Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (15 page)

[Trying to track O’Hare signs into actual O’Hare, with mixed results.]

This is what’s known as the David Wallace driving maneuver, over-reliance on signs.

[Break]

[I ask if he thinks his being handsome helps him.]

You’d have to come and put me down if I even
start
thinking that way.

To begin thinking what way? About how books are sold, or about the qualities of your book?

Or about
toothsomeness
or whether—I mean there’s a, there is a part of me that, you know, that wrestles with every one of these questions. Do you want to do a
Rolling Stone
interview, do you want to do X, do you want to do Y—that worries that what I’m doing right
now is being a whore. And you know cashing in somehow, or getting some little celebrity for myself. That will, from some bizarre set of misunderstandings, sell more copies of the book. Fine, and you can quote that. I’d prefer you do it, if you did it, in a context where I didn’t sound just like a total dweeb.

No, in fact I’d probably cut off the whore part. It’s too much
.

Yeah, you don’t need—I mean, if I’m all that worried about being a whore, then why am I doing this? It sounds very easy to say, but it’s just—it’s sort of … When you say that, I’m not playing dumb, it’s more like I’m, I’m sort of letting just one paw—one front paw of the tiger out of the cage to try to understand a little bit what it’s about.

[Break]

I mean, there’s a part of me that’s still not real mature, that’s afraid that, like, I would rather
not
be read and complain about it, and not feel like I had that pressure on me, you know? You know? My consciousness was really formed in this kind of avant-garde, neglected, if-you-get-a-lot-of-attention, therefore-you’re-a-whore-and-an-idiot. And it’s, I mean I’ve already said, it requires a certain amount of—I want to be able to reconfigure my map in a way that isn’t just
conveniently
reversing all that stuff.

[Wipers making weird rubbing noise because ice is caught underneath the blades; a frozen, Midwestern-style problem.]

But doesn’t end up with me, you know … I mean like, this has been fairly fun and hasn’t hurt. And it’s gotten me thinking about certain stuff. It’s not like I’m doing it—it’s not like I’ve done
twenty-five
of these, you know? Or that I’m going on like, you know,
Love Connection
. So and I don’t want to go around wincin’ about it.

[Break]

Is fiction going the way of poetry or no?

I think
avant-garde
fiction has
already
gone the way of poetry. And it’s become involuted and forgotten the reader. Put it this way, there are a few really good poets who suffered because of the desiccation and involution of poetry, but for the most part I think American poetry has gotten what it’s deserved. And, uh, it’ll come awake again when poets start speaking to people who have to pay the rent, and fuck the same woman for thirty years. That’s off the record: that’s really nasty.

Do you worry that fiction could end up becoming the kind of pleasant hobbyist’s backwater that reading poetry has become?

If it does, it won’t be the audience’s fault. And it won’t be TV’s fault.

[Hiss of another Diet Pepsi can being cracked: little carbon dioxide sigh]

I disagree with you. I think it could easily be the audience’s and TV’s fault
.

I have this—here’s this thing where it’s going to sound sappy to you. I have this
unbelievably
like five-year-old’s belief that art is just absolutely magic.

And that good art can do things that
nothing
else in the
solar system
can do. And that the good stuff will survive, and get read, and that in the great winnowing process, the shit will sink and the good stuff will rise.

[His watch beeps: I keep wondering if it’s mine.]

But who’s going to be trained to read acutely? I mean the skills you need to read, not for a computer, but for fiction, you’ll lose the training
.

But realize the limitations of space, time, and historical situation.
You’re talking about nobody will be trained to read the way
we
read. Which means that if people are reading in more short bursts or whatever, that art will find a way to form conversations with readers in the brain voice or vernacular that they’ve got. And for a while, when they, you know, what’s—is it Nietzsche’s term or Heidegger’s term? “The old gods have fled and the new gods have not come”? It will be a bleak time. But I mean—Jesus, if the thing made the jump from oral, you know, jongleur ballad, to printed text, then I think it can—

“O’Hare River Road,” that’s what we want. So you want to at some point to drift
left
. We’re
clearly
not going to make the noon, are we?

