curious about for so this this latest round online. right with ah Valerie Stivers and Annika Levy. So what what did you make of of this yourself, Salim?
Unpublishables: Oh, I mean, I think we we're both in agreement that people were being too mean to Stivers, you know, ah it might have been a bit of a generational cur to cultural disconnect. I think she was being earnest, not passive aggressive, as many accused, I think,
Unpublishables: And I, my crack at it was, you know, if you're going to post an honest takedown of a bad work, it's, And undignified for somebody to maybe cover their bases with a, oh, this is painful for me too sentiment, pretty strongly implying that if the works author does better next time, you know, she'll be graced with a good turn in the future, which was a direct quote.
Mark: OK.
Mark: Did that, did that, did that, okay.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Mark: well Well, I was thinking about this though. um Given the kind of, I mean, I don't review books anymore, but, uh, If I were to review, I could completely see, i don't i can't say it speak for Valerie, I don't know what she, what her state of mind and the particulars of this particular DM, but I could totally see wanting to separate these two things and saying, look, hey man, I just wanted to give you a heads up, i've got I'm not about to blow you up on this book.
Mark: ah I don't expect you to be happy about that, but I also don't take this to be a criticism of you as a person, in other the context. I could totally see sending that message and and not seeing any contradiction in that.
Mark: And there were people who seemed to say, you're so cowardly. I thought you were bold by you know saying you're gonna do this negative review, but it's you're not so bold because this is like, no, no, no. um the What's bold is the review. the The criticism of the book may be bold. and pure, and and et cetera. But that has nothing to do with the criticism of the person. It's just there was this kind of flow beyond. It's like they they were like, oh, we got you. There was no gotcha here in that sense because it's like, yeah, the book review is still pure. I savaged you. That's that's done.
Mark: That doesn't say anything about my personal feelings about you or or or the other. Now, on the other hand, as you say, you're you're sort of suggesting in this particular case, she did see seem kind of grovel-y. Is that what, right?
Unpublishables: Yeah, but at the same time, ah I mean, as far as I can tell, they were friends before that does introduce some obligation, like you were saying to do something. Maybe this was an overreach, but. ah
Mark: I don't even say, it's not necessarily an obligation, but i I don't think there's anything, there's no gotcha. It's like, yeah, bro, I hate your book.
Unpublishables: Yeah. yeah
Mark: I hate your book. And at the same time, I think you're an okay person. Like this is this isn't, I also think in today's criticism, so much is ad hominem. The idea, anything you say about somebody is almost taken as a personal attack because of the way the culture is now that,
Mark: separating work and and and never mind art, but work and and the person in any context, an essay, criticism, we immediately take it in this sort of very personal kind of way, you know as ah as ah as a personal attack where it's like, no, this is a critical attack.
Mark: And if I have a personal attack, that would be a separate issue. Maybe I do. Maybe I also hate you. But I could easily hate this book and be like, yeah youre hurt you're a cool dude. Actually, I know plenty of people I hate their books because I hate almost all books.
Mark: But I still think they're like interesting people. i don't don't mind hanging out with them. you know like that doesn't that's i just feel like a lot of the comments were like, they couldn't even leave room for the idea that these are two things, right?
Mark: And that you might want to tell somebody, especially in your own community, right?
Unpublishables: Yeah. yeah no
Mark: Literary world. Hey, I did have to, I did by doing the honest and, um, you know, conducting myself with integrity, I had to say what I had to say about your book, but ah that doesn't mean x Y, and Z about you. Now, what happens from there? Of course, the person is free to say, I think, I thought Anika's response was perfectly legit. Like, well, you know, fuck you. Like, that's a useless venue. um And maybe it is. I don't know. But I just thought there should be room for that idea that, like,
Mark: you you could say that You could split those two, and it it's not it's not um inherently hypocritical. And people were suggesting hypocrisy is all I'm saying. I mean, what is your take on this?
Unpublishables: I mean, I didn't see anybody contesting the point she was making in the review itself.
Mark: Does it have to be hypocritical?
Unpublishables: ah I read it once or twice.
Mark: No, but they were saying you're not you're not courageous like you think you are.
Unpublishables: Yeah,
Unpublishables: yeah,
Unpublishables: ended in sort of a chat GPT-esque call. you know I have the quote right here. And thus the pain, ugliness, and confusion on display in this book are at least signifiers of the complex and real.
Unpublishables: We need novels by women that explore these issues instead of merely attention-seeking and regurgitating the internet. So it ends on a call that we need books by women that uh or more about pain i guess rather than being a sociological comment on the
Unpublishables: thinking of a more cut and dry case. And the first thing that came to mind was Death Kit. I don't know if you're following. It was a smaller...
Mark: know
Unpublishables: ah journal, website, I don't think they're a press, ah but they made a tweet to the effect that any review ah in the so-called India ecosystem is bad. Any negative review, there should be no negative reviews ah because it's bad for the ecosystem and it hurts the sales of these fledgling, struggling authors, which I think if, you know, ah there's an author warranting that many independently generated negative reviews, I think, you The most half-assed takedown is probably better for the so-called ecosystem than letting a million of these city boats flourish.
Mark: That's interesting. these are are that i think
Unpublishables: I'm
Mark: The Annika case is nice because it's it's mainstream,
Unpublishables: I'm generally not putting flat earth anywhere near that category.
Mark: I understand that.
Unpublishables: yeah
Mark: What I mean is her case is kind of pure because you know you're not destroying the ecosystem by saying something negative. You can, but still there are consequences that would discourage you, not because, hey, that's not very sportsmanly of you.
Mark: You are ruining this very fledgling, tiny industry. It's like, no, no, no, this person is person's going to be fine. that Most of her reviews are really positive. So it was kind of a ah good, like, conceptually, it was a good test case.
Unpublishables: For good reason, yeah.
Mark: ah
Unpublishables: the idea
Mark: Because it isolates the the variable. What are you really scared about? And you're scared about these social consequences and like the way people over-personalize and can't deal with like, there are a lot, of for instance, i put it this way. There are a lot of people who hate my books, but I don't take it personally. Oftentimes they're still friends of mine. I'm like, you didn't really like this book, did you?
Mark: and And they'll be like, very uncomfortable, it's okay. Don't worry about me. i'm I'm good. I believe in my work to such a level that you could never possibly hurt me. so it's it's ah And then they're like, oh, thank God, like because you're right. I really don't connect with you're doing.
Mark: I wish more authors could feel that way. Like, yeah, I fucking hate your work, actually, but you're like a really cool dude. like That should be a space that people felt more comfortable in, but really, I think a lot of people are so insecure that if somebody says something about your book, you're like, oh my God, how dare you?
Mark: And I can understand with so much autofiction and so much of this bleed through between Memoir and reportage and all these other things.
Mark: It's like it all seems like one thing like if you attack my work That's definitely like attacking all of my soul. It's like not really
Mark: point about the indie one was what exactly? Like, the indie example. okay I think because it's true. Like, you can, that's an extra thing. You can damage the ecosystem.
Mark: There's some truth in that. I mean, some of these presses are are tiny and barely running in, you know, maybe they need sales to some extent to survive. I mean, there's some point in that, I guess, but I would rather see the press.
Unpublishables: But aren't negative reviews kind of negative reviews tend to attract more views to begin with if that's sort of the motivator you're operating on?
Mark: What's that?
Mark: That's true. That's true. But i then, to be honest, I think it's even doubly a community issue because those books don't even make any money, right? Indie books. theme My own books are indie books.
Mark: I think the indie community is even more about community than the mainstream one because there's nothing else in it but... the small set of readers of these books, readers, and and they're often writers as well, reading each other's work. You know, it's it's a little bit like the poetry community or something in this regard. So it becomes very, very personal, I think. And so it only amplifies the issue we'd be talking about with Hanukkah, which is, it's, oh you know, it's,
Mark: you know it becomes this really offensive thing. But again, I'm like, no, man, I hate your book. I didn't say we can't hang out. You might not what you you might be pissed that I hate your book, but you might hate mine. And what couldn't we hate each other's books and still hang?
