Dagoberto Gilb
Author
of Gritos converses with Robert Birnbaum
Writer Dagoberto Gilb (his unusual name comes from
a Mexican mother and a
father of German extractions) was born in Los Angeles and has
written The Magic of Blood, The Last Known Residence of Mickey
Acuna, Woodcuts of Women and Gritos, winner of a Pen/Hemingway
award and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. His essays
and fiction have appeared in numerous publications including The
New Yorker, Harper's, The Best American Essays and the Threepenny
Review. He attended the University of California, Santa
Barbara, receiving degrees in Philosophy. Dagoberto Gilb is now
on the faculty of Southwest Texas State University [with Tom
Grimes and Tim
O' Brien].
Latin music is the source of some of my favorite uses of the human
voice. In Cuban/Puerto Rican songs the chorus sings in a style known
as vieja [old women]. In Mexican singing there are the
high-pitched exuberant shouts and cries, called gritos.
Gritos also turns out to be one of my favorite book titles
(but my superficiality is another story). Nonetheless 'exuberance'
is a very apt word to associate with Dagoberto Gilb. The essays
in Gritos
cover the whole waterfront as he is likely to go from blood sports
like cock fighting to the author of Blood Meridian, Cormac
McCarthy. This collection of 36 essays consists of four sections.
"Culture Crossing" is a series of ruminations on El Paso
and about living and working on the border. Section 2, titled "Cortes
and Malinche," is about masculinity and how the Mexican-American
and Anglo cultures interchange—such as it is. The third section,
"The Writing Life," chronicles Gilb's struggle to adapt
to this unfamiliar life. And the final section, "Working Life
and La Family" pulls the collection together, showing how the
various strands of Gilb's life have created certain fault lines
and seams.
Here's Gilb's hometown paper, The Austin Chronicle, on
Gritos:
"What makes Gritos such an enlightening and emotional read
is not just the subject matter (writers from Richard Rodriguez to
Mike Davis have tackled some of this before) but Gilb's—gasp!—subtlety
and great ability to overwhelm the reader with mere hints and traces…Not
to fear, though, for Gilb still shines in these essays with his
fearlessness and wit, as well. Most impressive are his clarity and
his measured indignation at the inability of white America to grasp
Chicano beliefs or culture. Gilb even begins his book with a square-one
lesson in the Mexican essence of the Southwest. As the book progresses,
though, the problem he's addressing manifests itself in a million
little ways—the misunderstandings and silly expectations he
encounters from editors and the like, the quiet heat of construction
workers trying to learn how not to be deported."
The conversation below is the second I have had with Dagoberto
Gilb. We sat down after we had spent the better part of a day at
the recent Pen/Hemingway Awards (held at the JFK Library, which
also houses a significant collection of Papa papers) and then a
pleasant round of drinks with literary couple, Helene and Robert
Atwan (she of the Beacon Press and he of the Best American Essays
series) and writer Suki Kim, author of the award winning The
Interpreter.
Robert Birnbaum: Sometimes I am asked if I ever
get sick of talking to writers. In fact, I ask myself that question,
occasionally.
Dagoberto Gilb: I do [both laugh].
RB: The thing is that when you ask what a writer is, their commonality
is overshadowed by huge differences. Which is to say, when you tell
me that you are a writer, you haven't told me that much. Or enough
specific stuff for me to know who you are. What do you think?
DG: I'm not sure what your point is, to be truthful.
RB: Well, um, do you consider yourself a writer?
DG: I do now, yeah. Actually, yeah.
RB: And is it a distinguishing characteristic of yours?
DG: I guess when people are saying that—we just went through
a marathon, seven hours of writer-talk—I feel like my nerves
are squeezing, have wrapped my muscles and they are squeezing, saying,
"STOP IT! [laughs] Oh my God, just stop it." For me it's
a little bit like being on Jeopardy and everybody is pushing
the button, pushing the button. And I'm like, "Uh, uh."
