AUTHOR Q & A

Questions for Jim Krusoe

Your books and stories are highly unusual and often border on madcap – men rowing in a lake of blood, or falling into volcanoes, or discovering women suspended in yogurt – what inspires you to push storytelling to its limits?

 

I’m interested in how much we need to believe in stories, and how far we will go to suspend disbelief. I can feel every cell of my body shift the minute someone says, “Let me tell you a story,” and sometimes I think: why should I believe you? — but then I do, because it’s more pleasurable than not believing. Another word for “madcap” in your question might easily be metaphor, or nightmare, in my opinion.

 

Girl Factory is set in a frozen yogurt store, which houses young women, suspended in vats of an acidophilus solution in the basement. Hmmm... now what started you thinking about girls in yogurt – where did that image come from?

 

Where the women came from exactly, I’m not sure. But the yogurt parlor itself only happened on the fifth or sixth attempt to tell a story, and there is something about yogurt that seems to be important to my imagination, maybe something in bacterial action I find inspiring. It was yogurt that allowed the story to begin, not the women. The women in the basement arrived later because I needed something that would cause me to push my limits.

Could you name any writers who you would consider influential to your work? What about new or contemporary authors?

I am most drawn to Eastern European and Japanese writers, but there are hundreds of others who have influenced me. The most interesting thing is that often they are people whose work I absolutely cannot — would never be able to — imitate in a thousand years. But if I had to write the way they do I wouldn’t be able to write at all.

 

You are dealing with large themes, such as death, grief, reanimation, fate, coincidence; how do you then produce such a humorous work?

 

For me it’s a given that comedy involves a kind of distance-viewing — or at least multiple points of view — of circumstances that often involve real pain of one sort or another. I suppose in that regard comedy is an anodyne, as well as a means to examine these ideas. Large themes seem to be the ones I care most about.

 

It is easy for me to see Girl Factory cinematically, and am actually reminded of themes and characters that wouldn't be out of place in a Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Science of Sleep) film. Do movies influence your writing?

 

Not specifically, although I like to try to be as visual as I can. If you want to know my favorite movie, it’s Tarkovsky’s “Solaris.”

 

Is the American novel dead?

 

And if it were, what would be different? In any case, I don’t know anyone who writes to prove or disprove that case.

 

Do you think people make their own luck, or is fate what we all have to deal with?

 

A great question, and one I try to pose through fiction.

 

What is your writing process like? Has it differed from book to book? Do Jonathan’s attempts to reanimate the women remind you of the writing process?

 

I hadn’t connected Jonathan’s work with writing until now, but that seems as good a metaphor as any. Each book is completely different in that it starts with a scene I find interesting. Then I add another scene and another, and at some point I have to figure what the book is really about, which of these scenes are important and which aren’t. I’ve finally learned that I need far many more drafts than I ever thought, not even to polish the book, but to find the actual story the book wants to tell. In every case it’s been a different one than the one I began with.

 

Your choice of first person narrator gives us a close-up perspective of Jonathan's anxiety, ambivalence and memory. What other benefits do you think first person narration offers?

 

For me there are several benefits: In the first place a narrator can sell a story, and when a person writes stories that stretch the possible as mine do, this selling is important. Certainly a narrator who is dangerous can also add a layer of tension more than a narrator who is neutral. I continue to marvel about how most of us justify our actions to ourselves, and using a first person narrator magnifies this.

 

Do you always use first person?

 

I try to avoid the first person at all times and usually fail.

 

You teach writing – how does that impact on your own work?   

     

Teaching writing reminds me of the basics: details, story, all those things that I need to be reminded of on a weekly, if not hourly, basis. Also watching people’s work change over time reminds me that writing is always a kind of collaboration between a writer and a willing reader, and how there are often several ways to create an effect, to make it better and more clear. It’s made me a better listener and more patient with my own progress.

 

You seem to have quite the following as a teacher. Any guesses as to why your classes are so popular?

 

The people in my classes are astute and generous and widely read, and many are published writers. I think the classes are popular because it’s the goal of everyone in the room to make other people’s work better, not to discourage anyone. As for me, I hope I never let good work slip by without sufficient praise.

 

What is your philosophy about teaching writing? What brings out the best in people? What brings out the best in you?

 

Praise + challenge.

 

If you were to objectively view your book (incredibly hard to do, I know) what do you think the main theme is?

 

Resurrection. At least I’m working on two other novels now that are meant to continue exploring this theme.

 

You began your career as a poet – what brought you to writing prose? How do the two forms differ for you? What are the benefits of writing prose for you?

 

What brought me to prose was that my poetry was starting to bore me. It was becoming increasingly hard to surprise myself. It took me five years to make the switch, and I wasn’t even aware of what I was doing at the time. I didn’t know I was learning about fiction; I only knew I missed writing things I cared about. For me poetry is mostly about a self declaring itself in relation to the world. Fiction (which is why it was so hard for me) actually proposes a model of a world with a self imbedded in it. I like fiction because it forces me out of my limits, spills over the edges, and after several years I still know practically nothing about it. In addition, there’s also something about having to arrange facts in a line that keeps me honest, or at least less prone to self-distortion. The fact is I don’t really consider myself a real fiction writer. Someone once said I don’t write real novels, but “a poet’s novel,” and whether true or not, I‘m happy with that notion.

 

If you could generalize about the work being produced today, in this country, what could you say about American authors?

 

These days a lot of American writers seem surprisingly committed to realism, almost as if they didn’t write it down there wouldn’t be a real world. There is nothing wrong with realistic writing, of course, though it does trouble me that historically it seems a favorite of totalitarian states. When I want the real world, I’ll generally walk to the market and buy a carton of yogurt.