Unpublishables: yeah
Mark: I totally think that's a legit space because I write stuff that if a certain number of people aren't hating it, I'd be disappointed, actually. It kind of amuses me when people are or don't like it, actually.
Mark: And I'm quite proud of, for instance, of my 2.63 on Goodreads for my my first novel. It's like it's nice, people in there, they say, this guy sounds like a terrorist, this guy sounds like a racist, this guy sounds like a misogynist.
Unpublishables: Flatten the curve, brother.
Mark: It's all quite amusing to me. i like And I wish more people had the confidence to be like, Please, go home. What else do you think of of ah of it you know it's like it's really it?
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Mark: It really shouldn't be a big deal. i think people are very, their egos have become very, very fragile. And I think that's part of it. So I mean, speaking in terms of today's guest, right, Harris Lottie, who we will bring on shortly, he he had a sort of mega tweet about his own recent novel, Forclosure Gothic, which What was the tweet? i've I've never seen a novel with such a a low rating, and I think it got like four or five million views.
Mark: And then there was a person who retweeted it with a comment saying, um because the Goodreads comments that non-professional reviewers on the other, instead of the professional actually feel very free, right?
Mark: Because they aren't part of a small community. They can take down an author without feeling like, oh, I won't get invited to that party next week because then they were never going to be invited.
Unpublishables: Yeah, yeah.
Mark: They're probably living in another country. like So there's a freedom to the Goodreads review, which is kind of cool. like That's the place they'll call you a terrorist. Somebody in New York is not likely to say that to me because it could be a problem you know in the literary world, right?
Mark: But a rando. It gives him freedom. He's like, I don't give a fuck what you think because you have no bearing on my social life. So I like that about Goodreads. I think we all get a kick out of it. I see people repost their worst Goodreads reviews because you see the freedom, right?
Mark: Or is that not true?
Unpublishables: You're saying there's like an exemption from the literary social credit score.
Mark: I mean, there absolutely is, right?
Mark: They're and terrible readers. that That goes without saying, and everybody knows that about Goodreads. But the one feature it it has is that there is, to the non-professional review, is that there's the freedom, like there is no social consequence.
Mark: Like I can dog this guy.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Many are anonymous anyways. You can't, it's not like you can find who this particular Goodreads reviewer is. So it does give them freedom. But anyway, the recurring comment with Harris was,
Mark: I guess the book is supposed to be, some people had this impression that was supposed to be very terrifying. Like it was a classic horror book and they were upset that that this wasn't happening. they weren't They weren't getting the jump scares, I guess, that they wanted.
Unpublishables: I did see a surprising amount of engagement. ah This was in the early stages of the tweet, I guess it took off after that, but it was from, you know, like book talk horror romantisy people and their gripe with it was that ah the twist at the end wasn't scary enough, basically. ah
Mark: Yeah, i mean before I actually wrote, I'm going to ask Harris about this. I wrote Harris about this before he ever tweeted that, saying one of the things I want to ask you about is why all these Goodreads people are saying this book, in many respects, is not scary enough, that there were many opportunities early on that seem like undeveloped, right, that throughout, and we'll we'll get into the specifics when we bring them on, but I just thought it was interesting that, like,
Mark: this person retweeted saying, no, I actually found it really scary and terrifying.
Mark: it It was classic horror. You just missed it. Rather than I would have thought, what about the and the most of the professional viewers never took this up. They took a completely different direction. Like this isn't really a horror book.
Mark: Grow up. And so I just thought that was an interesting dynamic that the tweet that even blew up around this book was defending it on horror genre grounds. Whereas I too personally took it in a different direction, but okay.
Mark: Saying all that, I think at this point we should probably um turn to Harris himself.
Unpublishables: welcome harris thanks for coming on uh to listeners uh harris lottie is a writer whose short stories have appeared in bomb southwest review new york tyrant rest in peace he's co-founded the indie press cash for cold books and uh it's a fiction editor for fence magazine uh yeah welcome harris uh is it true that you are the only author on goodreads with a negative rating
Harris: Hey.
Harris: not Not for the effort of trying, but um yeah, i think I think it's true. and i'm trying i'm trying I'm trying to own the the negative reviews a little bit, but... um After the um that tweet went viral, actually, that it's it's been ticking up and it's going to like it's like teetering on the edge of going it back into like the threes.
Mark: I know because and because you had that, that I mean, i also let's that's another issue.
Harris: And I feel a little mixed about it.
Mark: I mean, the sales must be amazing right now for you. Don't lie, man. I mean, it doesn't matter what, as we know, any publicity is going to, and you this is like, your what your tweet was like 5 million views.
Harris: You know, I'm not. yeah
Mark: The retweet, which was defending the the frighteningness and jump scariness of your book, right? You know what I'm talking about that? I mean, ah you if you take those, that's why you write
Harris: Oh yeah, for sure.
Unpublishables: Yeah, the bright light behind you is actually the high beams from the Humvees you've been able to buy with your new profits.
Harris: Oh my God. Yeah.
Unpublishables: situation.
Harris: ah I think the question is like, if I get to do it again, kind of thing at this point, I don't know about profits, but I, am yeah, that I was shocked by that. And I was kind of like doing like a little research on like how viral, like viral things go.
Harris: And I was like, holy shit, you know, there's a lot of people hyping this book up. And so I'm just basically just like waiting for it to come back around and then bite me in the ass again, where everyone's just like, I was promised nightmares, you know, and the you know,
Mark: No, no. Exactly. Because now you'll get the bump from whoever that person was retweeting saying, no, no, no. I guarantee you it's actually really terrifying. Then it'll go back. that People will buy it.
Mark: you'll get And then my own pornet perspective is most of those people are going say, wait a minute. This is this still not really horror. this isn't this i kind of feel that retweet is it's it's great for you in the sense of, hey, you probably sell a lot of books off of it.
Harris: Right.
Mark: But I actually still think the professional reviewers tended to be more correct that if you're looking for jump scares or being frightened for days or whatever that person says after certain imagery, ah maybe you will be in certain points and junctures, but that really isn't the thrust of this book.
Mark: I mean, the genre expectations, right, on Goodreads, what was so interesting. I don't know, was your I'm curious, like, was your marketing team pushing this as a horror book? Maybe that's why they all think it's a fucking horror book, but that's, it's weird, because I don't see it as a horror book, yeah.
Harris: Well, yeah, what what you said about the the professional reviews, all the professional reviews completely nail what the book's doing. They kind of explain how it moves, how it's kind of like a goth song, as it was described, or like just full of portents and omens and kind of like it's an unsettling book.
Mark: Oh.
Harris: So if you dig like a centimeter below the surface, of any, like, first of all, like you mentioned the marketing. I'm like, what, there was no marketing that marketed my book as a horror book, except for there's a Goodread late on Goodreads.
Harris: There's a label that just says horror. That's really the only, the only thing.
Mark: oh
Harris: And I guess someone just looked at the cover because the cover, like you can't really like, you know, you can't diminish what the the power of that cover, like the cover is so, so good.
Mark: No, Yeah.
Harris: I can't take no credit for it, but you know, I think,
Mark: the cover may The cover may have done you wrong in this sense. It's beautiful, and and it is horrifying in a way. Maybe the book itself is, I would call it eerie or uncanny, moments of the uncanny, yeah.