Everybody is ahead of me. I'm like, "I didn't get that one.
I wasn't quick enough." I mean I write, and I like writing,
but when I am around writers I feel like, "God, I don't do
this. This isn't who I am."
RB: What I am trying to understand—I normally see writers
one at a time, one brand new person who I don't know, who has a
new story to tell—
DG: Actually, I am around a lot of writers now in this stage of
my life. I used to be a construction worker, and I never talked
to writers or talked about books or writing. We'd just tell stories
all the time. And so when I was around writers, I was hungry. It
was like, all exciting because it was just words being thrown around
like confetti. It was like a parade. And now I am around it so much,
its messy, like, "Shut up! Go do something." I'm tired.
A lot of writer talk—there's a lot of talk about how to hold
the hammer. And I'm like, “Please, I just can't stand it."
I couldn't stand it when I was a carpenter. Even when I worked with
an apprentice, I'd say, "You are asking me questions, you just
need to shut up. And you need to just do what I am saying. And in
six months you will not have that question. It’s just a stupid
question. And you'll know it." I could discuss this Johnson
clamp with you. But once you put a hundred Johnson clamps on those
walers you aren't going to give a shit anymore. About the principle.
You're just doing it—
RB: Why do writers want to talk so much about writing?
DG: I don't know. I mean some of it—like myself, when I was
hungry, it's fun. The business part I enjoy. I like talking the
business.
RB: Because they're odd stories?
DG: Right. How to maneuver in the business. And then, obviously
I love writer's stories. When I find someone I'm interested inwhatever
that odd little thing in somebody that you like, that happens to
be a writer. Sometimes that's fun. I don't meet them very often.
Lots of people have really great stories that aren't writers.
RB: And lots of writers have not really great stories. [laughs]
DG: Yeah, really don't have a lot of great stories. They tell me
what they are working on, and most of the time when people are telling
me what they are working on, I find it less fascinating than—I
like writers for other things. Maybe for the trouble they cause
that isn't about writing or is a consequence of writing.
RB: For me there is a presumption that writers are people who have
a heightened ability to notice things that frequently go unnoticed.
Plus I imagine there is bigger conversation going on. I am not sure,
but it’s nice to think there is.
DG: When I came upon the first writer—because I knew none,
they were all dead people. I really didn't have a concept of a living
writer. I took it upon myself, the equivalent to reading Plato,
"I want to write one of those dialogues." And then when
I started to reading books, "I want try to write a novel"—maybe
that was the effect of drug addiction. Hah! [laughs]
RB: Or innocence?
DG: Yeah. Comparable things. [both laugh] I just thought I could.
I had a confidence in myself that I could do anything I wanted,
if I just worked at it. And I did believe that I could just sell
books. I could look at a Writer's Market and they'd have
stories about selling a first novel for fifteen or twenty thousand
dollars. When I started that sounded like a lot: "I'll just
do that." Frankly, I never met a writer that was working. They
were all in school, studying books and in fact now I teach at this
university and still find myself listening to these people, their
references aren't to stories of things that they have done or to
people they saw do this. They are memories of books.
RB: Not a lot of first-hand experience.
DG: It's just different. I don't think there is anything wrong.
It's just not the way I came up. Or even how I found writing—I
saw it as an adventure. Writing was a physical adventure that I
went through and recorded in a fictional way. I would recreate fiction.
And it's different. I don't know if there are two distinct camps.
There are probably several distinct camps. One is where you come
out of it like a physical adventure and then there are the people
who have an imaginary mental adventure. We were talking earlier
about Joyce Carol Oates—what did you call that disease?
RB: Hypergraphia.
There's
a lot of talk about how to hold the hammer. And I'm like,
“Please, I just can't stand it." I couldn't stand
it when I was a carpenter. |
DG: It's fascinating that you could live in that
world of sentences and never get out of it and still create. I can't
even imagine that. I sort of envy it. You fall in to some kind of
dreamscape, a complete dreamscape.