No. It’s 12:04 …

Shit. The next is one fifteen. We’re going to have to go to the desk and change. She said that one fifteen was empty.

[Break]

What were you afraid of in the reception of the book?

I was afraid people would think it was sloppy, poorly—that it would seem like a
mess
. Instead of an intentional, very careful mess. That it would seem … But the fact that she would think that this was just every thought I seemed to have for three years put down on the page, just made my
bowels
turn to ice. [Re: Michiko Kakutani]

Because that was of course the great dark terror when I was writing it. Is that that’s how it would come off. So seeing that she really really liked Updike was a tremendous shot in the arm. [Updike’s
In the Beauty of the Lilies
]

Why?

Because Updike, I think, has
never
had an unpublished thought.
And that he’s got an ability to put it in very lapidary prose. But that Updike presents one with a compressed Internet problem, is there’s 80 percent absolute
dreck
, and 20 percent priceless stuff. And you just have to wade through so much purple gorgeous empty writing to get to anything that’s got any kind of heartbeat in it. Plus, I think he’s mentally ill.

You really do, don’t you?

Yeah. I think he’s a
nasty
person. And I’ll tell you, if you think
I
hate him? Talk to—bring up his name to [to J. Franzen].

[Break]

Boy, are we gonna feel silly if this crashes.

[I mention that the woman at the United Airlines desk only had eyes for him. That Dave, on the road for three weeks, is pumping out celebrity glow, the look people give, the trim, radiant impression of being watchable.]

Yeah, it’s the sweat pouring down—she was watching the sweat pour down my face. It drives ’em wild.

[In Bloomington, when we were talking with the ticket agent, and the flight was cancelled, he put his head down on the counter. And
groaned. Also, the wintergreen smell from his chewing tobacco in the front seat. The ice on the car, the tobacco can spilling over.]

Just another of my series of, one long series of SNAFUs on the reading tour.

[In the car, he told me a funny story about reading at Iowa State. Also, the Richard Powers story: going to the writer for help when he was being asked to cut four hundred pages, very interesting. He wanted to raise the money and buy the rights back to the book.]

[As we walk down jetway: Dave still wondering if we should board.]

I always fear that when I really impose my will on something, the universe is gonna punish me.

[He’s fascinated: he’s
really
reading it. Everyone I know has always treated it as a hotel’s Gideon Bible: drawer ballast, nothing you’d open.]

Does that affect your feeling of safety as you sort of are riding on—it looks like it requires two mild muscle spasms to remove the
door
. Bonk, bonk; bonk. Well. There’s got to be some occlusive seal on it or something, right?

Also, it looks as if the jet is perhaps in flight, and he’d just gotten tired of being on the plane
.

Exactly. He’s sort of like, “You know, since we’re on the grass, since we’ve landed on the grass, perhaps we’d like a
stroll.”
“Let’s considerately wait by the soon-to-explode wing, and help people as they slide off of it.”

[I remember what that guy Mark said at the Bloomington airport.]

Of course, the problem is the wings are full of fuel
.

Yeah, not good to be over the wing. [Still fascinated by the Safety Guide.] This is what I like, is like: “How interesting. An oxygen mask has dropped down.” Look, her eyes are totally unafraid. “I think I’ll put it on. Why—no, I’ll put one on my child.” It’s just this …

[Closes it, looks at cover. Clouds and sky.]

This was my major complaint about the cover of the book.

[Voice comes over Boeing PA: “Flight crew, take your positions, prepare for departure.”]

Is that it looks—on American Airlines flights? The cloud system, it’s almost
identical
.

[On safety booklet for 757]

Oh, that’s funny. What did you want instead?

Oh, I had a number of—there’s a great photo of Fritz Lang directing
Metropolis
. Do you know this one? Where he’s standing there, and there are about a thousand shaven-headed men in kind of rows and phalanxes, and he’s standing there with a megaphone? It wouldn’t have been … Michael said it was too busy and too like conceptual, it required too much
brain work
on the part of the audience. …

Because you were making a metaphor on the cover?