Harris: Right. Well, but but when I, but when I think about like, like the different, like Mark, or so like, this is a good question to pose. Like the difference between like an unsettling image and a horrific image, it's kind of like the same thing, but it's something more that happens within your mind.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Harris: It's like a, something that's happening inside your brain. and It's like a feeling versus like um anything that you can kind of like depict cleanly, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's muddy. So,
Mark: OK. One thing I thought of it during the book, right a lot of the comments are about this. There are a bunch of sort of uncanny, eerie, scary moments within it right that they they claim right didn't develop or didn't flower into basically a kind of jump scare kind of moment. So I'm thinking of in, in of,
Mark: the two gravestones discovered in the basement, right? Or the fact that Junior is like preternaturally precocious like and speaks in this very formal sentence very early. Or the garbage man right and his wife who move in. So there are all these little moments, right I guess, that are definitely uncanny and weird and sort of glitchy.
Mark: the The language you use, sort of which is really, I think, very interesting, cycles between ah relatively realistic depiction to something something more um surreal.
Mark: Vic trying on the the doctor's you know method acting as a kind of sliding on of a face and reality just changes in that way. So I just wonder what you think of those moments. like There are those moments throughout the book, but people seem to expect them to turn into like, what's under there? with the The tombstones or Junior's a fucking monster, it turns out, and he's going to fucking destroy the town. I mean, go ahead. Yeah.
Harris: Yeah, well, yeah, for me, I think for Like, for one, I don't i don't want to underplay, like, how influenced by horror I am. I really am not a literary horror guy, but I love horror films.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: And i'll watch I'll watch everything. Just like that fan base. They really are, like, a ravenous fan base. And I would have loved to connect with them because that means, like, great, great sales. But the thing about horror that I find most interesting is, like, the first, like, 20 to 30 minutes.
Mark: Okay. Yeah.
Harris: Because it's so... it provides space for the the viewer to, while you're like taking in the art, you're constantly trying to figure out what it all means. And then once things kind of start like finding their rhythm and moving in the one direction, you kind of know where it's going to go and how these things proceed based on the genre. And that's the most boring part.
Mark: That is so interesting.
Harris: So-
Mark: What you like is the portentousness, right? The setup. and But when it starts delivering, yeah.
Harris: Right, yeah. And just like with like with, but also like with with with all with all books, i I feel like there's a lot of authors that that do this and they're the ones like i try to I try to learn as much as I can from where they're like providing space for the reader to interpret constantly.
Harris: So it's a much more active and engaging read. And one of the tags that I really didn't get against me on all of the shit talk, like the piles of shit talk, there was not like a lot of like did not finish, you know?
Unpublishables: So
Harris: And it's like, that's the point.
Mark: That's true.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: That's true.
Harris: I just want to like to get you to the end is is really the the goal and what you experience is what you experience. You don't have to love it, but as long as it it affects you.
Mark: Yes.
Harris: um And I would have loved to like ruin people's days at the beach. Like that's, that's an awesome, noble thing for a writer to do. I think if they did it to me, I would be grateful.
Harris: But the fact that everybody thinks they should enjoy a book is just a strange, strange thing.
Mark: And, yeah. I mean, they essentially i the sense is I get you frustrated their desire for a certain type of um narrative development that this what didn't end up being a vehicle to the flowering of fear in the right way, that it was portentious, but the portent didn't lead to, you know, whatever, the town burning up or, you know, some some monstrous thing, right?
Harris: Yeah, what well, the most the most interesting part of of those those stories to me is like what's being revealed about those characters and then like how it may or may not be carried through and then those connections that you are then more engaged with as as you're reading, you know?
Mark: Yes.
Mark: Yes.
Mark: ah let let me turn to the professional reviews because I thought...
Mark: One thing, here's where I had, I may be pardoned from some of them. I think they're absolutely right, as you say, that if you were expecting like classic horror genre kind of stuff here, then you haven't read very deeply.
Mark: So that's legit. Goodreads is always like that. We know that. I actually find it kind of fun that... The reading is so sloppy on Goodreads that sometimes if you read enough of the reviews, like every 20th one, though, is like absolutely gold and says something you would never possibly consider because it's so out there.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: It's actually like interesting because it's like an outsider critic is in the same way as outsider art. Right. But let's let's.
Harris: Right. Oh yeah.
Mark: but Yeah.
Harris: That's interesting. Yeah.
Mark: But let's think about the professional reviews for a second. and I was thinking, you know, a lot of them thematically were describing the book, you know, as being about, you you know a kind of coming of age of ah the abandonment of youthful dreams, of pipe dreams, this kind of thing. Because you know the character goes you know thinking, as far as Vic being a Hollywood actor, right this very glamorous kind of lifestyle, and then sort of coming back down to earth in the way of ah of a Bildungsroman, right? That now actually he's got to do this other thing. Similarly with Junior, I guess his dreams are of being a writer. Is that right? so And there's a kind of kind of deflation back to reality, right? but Reconciling with the truth. But to me, I felt like the whole renovation theme, right, that is specifically, obviously, the literal part of that is
Mark: house renovation right turning this is is also a kind of renovation of these the spirit of these characters that it's not so much in it's an abandoned dream but maybe in a dream that was well abandoned like it's it's it ought to be for something more authentic and real because they like connect with something that is maybe less illusory than hollywood glamour smoke and mirrors less illusory even than As I know from New York, the literary world is pretty much just as much smoke and mirrors in many respects.
Mark: It's like silly.
Harris: Right. Right.
Mark: It's it's exciting and and titillating, but it is kind of empty when you get down to the end of it. right But here they connect with a family tradition. right The grandfather, I think, is the first in the...
Mark: of the And so there is something like authentic that's happening to them in in in their abandoning this the silliness of of Hollywood or the writerly world for something like that they actually know and that's in their blood in some way. And I would say this, that some of the most moving scenes to me and most impressive scenes in the book are where you depict how they see ah one of these dumpy fucked up houses and how you would how you would fix it up.
Mark: What would go for the estate sale?
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: What would be trash? What would be, you know, ah how would you would price this out? who You know there's almost a very loving approach to the way you do that. And it's very moving.
Mark: Like here, they're finally doing something that's really in them and it's not for show or something like that.
Harris: Right.
Mark: And I also know that you have personal experience in, ah renovation and other things. i'm Surely you would have drawn that eye comes partly from your own eye, right?
Harris: Oh, yeah. No, Mark, I think that's actually ah really astute. and And, you know, I i say this all the time. Like right right now, um my wife is working full time and um so she works as and as a nurse. So she's like gone from like 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. So it's just me with two toddlers all day.
Harris: And there's something so freeing and kind of relieving about that because it's end to end. I cannot write. I cannot pursue my dream in this way that um gives me, ah allows me to relax. Right. And I think like there is like a certain amount of, uh,
Harris: Like to give up your dream, it sounds like a horrible thing, but it's also this really relieving thing because then it's like, what what immediate thing are you are you are you filling that in? And it actually prevents you from kind of like living in the a distant future and living in the now, right?
Mark: Yes.
Harris: So I think that that's kind of like... that really is not, not I'm thinking about it. It's kind of like the, the metamorphosis of Vic, right. And it becomes something that he starts to do kind of maladaptively toward the end.
Mark: Yes.
Harris: But it's like, there's that chapter where he's like trying to convince Heather that he actually is as happy as he's saying he is.
Mark: Yes.
Harris: And like, there's kind of like this sense that he's maybe lying to himself, but then like his actions kind of speak for themselves where he's just like, he can't stop doing this.
Mark: It seems like he's really joyous, like even dealing with the god the the garbage man.
Harris: And they're,
Mark: hes He's excited to work with this guy. he's he's He's our monster, he says, because he's so good at like ah redoing the houses in a way that's like you could, no, Vic is obviously like, he's like actually doing something that's not theoretical or,
Mark: or speculative, it's like in his bones, he's enjoying the day. like He's like, I go to the site with this guy, and he wants to to call him over. And the wife is like, Heather's like, i don't know, you want to be friends with him? No, he's great.