RB: I am curious what it feels like for someone who is writing
when they are actually doing it.
DG: It's a dream to me. I feel disturbed when I am woken up. Talking
about what writing does to me--it keeps waking me up from my dream.
I'm like, "I don't want you to wake me up. Leave it alone.”
Because you make me think about it then I will think am I doing
good. When I am really just having an entertainment. When I have
to become conscious of it, I'm like, "Is it this? Is it that?"
I play those little games with myself to my own standards, high
and low. This other stuff is disturbing. Most of the time I am strong
enough for it to bounce off me. Or I just turn my head and it gets
right by me.
RB: Is there a cultural ethnic divide? You are Mexican-American,
started off as a worker, a laborer from L.A.—in one of the
essays in Gritos you refer to El Paso as a suburb of L.A.
DG: It is a suburb of L.A.
RB: Am I making too much of the fact that you are not the model
for most contemporary writers?
DG: That's becoming more and more evident to me—
RB: [laughs]
DG: No, I don't think I knew it. It just becomes more and more
evident. I feel isolated in different and varying ways. Which, when
you are tired or something, you get this paranoid feeling. But when
you are feeling strong, you feel good. Like that is exactly what
you want and that's exactly how I have always been. And that's the
only possible way that I am going to do anything interesting. I
don't mean in terms of the 'out there' interesting but in terms
of my own dealings with God. Like this book I am working on--I think
it's interesting. It fascinates me. And that's fun.
RB: An odd notion of isolation, I think. I've been reading a book
by Rachel
Cohen about artists/writers and their friendships from the mid
19th to the mid 20th century. The overarching idea here is that
each of these people has been making their own life without a model.
And that a creative person's life is also an act of creation.
DG: I don't have a paradigm. This whole concept of mentoring is
odd to me. And I don't have one.
RB: Perhaps that wasn't a big thing with our generation.
DG: I hear about it. People who came up through writing programs,
whether it’s a specific person or a program, people ask, "What
do I think of these?" I tell them, "Just think of it this
way. They are telling you to join a program. That should tell you
something [laughs]. Maybe you need to join a program. I don't have
the answer to this.” I am asked about what writers have influenced
me. And I have really thought of it a lot and think, "You know,
maybe Plato. Maybe these weird things that I read. I don't know
that it's been literature, and I didn't know any writers, to the
extent that when I went to El Paso and started writing, I was writing
a novel because I thought I could write a novel." And then
I met Raymond Carver. Did he mentor me? No. He was a guy that was
publishing, getting famous writing stories about the working class,
which was what I was doing across the street. And so I thought,
"Oh, they are interested in the working class and here I am
working. He's teaching over here and I am banging nails over there
and I can tell you a story or two. I know a few stories." "Aw,
that's a good idea." And I started trying to write short fiction.
But does that mean he [Carver] influenced me? That was a business
thingthat wasn't like a stylistic influence or even like Russell
Banks was saying today about Hemingway. I was thinking, "He
really was influenced by Hemingway, going there [Key West] and following
him," I didn't do any of that. I read different novelists from
first book to last. If that's what you are talking about, I did
all that.
RB: I forgot what I was talking about. But I do think this idea
of mentoring, on a large scale, is a recent one [hence the prevalence
of the verb], a post-Vietnam-War-era phenomenon. And that there
was this greater pressure or accent on programmatic ways of living.
More self-help books, various new methodologies on how to be successful,
leader counseling, blah, blah, blah.
DG: I didn't have that. I have been doing a little more self-analysis
because I didn't have help. I don't feel bad about it. But I know
that I don't feel good about it. I am as equally bitter as I am
a proud. And that's just how I am.
RB: Well, in principle, it would be nice to be helped.
DG: It would be nice to have your parents help you once in a while.