No, I just thought it was
cool—

They used the Brit version of my cover after they saw it. It’s a cover I like
.

Auhhh! (Dry shocked exhale of disappointment)

You didn’t like that cover? I think it’s good-looking
.

No, it’s
real
good-looking. It’s just, why do
you
get to have any influence on, I—

[Break]

[I go to bathroom to make notes. He began that phrase by saying, “This I always find funny. That they don’t seem at all worried. You know, just opening up the thing.” It was the door illustration on the jet safety guide.]

[Looks at wing: we’re juddering down the runway.] See the wing, see how it ripples and shudders slightly? Then you start thinking about, you know, like the
metallurgical
composition of the wing—and how well they’ve calculated the stresses.

[His fears of flying]

I wasn’t all that good at physics in high school. And we’re gonna—basically our lives are about to depend upon physics. What is it: the under exceeds over, there’s lift?

C
APTAIN, ON
PA: Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, I’d like to welcome you aboard. This is United Airlines Flight 1453.

[Why he prefers crazy women; and feels he’s ended up with lots of crazy ones …]

Psychotics, say what you want about them, tend to make the first move.

That’s a great, great line
. [To tape]
It’s about the women he’s dated. Because he’s shy
.

[Break]

It’s just much easier having dogs. You don’t get laid; but you also don’t get the feeling you’re hurting their feelings all the time.

[I laugh.]

You don’t, though, right?

He began by saying, “The thing is, it’s just much easier having dogs.”

I emphasize it’s a platonic relationship with the dogs.

[Break]

[Told the counterwoman at UA, again: “Not on a date.” “We’re traveling together—not on a date.”]

[The pilot came back to check the ice on the wing, and then when he explained what he was doing, he looked at us very squarely and said, “Do you know who I really like, gentlemen? Me.”

He seemed to think we were wondering why he’d take the trouble. A little disquieting.]

That’s what he said? “You know who I really like?” Were we talking about who we liked?

[Pause]

Is this one of these deals where we have a sudden intuition, and bolt off the plane on the tarmac?

I think it’s too late. I figure we just have to accept
.

Hey. Look, read the packet: We’re two arm motions away from liberty. Except then, of course, one would get out of a crash, but there’s all this whole
Appointment in Samarra–type
madness. That story makes my stomach hurt. Or it’s a
Twilight Zone
episode.

[Has brought Heinlein to read on flight]

You made some remark at the New York reading that Ethan Hawke took umbrage with
.

No no no no no. It’d just come off—

Well, what it makes you look is glamorous …

No it doesn’t. No, what it does—all right, I’ll tell you. But if you use this, though, you’ve gotta tell the truth. Which, the truth is, what happened is, I got really nervous, and had one of these
brain farts
. One of those nanosecond inspirations. Another thing that’s out of your mouth and then you’re reaching for it. There was this whole long thing about “unsuccessful actors, the kind who would in previous decades have been in infomercials.” It’s all in the videophone thing. And then I’d inserted, “And Richard Linklater films.” Thinking that he would not find this hostile. (Shakes head at his decision) Yeah, I have a movie star at my reading, and I’m inserting false stuff in some weird, hostile ass-kiss, and uh …

You put that in the videophone section?

Yeah. But it was just—I just
inserted
it, reading it out loud. I mean, I didn’t write it in. It was like, “Oh, I’ll put this in, and it’ll be funny.”
But according to Charis, he was
really
pissed off. And then I felt like, “God, this poor guy. He can’t even go in the back, he didn’t want to be acknowledged, he just wanted to listen to a reading.” And I, because I’m nervous, feel like I’ve gotta pull some condescending shit on him, and I just felt like an
asshole
. Felt like a
true
asshole. And if you would, I’d appreciate your having me acknowledge that I felt like a
serious
asshole.