Mark: This guy's great. There's real joy there, authentic joy. I don't think it's lying to him. mean, yes, there's a layer of that. But as time goes on, the reason he doesn't want to go back to Hollywood is like, I'm getting a kick out of flipping these houses right now.
Mark: And I'm good at it.
Harris: right
Mark: ah Being good at something matters, right? that yeah
Harris: Right, yeah, and being able to provide for your family also is like the the biggest, once you have kids, you know, like like the the questions of your, like what you want kind of go out the window and, you know, it's, there's something really rewarding about kind of like continuing to like foster like the, your lineage, you know, your legacy, build a legacy.
Mark: Yes.
Mark: Right.
Mark: That's right. Yes.
Harris: um But I can speak from personal experience, like renovating houses, like if you were a writer and you want to like learn about what people go through and how how how their lives end and like the shape, how their shape, their lives form and end. It really is just like this really beautiful time capsule, um not to mention like the the characters you meet that work for you and you just get a slice of like every single segment.
Mark: Right.
Harris: of America and it's a really kind of like good way to see the world. You know, I enjoy it a lot.
Mark: Yes.
Harris: um But yeah, I've seen all kinds of weird shit, you know, like most of the most of the book, you know, i saw what, speaking at Goodreads, you know, I saw somebody at Goodreads being like, this guy's cribbing from all these Gothic traditions and all this.
Harris: I'm like, bitch, this shit happened to me.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Harris: Every single thing, like the weirdest part of each one of these stories, this happened to me, you know, this is something I've encountered.
Mark: Happened? This actually happened? I know.
Harris: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark: i thought I thought the book is lovely because we have we're always swamped in this, lately, in this idea of you know autobiographical work and the writer talking about him himself writing a book, et cetera. I'm so interested. This way of drawing on autobiography is just so much more open and rich because the book has...
Mark: these very surreal elements, these very mixed element elements. And it's it's obviously not a man just self-obsessed and charting his own life, but you've drawn so productively on what, I mean, the stuff about the sweep of of ah of a house and understanding how you would ah re-envisage how you see the bones of it and see the possibility.
Mark: That's the real dream, right? The Hollywood dream ends up being sort of fake, but he, he both, vic Vic has a real talent for seeing the future of these houses, right? How they would be, how they would work.
Mark: And then he does it and he has success, you know? So there's, there's a kind of authenticity there that I thought was great.
Harris: Right. Well, there's also like a weird parallel to writing too, especially if you're like writing recursively, because I feel like these houses oftentimes are so disheveled, but then you'll find like one thing where you're like, oh, if you redo the floor, then like the the bare wood of that can play off of this thing.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: And then it informs your other choices as you continue to go. So there's this like, there there is a very kind of like rich creativity, you know, and you have to like listen to the house, you know, like you have to listen to a story, you know?
Mark: Yes.
Mark: what I'm saying. That totally comes through. And I thought there was a real... I felt most gripped not by ah horror moments, but the moments when Vic and then at the end, Junior, right?
Mark: He's thinking he almost feels compelled by seeing these properties. He himself gets sucked in almost with that. Instead of it being this artificial dream, I want to be a star in Hollywood.
Mark: I want to be a writer. It's like, this is from the gut. Like they're like, they just look at these things and they're like, I got to do this.
Unpublishables: you
Mark: you know And that's like more it's more real in some way.
Harris: Right.
Mark: So i i I've read the book twice now, and I think it's it's really special in the way you have mobilized this theme of renovation,
Mark: but if If we could, ah Solana spent some, some I mean, you this is your first novel, right?
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: And you've spent a lot of time writing short stories, right?
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: So I'm not really a short story guy in a big way, to be honest, but Solana is. So she I think she she might have some things to to to talk about there.
Unpublishables: Sure, man. I mean, you spent a lot of time or a little time talking about how the most engaging part of a horror movie is the beginning, you know, the setting up of the expectations. ah There's this one story of yours that came to mind about this necklace and they're, you know, Vix in it too. And Heather, I think, and they've got this mute kid who's like playing in a gravestone in the garden and there's like quicksand breaking him in, you know, and Heather seeing like her kid's ankles or something like flailing around and she,
Unpublishables: like, yanks her kid out and he's holding this necklace. And I don't know, man, it's easy to put, you know, pauses in a movie, like a Lynch movie. ah You do a really, really good job, you know, putting in a story. Like, how else do you do it? You know, you'll have complete, you know, a blank page, you know, it's all pauses. But the horror almost seems to be beside the point of first these expectations for the necklace and they pawn it off after this back and forth and it's worth nothing.
Unpublishables: And then Heather, like, shoves her kid back into the quicksand, you know, forces him to play to see if he'll yank up something else and he doesn't. And they're at the dinner table ah and, you know, he's like an autistic deaf mute or something.
Harris: Thank you.
Unpublishables: He doesn't talk. And the big expectation is that he's supposed to talk. At the very end, the horror is when he talks about the who the hell owned the necklace before. And it was like a pregnant woman who died and was buried in the garden.
Unpublishables: And like the man hung himself and everyone's finishing each other's sentences. And it's i mean it's completely connected but it's almost a throwaway to the real horror which is the expectation that everyone has of itself you know same thing with your uh Your dispatches, you have these series of upstate dispatches and they're ghosts, you know, and some, you know, these widows and these whoever. and But all these ghosts are people who had way different expectations of the house than they did. Or, you know, you're starting to flip houses and you're haunted by the fact that somebody didn't sign off them correctly. And now you're like a million dollars in debt.
Unpublishables: I just like how bureaucratic and beside the point your horror is. Yeah. yeah know yeah
Mark: interesting yeah
Harris: i'll take I'll take that. Yeah, I'll take that all day.
Unpublishables: Yeah,
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: The horrors the real world correlates is what is sort of what you're saying, right?
Unpublishables: yeah, yeah.
Mark: Yeah, that's interesting.
Unpublishables: Uh,
Harris: Yeah, yeah. No, I always saw, like, I don't know if you guys consider, like, David Lynch's movies, like, a horror film, but I definitely think that there's, like, a lot of, ah like, you can make an argument that, like, Lost Highways is is a horror film, or, like, but like some of Bolaño's works are are are horror films.
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: um so so yeah though that that was kind of like more like how i envisioned it you know um then like some campy uh slasher which i also adore but oh really you're you're a fan of those
Mark: There's an oblique sense of horror.
Mark: ah Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which I like, and as I do too. But I think, I don't know, I'm really into like ah all all the Jason and Freddy movies, all that stuff. Even the ones that are not considered very good, I'll still watch because I'm like, oh, you've got you gotta to see it, man.
Harris: oh me too yeah oh the the worse the better yeah
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Mark: This is the ultimate line extension. it's like the 18th one in this. And you're like, I still have an appetite for this. though you know
Harris: Yeah, yeah. is yeah is like Well, there's something like really interesting about asking to to to continue to to do it. You know, like how how do you how do you make something interesting on the fourth or fifth time?
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: Like one am my one of my favorite um documentaries is that, have you ever the five obstructions that Lars von sch Trier
Mark: I have, yes.
Harris: film where he makes that that guy that short film maker remake his film five times with different instructions each time um but that's that's what I feel like those those sequels kind of become after a while you know
Mark: That's right.
Mark: Yeah. And I also like that you, I wasn't sure what what angle you would take on this. I thought you might completely repudiate any connection to horror and put it more in the lineage, as you said, Lynch and Bolaño, sort of oblique horror.
Mark: But it's so interesting to say, no, no, no, I love horror. It's just, I love the the parts before the slashing, not so much the slashing at seven.
Harris: Right.
Mark: That makes sense of of your of this book, too, of Foreclosure Gothic. So that's very interesting. And so in a way, you're not totally at odds with your audience. It's like, no, no, no, we both love horror.