I didn't have any of that stuff. And I still have problems where
people tell stories and I am like, "You have help. You are
covered at the end. When things go bad your folks will die and you
will inherit a house and you'll sell it and you have a big bundle
of cash." I don't have any of that. And I have never had any
sense of any of that at any point. It's really like, what I have
got, what I've done, what I am doing, and my fantasy about it succeeding.
And that's it. And the success I have gotten—I have gotten
success at the financial aspect, but it wasn't major. I lost my
train of thought.
RB: We were talking about who can teach you and help you. What
are the lessons to be learned from someone else?
DG: We were talking about mentoring. I am like the Zen master who
is living in a cave, on a very steep sharp cliff and the students
crawl up—rock climbing skill was necessary—from crevice
to crevice, and then get there: "Ah master." They have
come for satori. And I am like "Get the fuck out of
here."
RB: [laughs]
DG: "You are not welcome. I do not want to see you."
And they go “boom" and they understand the mystery of
life.
RB: [laughs] Well that's good, yes?
DG: Yeah. [laughs]
RB: It would be an odd kind of mythology that wisdom comes to you
from sages in little dribbles.
DG: They all do [think that]. They all think they should come in
the cave and sit down and talk over a primordial fire. And things
pass. "Fuck you. Get lost." Actually, the truth is what
I want to say is, "Now go write that story. You have a funny
story now that will probably be published. You climbed that rock
and the dude said, 'Fuck off.'" To me, that's my life experience.
I mean that positively and humorously. That's what life has been
to me. One job I had—I had just gotten fired from a job. And
I sucked it up. The guy yelled at me. Instead of just snapping it
off, I stared at him, sucked it up and then he got me my check three
days later. So I didn't have the job. It didn’t pay off. I
got three more days. There is something to be said for that. But
I was pissed off that I didn't tell him right then what I thought
about what he was saying to me. So the next job I went to there
was this old German man and we were doing something, in this big
hole, a pit, and four stories down. I was one of the first five
or six carpenters and this old German man starts screaming at me
one day. And I just did my old me. Which would be to jump up and
start screaming, "Do not ever scream at me. If you have anything
that you are so mad at me that you are going to scream at me, just
get me my fucking check. Don't scream. I am not going take it. I
am not taking it from you." And the guy got the biggest damn
grin.
RB: [laughs]
 DG:
I was in. I was in. I kept that job for three years—in and
out. I did whatever I wanted. And he was right to trust me. I am
not the type who would fuck off when he wasn't around. I am doing
the same when you are around as when you are not around. I am not
playing games. I understand I am in life. I am going to build this
sucker. I am going to enjoy myself while am building it. I'm here
from 6:00 to 4:30 everyday, banging. And I am going to make fun.
I'm going to laugh and you’re not going to scream at me.
RB: It doesn't seem like people are learning to live like that.
DG: I don't know what people are learning.
RB: I don't know what they are learning. I have sense of what they
aren't learning. Wait, maybe I do know. Duplicity is okay. It's
okay to be sneaky. Irony is okay and you don't have to be direct
and say, "I don't like this and I do like this. Or fuck off."
That's what seem to be the reigning values of social interaction:
non-confrontation, euphemism and a set of indirect patterns of interaction.
DG: I don't know how you can learn that without it just eating
your body, turning it mushy with rotted parts. The funny thing about
authenticity and inauthenticity--these people who are making up
personas--I don't even know how they determine what was the one
to imitate [laughs]. How do they do that stuff? So I am just like,
"I have no ability to—" I have to stop myself. I
have no idea what they are talking about. I am stupid. We sat here
for several hours [with Helene and Robert Atwan and Suki Kim] and
I was thinking, "How do they know all that shit?" I feel
so ignorant. I'm supposed to be one of the people that you are reading
and I am totally ignorant.
RB: That's one way of looking at it. Some stuff just accrues to
you. That's all. If you played a sport--or being a carpenter. You
hold a hammer and if you do it often enough you get good. Helene
[Atwan] has been in publishing for over 25 years. She could talk
publishing business stuff in her sleep.
DG: I love books. I find a lot of people who want to be writers
don’t really love books. It’s extremely odd to me. I
do love 'em but I am kind of innocent and young about them. I just
don't deceive myself that I am ever going to read them all. I mean,
there are books that I'll read and I don't understand. I don’t
know what they are talking about. I can read the words, but it's
just not getting to me. And I have somehow gotten into a business
where there are people who know more about books, in all these ways—and
I'm with them supposedly as a teacher now. And that I have finally
been reduced to saying, "You know, I'm just not an editor.
I have no idea what to tell you here. I just can just tell you maybe
about four sentences worth of what I read in the work that seemed
to matter." But I don't know, that's for somebody else to decide.
RB: Who are you supposed to read? I have given up worrying that
I haven't read any Updike or more than a few pages of Roth and other
masters from the canon.
DG: I did read those people. It's funny--I was talking to Russell
Banks today. In his speech on Hemingway and as he was speaking,
I realized I had no interest in Hemingway. I realized I was completely
not interested. And when I did read him, he's in Spain [laughs].
What could be wrong here? And God, what ennui is it? [laughs] Now,
in fact I like him [Hemingway] more. But this is very recent that
I have read him more carefully—because I have been teaching.
Before I taught him I never read him. Once in a while I will have
a workshop class and we'll read ten published stories and one of
them will be a Hemingway. The presumption is that I'll lead the
discussion. I try not to, but sometimes I have to be prepared and
Hemingway is kind of good. I didn't really know that before.
RB: One can only hear the phrase "deathless prose" so
often.
DG: Yeah. I joke about Hemingway. It’s like, there is a certain
kind of prose. He is the ultimate man: "I was thirsty. I bought
beer. I opened it. I drank." Just periods. And then when you
get a little girly you get into Faulkner and you get to have commas.
And lots of “ands.” It starts to get a little loopy.
But Hemingway is sort of like the ultimate male. That's another
thing I realized tonight—is that I don’t write like
him in the slightest. I think because he's a male and I am male,
I get a lot of these, "You read like Hemingway."
RB: I liked Banks’ remarks. And he made the perhaps obvious
point that he was widely read. The author that made a strong impression
on me when I was a young reader was Nelson Algren.
DG: I like him a lot. But I guess mine were all foreigners. Dostoyevsky
just blew me up. It was like, "Whoa." The large issues
that were both spiritual and—
RB: I had trouble reading stories where I couldn't pronounce the
names.
DG: Yeah, there are too many names. I just read some recently and
I thought, "Man, this is not as good as I remember it."
Crime and Punishment is a really great story. [But] if
I were to edit it today, I would cut out a lot of stuff.
RB: [chuckles]
DG: These long speeches, really long speeches. But the issues were
big. Raskolnikov and his sister—there is a story there that
people haven't paid attention to. I hadn’t paid attention
to—his beautiful sister marrying some accountant for money.
Whoring herself out. That's a lot of what his crime was about. His
passion for saving his family and that stuff—was it suppressed
or not just on the surface of things? I never saw it.
RB: How old were you when you read it?
DG: We don't play it up very much. He didn't make her a good enough
character. The first time I read him [was] in my early 20s. I didn't
start reading until I was—I read one book at like 17 or 18.
And then I started reading in my early 20's. I really went nuts.
RB: In retrospect, I was introduced to the canon before I had an
interest or ability to get something out of it.
DG: I didn't have any lessons in the canon. I would go to the bookstore
and steal books. I was totally into stealing books. I would not
go to the English department but to all the foreign books. That's
where I would look. Every time I read books from the English section
I felt too stupid to understand. Something was wrong. So I learned
to avoid them and I learned to enjoy reading. Dostoyevsky. The
Brothers K. I just couldn't get over how great it seemed. Now
I should read that again. Take that those 1000 pages and see if
I could make it 350 pages. It's like you weren't you. I am in a
different life now.