Mark: It's just we love different parts of it, it looks like. They love the end and you love like the beginning.
Harris: Yeah. Well, right.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: And you know what I mean? that so So your book has like a series of beginnings, the flowerings of horror. It's like, no, that just turns out to be like, that's, this is the other thought I had about this book. and i'll I'll leave, I'll leave other things we can talk about.
Mark: But there's, i also thought of like magical realism because there's an element in which weird, eerie, unreal types of things happen. But the they don't develop in that way. but And the characters are not that troubled that, hey, I guess nothing came of that. They they they accept unreality as like not that freakish. And in a way, it makes sense because Vic is ah is ah a Hollywood actor where everything is smoke and mirrors anyways, right? So illusion is not so crazy. So if ah you know if something happens that's weird, there's an acceptance within the book that
Mark: weird shit happens that doesn't lead to like gore and blood it's just some weird stuff like reality glitched a little there and the book is full of those kind of glitches with realism and and something eerie some kind of other sort of spiritual world or you know and and it treats it as as ordinary in the way of magical realism like it doesn't have to lead anywhere it's just like that's that's how weird life is like you know
Harris: Oh yeah, no, and I think that also like to build off like that's how life is, people are like, there's a resolution, like things things aren't being answered, but also like when you look back in your life and you remember things, you remember things that caused you the most kind of like ah emotional arousal, right?
Harris: But like the way that they kind of resolve themselves isn't like the thing that you like like have burned into your memory. you know So like that's kind of like the way that i I began to think about it as it like evolved.
Mark: Totally.
Harris: And I think that that kind of rings a little more true to me. like a Resolution kind of seems like the wrong wrong word to me in some ways.
Mark: yeah it Yeah, and and it's it's it's almost not the point of real interest or intensity. The emotions and attachment are sort of heightened ah in a prior stage, as it were, where it's still about expectation and possibility. By the time you get to the resolution, it's like,
Mark: Yeah, nothing much occurred actually, but it was exciting to dream about it or think what it might have been, but it turned out to be you know so something by the by kind of.
Harris: Yeah.
Unpublishables: You have a throwaway line, or not opposite of a throwaway David Zillay book where you're like, ah life...
Mark: but ah
Unpublishables: The glitch is when you know you do make your mark on life. It might even be like a delusion of modernity or modern art. you know Life happens to you, and that is very... ah you know Like in a Chainsaw Massacre movie, the glitch is when you...
Mark: Yeah.
Unpublishables: take the chainsaw and like cut their head off you know otherwise you're kind of running away from other people's expectations and hoping not to get bitten
Harris: Yeah, yeah. Did you guys read that book, Flesh? I felt like that book kind of did something similar, which I really kind of appreciated. it it didn't try to like answer any questions.
Mark: I didn't, I haven't actually read that. Have you, Celene? No? or I was the Booker winner this year, right?
Unpublishables: I liked yeah yeah
Harris: Yeah, it's it's such a fascinating book. I really enjoy it, yeah.
Mark: it's play Interesting.
Unpublishables: your stories are also place-based.
Unpublishables: I mean, do you think you'll ever get to the point where you ah run it out or overshoot your load and think, I gotta, to i mean, it's the Adirondacks or the Hudson Valley, right?
Harris: What do you mean?
Harris: Like write about something else?
Harris: honestly, like they're just, to tell you the truth, like I could write a book about every single house I've ever renovated. And right now what I'm working on is a is a story about my neighbors. Like my whole goal is to just like write this book that makes me have to move.
Harris: Um, but if you guys are interested, it's kind of, it's kind of a funny story, but the, like my neighbors, um
Mark: That's really good.
Harris: or this group of people called the Bruderhof, some, like, these hyper-pacifists um who moved here during World War two And, you know, they you'd think that they're, like, pilgrims, you know?
Unpublishables: Sick.
Harris: Women wear, like, ink-length skirts, like, bonnets and shit.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: They have, like, a farm and everything. So, like, these people are just, like, walking by, like, smiling, like, growing their own wholesome food and drinking their unpasteurized milk and they're all so happy. So I'm, like, writing this book about how they, like, terrorize this guy who lives near them with their goodness.
Mark: Yeah. That's an unreal that well even though the the core, the factual component of of your story is itself totally crazy, meaning it's it's very interesting.
Unpublishables: work
Harris: Every time. Yeah. it it
Mark: That's great. that won What a circumstance where you don't even have to go too far away from reality. It's like, no, this is a realist story. These are my neighbors.
Harris: yeah yeah Oh yeah. no
Mark: Yeah.
Unpublishables: The
Harris: Well, that's the thing. That's the thing that i'm always interested in. Right. And I think you kind of identified that where there's like these moments where it's like, it's almost like magical realism.
Mark: yeah
Harris: It feels it feels that way. And then you just move on. You're like, that was weird. Like what the fuck is that?
Mark: but she that Exactly.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: that's That's sort of a theme in some of your stuff.
Unpublishables: ah worst thing they could do to you is leave you five stars on Goodreads.
Harris: Yeah.
Unpublishables: Like, terrorize you with your goodness.
Harris: and that would That would suck.
Unpublishables: Yeah. I think
Mark: um
Unpublishables: um
Mark: And the the other thing I thought, as ah on ah on a formal level, the way that even foreclosure gothic is like a book-length work set in the present tense is a risk, right? Because it's like there's a kind of intensity or immediacy to the present tense that can kind of be a little bit exhausting. It works in the short story very easily, but in a longer form, there's ah there's a risk. But then I was thinking reading it, like the fact is the the language you use, because it is itself so rich and interesting, it kind of distances you again. It slows you down. You're paying attention to the imagery, which is very always very frequently unexpected. Those glitches actually, in some way, push you back from sort of racing through the text.
Mark: And it's sort of, it it's it's like perfectly counterbalanced. i think that's just an interesting theme in your fiction and also in the stuff that you edit that, you know, people use terms like alt-lit, indie-lit, et cetera. etc But, you know, alt-lit has a kind of association with a kind of flat down kind of style from towel and sort of it. In that sense, your writing and other the things that you edit, both Fence, which we'll get into, and Cash for Gold, of the press you co-founded, are definitely not alt-lit in that sense. it is I would just call it indie-lit because there's such an attention to language, imagery, um and that sort of thing. So if we could talk a little bit about i mean Fence, this is one of these venerable places like
Mark: I think of like conjunctions and certain other places that have been going a long time on this sort of language-rich, language-drunk kind of work. And ah how long have how long have you been there? And and what what do you work for the magazine or also on the book side sometimes?
Harris: No, and I never work on the book side of things, just always the magazine.
Mark: OK.
Harris: I've been there for, so i think I started in 2018.
Unpublishables: Thank
Harris: So about you know eight eight years now i've I've been editing there, which you know you you would think that it'd be a lot more work.
Mark: Wow.
Harris: But I think maybe I've worked on like six issues since I've been there.
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: OK.
Harris: And I did a lot of online stories um just because i had the opportunity, essentially.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: It was like, you know, go crazy kind of thing.
Mark: Yeah. it's it's it's I mean, look, i'm there are not many places that I would be interested in editing at. But that's like an exciting, I mean, it's such a storied place, you know. and um even what they've published books or on the other side.
Mark: It's like, I think of like say someone like Otessa Moshefegh, like the only book of hers I like is the one on fence, you know, the rest, I don't know what the fuck happened, but this is when she was like really firing at all cylinders.
Harris: Right.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: I mean, macu when I just looked through the catalog and looked through the issues, I'm like, these are exciting writers really pushing themselves to their most exciting sort of elements rather than sort of a,
Mark: giving the people what they want or something easier. It's like, I feel like it's it's so interesting that that you're editing there and makes sense that you write in a way that's like definitely not the down style or the low style. It's it's very rich, it's complicated, a lot of unexpected turns and stuff. that What have you learned from being an editor and how is it sort of filtered into like maybe your own thinking about writing or
Harris: Oh, that's, like yeah, that's a really good question. um Yeah, so one thing I kind of think about with Fence is, like, it's obviously avant-garde. um And there was kind of, like, a learning curve for me when I started there.