RB: I do try to make a habit of reading one of two of Garcia Marquez's
books every year. Rereading One Hundred Years of Solitude
or Love in the Time of Cholera is a litmus test.
DG: Speaking of Oprah [One Hundred Years of Solitude was
a recent Oprah selection], I read 100 years about two years
ago and was just blown away. I want to read his new book.
RB: The memoir [Living to Tell the Tale]?
DG: Yeah. Some books just do hold up.
RB: I started rereading [Nelson Algren's] The Man with The
Golden Arm last week.
DG: That must be fun to do.
RB: Algren is as powerful as I remember and a better writer than
remember. He is pretty much overlooked.
DG: No it's true. Ian Fleming?
RB: I'm talking about Nelson Algren. Not the writer of Man
with the Golden Gun.
DG: Oh that's right. I was thinking, "What a strange book
to be reading and praising." I only know Algren's stories.
You're from Chicago. I forget. Everyone from Chicago is always telling
me about Nelson Algren.
RB: There seems to be a barrier to acknowledging people like Algren.
Maybe it's a kind of East Coast snobbery.
DG: These kinds of conversations, I don't know if I am trained
well enough to know. I can see what you are saying. I wish I could
spend a year and look into this stuff—now that I am in the
business. Before I used to like to read myths. Construction worker
myths and telling those stories. I would use a sort of realistic
style to tell myths that’s seemed dream-like to me.
RB: What's your experience with people who have read your work?
What do they say to you?
DG: I get good ones. I do. I was at the National Book Critic's
Circle awards ceremony. And this guy walked up with a bag of books
and I was standing next to Tobias Wolff. And he says, "Oh Tobias
Wolff, I want you to sign [. . .]" And he says, "Oh, you're
Dagoberto Gilb. I really love your work.” And he pulls out
these books. And he didn't have my books. "Yeah, you love me
so much you don't have any of my books, man. What the fuck?"
And he laughed and says, "No, no, no. I have all your books.
I am a carpenter. And I brought this." And he had brought this
issue of Carpenter magazine.
RB: [laughs]
DG: It was so much better [than having my books]. An issue of Carpenter
magazine where I had written this light little piece. I get that
kind of stuff, where these kinds of guys will come up to me and
I feel really good. I don't get a lot of money, but I know these
other guys [authors] aren't getting these particular people. Although
here he was getting Tobias Wolff’s autograph [laughs]. So
he wasn't that dumb.
RB: That's one form of payoff, isn't it?
At least when I
got this [NBCC] nomination, I didn't do anything. I got it
not because I knew how to play the system, but the system
worked in the way I want everything to work. |
DG: Yeah, there's a lot. I wish that would pay
a month's rent [both laugh]. It feels like it.
RB: Well there is the roulette wheel aspect of it. Someone will
option something you do and some odd good thing will happen.
DG: Yeah, and I get a lot of those [sarcastically]. And if that
were capital of some kind, I'd be doing great.
RB: Part of what happens when you write or paint or make movieswhat
no one signs on for—is that great X factor of things that
happen that you can't anticipate. That's why at the beginning of
this chat I wanted to get a sense of what you think a writer is,
because I think the noun has so much range of things that fall under
its umbrella. How much are you like John Updike or A.S. Byatt?
DG: Not much in common. There is definitely this confusion that
we all read everybody and [that] we should. One thing I have learned
in the last five years teaching [is] there are whole bunches of
genres, let's call them, that I am not interested in. That doesn't
mean they are bad. I'm just not there. I do know my own area is
the western United States that I write out of; a lot of the things
I carry into the real estate market of literature are from the west,
and the interest is different. People want a big ranch. They want
things that aren't as they are in Boston.
RB: Jim Harrison just published a story in The
New Yorker that is also in the online edition. Usually
the online literati (at least the ones that I read) will note the
new fiction in The New Yorker. I couldn't understand why
no one mentioned Harrison's story. He's a wonderful writer. [I communicated
with Harrison and he wrote back, “I'm doing fairly well on
the rest of the world but have heard the roar of silence for a long
time from our Eastern Seaboard."] I had wondered if it was
a regional bias.