Harris: Like, it's kind of it's kind of a funny story, just, like, the the way that I got started there was Lynn Tillman was my teacher in undergraduate at SUNY Albany, which at the time had the Writers Institute, which housed Fence.
Mark: Oh.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Harris: um Before...
Mark: Okay.
Harris: Very shortly after that, day they parted ways and it kind of like dissolved into this weird thing.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: But Lynn Tillman was my teacher. And then a few years I had no idea who she was.
Mark: That's amazing on on its own, Harris.
Unpublishables: ya
Mark: that night that why don't want to start that That's even more interesting. but Anyway, was a Lynn Tillman.
Harris: yeah
Mark: Great.
Harris: yeah was That was my first creative creative writing class.
Mark: that's insane
Harris: And she was brutal. She was like a really, really tough editor. and I kind of responded to that. i really I really enjoyed working for her. I learned a lot from her.
Unpublishables: Thank
Harris: But anyway, so fast forward a few years later, i had i was at Sarah Lawrence and I was going to I applied to be the fiction editor at their magazine, a job that i should have gotten.
Harris: Like I was high and above like the most qualified person for it They didn't get give it to me. So I just like randomly emailed Lynn she was like, oh, I know this place where you can go. so it wasn't even like something that was really on my radar kind of thing.
Mark: That's insane.
Harris: And um so I got on it as a reader and I think there was like a miscommunication and they thought that I was like an editor. so I just like pretended to do the work that they asked me to.
Harris: And I went to all these meetings and like slowly and gracious myself and kind of like proved that I wasn't just like some crackpot.
Unpublishables: method
Harris: Right.
Mark: I think because of the person who was recommending you, they would have been like, well, Lynn wants him to be a part of this. and but what Even your life is sounding like something you have written, Harris.
Harris: it feels like yeah it's just like It feels like that.
Mark: ah
Harris: i like try i'm I'm very open to it, you know, and I'm always trying to reconfigure things and in in new ways. But yeah, I mean, I think people like generally just like, I'm not like kooky and like people want to help me kind of thing.
Harris: So that there's like, that's it. You know, I think it's that easy, you know, sometimes like, um but so so anyway,
Mark: Just being open to that, yeah.
Harris: But I remember like being in the the early meetings with Trey Sager was there at the time, Rav Gruel Coke, who's still there, um Gabriel Lewis, who isn't there anymore.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: like So it there's like a lot of people that weren't there already, they and they'd been doing it for really long time, so I just kind of listened to them. But the thing that I learned about reading stories like that, like the more avant-garde and stranger, ah more energy or language-driven pieces was like...
Harris: trying to interact with the stories as like an art piece and like imagining them like actually tacked up on a wall and I'm like walking by it and a museum because in a museum, there's not any expectation to the art.
Mark: Interesting. Yeah.
Harris: They're not like divided into like fictional and non-fictional or genre or whatever.
Mark: Yes.
Harris: it just kind of like, you're having a very honest experience with each with with each piece. So, you know, like, was that Apple real that the guy painted or was it not?
Mark: Yes.
Harris: You know, people don't ask those questions. So like, I kind of had to learn to like, instead of like trying to edit it while I was reading and being like, this is weird, like, get to the end and then feel how it made me feel.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: And if it if it moved me, then, you know, it didn't have to be like reconfigured, like maybe maybe it was just perfect as it is.
Mark: Right.
Harris: And like, it's raw form, you know, that's the most affecting form. So that was like, what I would what I learned in the most.
Mark: Well, does that mean you started out writing maybe in a more straight kind of mode?
Harris: that Yeah.
Mark: And by editing here and being exposed to that, it actually did influence your, your because your writing isn't like that now, certainly. It it it has these those the layers I would associate with fence or something like that. And it it isn't straight.
Mark: are you Is that sort of what you're suggesting or, yeah.
Harris: Oh, yeah, 100%.
Harris: I was kind of like already like moving in that direction anyway.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: It just was like a very lucky coincidence, I think.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: like I really blessed in a lot of ways. But, you know, that guy, the guy Rav, he just had a book come out, come out The Snares. We both had our debut books come out the same year, which which was really cool.
Harris: um But he kind of took me under his wing and like was... just kind of like fed me different sorts of books and like introduced me to to writers that i wouldn't wouldn't generally have read um rodrigue ray rosa have you ever read rodrigue rosa the african story he gave me that book and that pretty much just like changed the trajectory of my writing in so many ways just like interesting book yeah
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Mark: I don't know.
Mark: Okay, interesting. but tu tell So you added on the magazine side, you're saying. And so I'm wondering, So in other other words, the mentally and your brain space-wise, ah you were sort of ripe to be able to still think of a separate press, your own press perhaps, to to do book editing and take this other step of saying, okay, I do short pieces, but what about what about book pieces? Or tell us a little bit about how Cash for Gold even came about. like
Harris: Yeah, well, yeah, don Cash for a Goal just, like, happened.
Mark: What was driving
Harris: It was just, like, another one of those instances where the things kind of just, like, started to line up, you know?
Mark: You're amazing, Harris.
Unpublishables: I thought it was a leader.
Mark: You're amazing.
Harris: You can't force anything. It has to, like, you just got to wait for the moment and then strike when the moment's ready. But um so, yeah, I met – maybe you guys were at this event, the the the complete Gary Lutz tyrant party.
Mark: Oh, I wish I was at that event, but no.
Harris: It was like 20, 27 teammate.
Unpublishables: I was upset with two.
Harris: No, that was a 20, 28, 29 teammate. I forget when that book came out, but so I met John there and I just remember there being like, it was at Murmur that, that venue in in New York.
Mark: Mm-hmm.
Mark: Yeah, yeah.
Harris: It's a big venue. There's like hundreds of people. There was like so much energy and affection for not only Giancarlo, but like this whole scene, it felt like something was like really happening there.
Mark: Right.
Harris: Um, so I, I met John, he was like handing out flyers for John Lindsay, um, a body high fame.
Mark: And you mean John Lindsay, right? Yeah.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: He was handing out flyers or whatever.
Mark: Right.
Harris: And we just kind of like exchange emails and we're like emailing. So we had had been like trading stories for a while. And like, after, um, John Carlo died, we both like, we're really upset about it.
Harris: And we're, we're kind of like mourning the loss of this, like this, like load star that we felt that,
Unpublishables: so
Harris: like we just felt really directionless in a lot of ways. I felt like I was always kind of like writing stories, like hoping that Jordan would publish them or like John would like be interested in my work.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: Like it was like really ah good to have those kinds of goals, you know, right, right now I feel kind of listless. Like I don't, I don't even know where to, where to point at this point for myself, but um so we started talking about having a press and this is kind of a funny, this, this part's really funny, but like um I don't think we would have,
Harris: i don't know if he would have really started it if Brian Allen Ellis and House of Vlad at that point.
Mark: okay
Harris: I think he kind of was like getting overwhelmed with the work of it and was like, oh, here, I'll just give it to you guys and you guys can run with it. And, you know, it'll be yours kind of thing.
Harris: And then we had a couple of meetings. um I got like a nosebleed during one. It was just like kind of like a weird, like a weird omen.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: um And then we started like talking about doing Peter Vax book and he wasn't, it was like kind of waffling. We're just like, um we want, and all right, we'll just do our own thing. You know, we're not, we're not going to do House of Vlad.
Harris: But then Brian Allen else went on like, ah like an epic run after that and put out like six books or whatever and like got into Urban Outfitters and like was like really successful.
Harris: So he was joking.
Mark: yeah.
Harris: was like a spite run.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Harris: i
Mark: i can imagine
Harris: So, so, but then, but then we started, John had the name Cash for Gold. were going to call it Dummy Books for a while. And then, yeah, he, he's, John is just so, it's so, it's so hard to like emphasize um how important John was to all, all of this.
Mark: Cash for Gold is amazing. It's a great name.
Mark: Okay, yeah.
Harris: um But yeah, so he had Cash for Gold and um he had Peter Vack and then like,
Mark: and you didn't know you didn't know you didn't know him at the beginning before that event, or did you?
Harris: No, no, no, I didn't. Yeah.
Mark: So you didn't.
Harris: Well, also like covid COVID happened and over COVID, we, we'd spent so much time, doing workshops together. We had like a few people that we were doing workshops with.
Mark: Oh, OK.
Harris: So we were seeing each other more than I like saw my family, you know, during, during that whole time.
Mark: OK. Yeah, yeah.
Harris: So it kind of solidified over that. Nathan was involved.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: OK. Yeah,
Harris: Um, Seanthor Conroe, who else, who else would dig was doing it with us? Um, Jackson, Jackson Franz. I'm trying to remember like names of people.
Mark: yeah. yeah
Harris: Um,
Mark: You mean, was this like a Zoom or something? OK, interesting.
Harris: Yeah, were doing it over Zoom. Yeah. um And then I was like, i don't know if i was like workshopping stories that John, but my the first book for Cash for Gold was supposed to be my first book, Mental Health Professional.
Harris: um
Mark: Okay.
Harris: We had a cover done by Atticus Lish and like we had it formatted and like it was all ready to go too.
Mark: Oh, wow.
Harris: And then I sold my book to Astros and we canned it.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: So that, so that's how it all all kind of came out.
Mark: and the
Harris: So then we did Peter's book first, which was like a fucking crazy way to come in hot, you know, like that was way, that worked out way better that way.
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: Silly boy. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Unpublishables: Yes.
Harris: um Cause he didn't, he didn't need us to sell it. It was, it was already like baked in, you know, we, and,
Mark: That's what I'm thinking. That's a great place to start, yeah.
Harris: And his party, like the party we had for him got so much buzz. Like it was like hundreds of people. It was so I've never seen that like a literary party like this in my entire life.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: I was completely blown away. We're like, right, we got something, you know, like, like let's let's let's let's try to try to run this.
Mark: Yeah, yeah, yeah. What a good place to ah to have started because he's drawing in even probably film people, other arts people, right? Like a whole confluence of like New York, you know.
Harris: Bravo was there filming.
Mark: ah There you go.
Unpublishables: Thank
Harris: I'm not kidding. yeah but They suck, man. i got i got I got beef with Bravo.
Mark: The making of!
Harris: the They didn't even promote his book.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: They like they like ah tricked us into letting them come and then they filmed all this other shit.
Mark: Oh, oh.
Harris: But it was a really surreal kind of way to to to start it. Yeah.
Mark: So did that come about before the the suicide anthology? that That came later? Is that...
Harris: No, that that came out. The Suicide Anthology was first, but that i was like with house the House of Vlad too. So it was like, it's hard to like,
Mark: Oh, I see. Oh, that was your baby steps, like getting to your own.
Harris: Right.
Mark: Interesting. ah Okay.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: and And what, tell us a little bit even about that anthology. It's quite like an unusual kind of work, I think.
Harris: Yeah. i actually didn't do any work for it.
Mark: Okay.
Harris: john yeah john John has a much more personal relationship with the, with the topic.
Unpublishables: do
Mark: Okay.
Harris: Well, you know, I was, uh, yeah.
Mark: you ah's hilarious okay
Harris: Yeah. I don't think I'm like, uh, I should be the one editing that, that book, you know?
Mark: Okay. That's really funny.
Harris: Um, yeah.
Mark: Yeah, you do say you there's a there's a kind of joy that comes through you, Harris. But yeah, I was like, so you started with suicide.
Harris: No.
Mark: Now I get it. Okay, it's it's your other half, which who I don't know john personally.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: So okay, now and now I know what to expect.
Harris: Oh, yeah. No, jo John's great. Yeah.
Mark: Okay. um And so tell us about some of the other books on the, I mean, you say your inspiration, right, in part was Giancarlo, but I feel like some of these books, could you imagine him publishing?
Mark: Like, did like I was just looking, go ahead.
Harris: Oh, that's a that's a really interesting question.
Mark: Yeah. I kind of feel like maybe not.
Harris: um
Mark: like youre yeah like He kind of specializes in that kind of somewhat gritty, direct kind of style, you know? And some of your books fit that.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: So Peter's book would. But like the latest one, right? David Ryan's. Like I couldn't see Jean-Carlo necessarily being like psyched about, I don't know.
Harris: no well
Mark: Go ahead. go ahead
Harris: No, one. Yeah, it's ah that's an interesting one that's an interesting one for sure. And I love throwing that in there. I felt like... maybe, maybe not David's book itself. David's book is doing something very interesting and different.
Harris: Um, but maybe not in the same way that some of those books were, but in the spirit of like John Carlos catalog, I felt like he had a really good balance of like the sugar and the medicine kind of thing where it would be like, he'd, he'd have like, uh,
Mark: Yeah.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: like person people with personas who also wrote really good, well written books that, that, that maybe weren't like as crafty, but they're still interesting.
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: Yes.
Harris: And, um, they worked as like art, like artifacts of like a certain scene or time period, whatever.
Mark: That's right. But what I'm sort of paying you a compliment.
Harris: um
Mark: Like you've gone, you've extended that vision. And and this I'm saying it sort of bears the imprint, frankly, of something like Fence. It has a more experimental element to some of the books. I mean, even Nathan's, like some of his work is not, I mean, there's ah there's a simplicity on one level, but on the another level, there's there's some other things going on that I i just feel like when I look at Cash for Gold, and i was going down the list.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: I'm like, Yeah, so I can see Giancarlo being in the background of some of these things, but I also think you guys are doing your own thing. And it has a slightly different, more linguistically heavy spirit than so a lot of the stuff that he was more like, no, I like this sort of grit.
Mark: I like the scene that it documents. Your stuff is a little bit more than documentary. It's like people who really love language are are part of your list, I think.
Harris: Right.
Unpublishables: You were saying at the beginning.
Harris: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark: Yeah.
Harris: Yeah. I think a lot of it flows from like a, like an affection for Gordon Lish too.
Unpublishables: Okay.
Harris: I think that, you know, it's hard to den deny that Nathan's not a very, like, I think Nathan's probably has like every issue of the quarterly at his home, you know, like I can't name another 30 year old that probably possesses that, you know,
Mark: Our Lishian here is...
Mark: Okay.
Mark: No, but Selene, 25-year-old Selene may be in that same school. that's our This is our resident Lishian is her, so maybe...
Harris: is that true?
Unpublishables: lost them all in the move, man. But you were saying in the beginning that ah when you were starting out editing events, there was like a gap between writing that you saw like recognized very well as great, but it wasn't necessarily to your taste. After a while, you started, like you grew to fit the mask of thinking more in terms of language.
Unpublishables: ah Did that, you know, does it have to do with short pro short form versus long for you? Like when you're writing something short or if and you even want to at this point, is there more of a constraint, you know, to think of it as an art object versus with longer form?
Harris: I think the only way that I could write longer from like personally is like trying to chunk it out as short stories, you know, like, cause it's ultimately like what foreclosure gothic is.
Harris: It just moves linearly.
Mark: That's right.
Harris: So, you know, you can call it a novel. um
Mark: So you do have a love of, of the short form. That's what, that's clearly, I feel like a feature of what you do. Like even the chapters have the, uh,
Unpublishables: in a rotating cast of sort of the same characters. It is like volume one, volume two, volume three, 100, 100.
Harris: Right, yeah. Yeah, and they could rub off each other. but there's something there's something really interesting that happens, like the way the way that I wrote for Closure Gothic, Mark, as like ah as like a not like a capital N novelist, like you know I really wonder like how how how this would this would work.
Mark: ah
Harris: But like the way that I wrote for Closure Gothic is I wrote the first story and I wrote the last story. And then I continued to like synthesize elements from from those two to make another one and then another one and another.
Mark: That's so interesting.
Harris: You know what I mean?
Mark: That's super, that sounds very fence-like to me, actually.
Unpublishables: Yeah.
Harris: peace smith
Mark: That's quite experimental technique.
Unpublishables: yeah
Mark: You're doing some formal shit there, right there. So I gotta say, that's interesting, yeah.
Harris: But like to write linearly, that almost feels like ah like a death sentence or something. you know like If you get stuck somewhere, like where do you go where do you go from there?
Mark: Right.
Harris: you know um So that that that would be like, the like i I'm going to write a novel.
Mark: Right.
Harris: like My next book's going to a novel. write short stories, but like I'm going to think about it as as short stories the whole way.
Mark: ah Exactly, you' right.
Harris: Otherwise, I'll fall my face.
Mark: And so what what are you working on right now?
Harris: the The Bruderhof novel about about the people who torture the good guy.
Mark: Bruderhof novel. ah exactly
Harris: Yeah, it's kind of like a reimagining that book, ah Miss Lonely Hearts. I don't know.
Mark: Oh, wow.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Harris: That Nathaniel West book.
Mark: I love that book.
Harris: Yeah, that's my favorite book in the whole wide world. um It's just evil. I love i love like archbook arch kind of books where, you know, you could sense the text kind of like enjoying the discomfort that's causing you kind of thing.
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: Right.
Harris: Like Elfri Jelanik. Like i always just kind of feel like a mouse that she's like playing with before killing kind of thing.
Mark: yeah yeah
Harris: Or like Slur Jagey too. I feel the same way. like
Mark: Right.
Harris: um
Mark: So this book, is this book, given the people you've named, likely to be on the shorter side or? ah
Harris: I just want to get over 200 pages. and okay
Mark: it's it's ah it's It's a goal.
Harris: Yeah. Yeah.
Mark: It's a yeah aspirational stuff.
Harris: then
Mark: No. um And and any any other, what about nonfiction? Any short stories you're working on the side or is this sort of the thing right now?
Harris: No, I've been pitching. I really want to write a an essay about the uncanny in professional wrestling.
Mark: Oh, that's very interesting.
Unpublishables: Nice.
Harris: Completely out of left field, but I've like developed this like really ambivalent um fandom of professional wrestling, and I've been like trying to figure out why I find it so captivating, and I'm like, I think it has to do with the uncanny, because all these people are just kind of like these weird sort of mirror images of things that I kind of recognize.
Unpublishables: Okay.
Mark: ah
Mark: Yes.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: And they have like cultural touchstones that they each represent almost symbolically. Like this is the American hero.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: And this is like, ah you know, ah this will give up like a militaristic spirit. And then there'll be like a guy who's like a hippie and, you know, with the crazy hair. It's like, what's going on symbolically within the larger field of them bringing these people together and matches and who wins and who wins the rematch.
Mark: And, you know, I took i mean, I grew up I'm old enough to have grown up with Andre the Giant, right? Hulk Hogan, the original shit, like ah um ah Randy Savage, you know, all that shit. And I always found that fascinating. I was into that shit way before I got into literature. And I agree, like some of those characters are super compelling very uncanny.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: No doubt.
Harris: Oh yeah. And yeah, like painted like in in really broad strokes, you know, is there's something very American it's trying to like understand America through this warped looking glass is really like an interesting, um idea for me, but yeah, like, like Hulk Hogan would fight like the iron sheik when like America was at war with Iran in like the late eighties.
Mark: Yeah.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: Yeah.
Mark: That's perfect example.
Harris: It's like, well, you know, it's,
Unpublishables: Or like when they worked in law and, you know, i don't know if you've seen the scene of SmackDown clip, you probably have, but he, you know, it was on UPN, I think. So they couldn't say like, we've killed assassinated bin Laden necessarily, but he stopped the wrestling match and he was like, ladies and gentlemen, I am proud to announce that we have compromised to a permanent end, Mr. Bin Laden. And immediately the national anthem comes on and everyone's like, it's one of the most uncanny moments I've ever seen. ah
Harris: No, I've never yeah i know id never seen that. I'm going to look that up as soon as we get off.
Unpublishables: Oh, that's great,
Harris: it But yeah, they there's like this really interesting way of like they break the fourth wall where they're like, <unk>re you're doing news announcements while these two guys are having this like pretend feud that writers wrote, you know?
Unpublishables: yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Mark: That's right.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: Because it's like an all-encompassing kind of spectacle where it wants to digest world events. It wants to talk about just local American events. And then there's just these personality like personality types clashing and in a certain ways. And it's like, you can get behind even somebody in regular life you wouldn't side with. But like within this context, like imaginatively, you'll see the fans like cheering on, like like very kooky or freaky characters that would normally be like, who, like some, you know, it's like, there's all, it it gives this sort of imaginative space for people to, people who don't read literature and do all this high stuff to sort of live a kind of something like ah within a novelistic kind of, you realm or ongoing development of a story.
Unpublishables: Thank you.
Mark: Go ahead. Yeah.
Harris: well that Well, that's the most fascinating, that that is the most fascinating thing about it, is the length of the storytelling, because this is the is the, it's like probably the longest running, maybe there's like a soap opera or something, but like every Monday, Thursday, Saturday or Sunday, like once a month, tod it's the story hasn't ended since you've been watching.
Mark: you
Mark: Right. Yes.
Harris: It's been the same story, just developing and and shifting and changing.
Mark: yes
Harris: And now with the fans, like they have more but behind the scene access to people, so they like actually know who these people are and they're like, factoring it into the storylines and there's just all these like weird kind of crisscrossing
Mark: This has been really great. Thank you so much for coming on. ah I mean, I first met you, right? i think and you You came to my backyard to read for MAG, and it's I've been following your writing since then more closely, and and I was thrilled to see when you had this novel come out. I'm thrilled to see that the professional reception has been very enthusiastic. I'm even thrilled to see, like,
Mark: the crazy Goodreads, non-professional, it's interesting. and Because your book is confounding people, which is which is always interesting.
Harris: Right. Yeah.
Mark: I think i think even people the fact that people a large number of people misunderstand it means something interesting is happening, as opposed to it being immediately digestible. So, thank yeah.
Harris: Right. i Well, it also like shout out for to Astro House for putting out a book like that, you know, like Deborah Geim, the editor that I had there and like the books that she put out there and she's going on to put out at Echo are like all she's like ah the Trojan horse, you know, for like real, real lit people, you know.
Unpublishables: Thank
Mark: Right.
Harris: So um it's something that i've I've tried to do and like to do it at that scale is like the fucking thing ever.
Mark: Exactly, because they they have the scale, the distribution and all that.
Harris: Yeah.
Mark: So I think it is it's a risk to to push a book like that, but it looks like one that I think, judging from the the reviews of all sorts, your book has has struck a chord with people in one way or another.
Mark: It's irritated some people, it's made others very enthusiastic. I certainly found it fascinating and actually found it, as I say, to be more about redemption and renovation than failure. So it it also is kind of moving coming of age ah And generational even to to slip that in right between grandfather and father to father to son. So thank you so much for coming on. And I'm looking forward to your the work that you've got, you know, in the hopper right now.
Harris: Oh, yeah, no, this is great. Thank you so much. I appreciate this was fun. I wish you could I could go for another three hours. this an Awesome talking to you guys.