DG: People admire him a lot, so he gets his. One of the things
I think about with writing that I do like, I sort of gave up sports,
and I have a son that gave up sports, too; he's a good athlete.
I gave it up and moved along. The thing is, you can be much older
and you’re still playing this game and you are in the ball
game and still trying to get MVP and all these things that you are
still [going] after. I am still working it. I'm still playing. The
season is still going.
RB: I hardly think about the competition in the literary world.
I don't think it's supposed to be there.
DG: I mean in the best sense of the word. I like to play. Guys
in sports are pretty much done at thirty. It's like they’re
figuring out how they are not young any more. At least the presumption
with this business is that you are young when you are still writing.
That the writing is still young. I like that idea. And I am hoping
it works that way.
RB: When I talked to Alan
Lightman last summer—he's a former physicist—in
contrast to scientists, he felt you got better as you got older,
as a writer.
DG: Larry McMurtry thinks the opposite. At least that's what he
said for a while. At least before he wrote these new books. He's
such a machine.
RB: Have you ever been to his bookstore?
DG: No, I want to. He's invited me. He's a lover of books. I really
like people like that. And he knows every book, too. He's amazing.
RB: Where is Archer City in relation to Austin?
DG: It's close to Denton. It's north Texas. He invited me up there
to stay. He jokes that, "Dagoberto won't go because there's
no girls." "Hey, man that's not true." But it does
sound lonely [laughs]. [Michael M Thomas told me that McMurty has
moved to Tucson, though his bookstores remain in Archer City.]
RB: I noticed there was a big anthology that came out last fall
that you were in.
DG: Lone Star Literature, edited by Don Grant. It's a
Texas book—it collected most of the major names since Dobie.
Frank Dobie being sort of the George Washington of literature in
Texas. Most everybody that's done anything is in there. So in that
respect it seems like a pretty good book. Don's an interesting guy.
Pretty crazy.
RB: A former Texas Monthly editor?
DG: He's still a Texas Monthly guy and he's a professor.
RB: One of the essays in Gritos, about your writing for
Texas Monthly, was bittersweet.
DG: Culos, man, that's all they are. Culos. I
think of it as an apartheid magazine. It's sort of my current rail.
The more I say it, the more I think it's true. The evidence is overwhelming
that I am right. The whole Mexican culture is so dismissed in their
pages. And the history of the state is like… The way they
treated me exemplifies that patronizing view of Mexican-Americans
in the state. Who knows how that changes? I keep saying we just
have to have a magazine of our own. We have an economy of our own
that can actually buy—it's confusing. How do you ever get
out of this? We don't read enough, so therefore we don't buy enough
books, and then we are easily marketed to because you can use TV
and stuff to market lesser things. So you bring lesser things to
the community, the smarter kids read it and think it is lesser,
and they don't know that they are right. They think, "I don't
like literature. I don't like books." And move on to something
else, when in fact they aren't being told, "You didn't like
it because it was stupid." So anyway—
RB: That's society wide, though I suspect it’s exacerbated
in minority communities. There is this idea that we are more visually
literate. I wonder if even visual literacy isn't being degraded?
DG: One of my best friends in L.A. was an artist and we hung out
a lot. And we had better conversations because I could verbalize
his art and his art was always informing me. That, to me, is a more
symbiotic relationship.
RB: That reminds me of Cohen's book A Chance Meeting,
where you had Joseph Cornell and Avedon and Matthew Brady and Carl
Van Vechten being friends with a variety of writer and poets.
DG: I was hanging out with Junot Diaz. He's a dominicano,
and I feel more kinship with him. I come here and I feel like I
am in another culture. I might as well be in Britain. On the one
hand, yeah, we all write, but it's like you are in a different world
than where I see my world. And I hunger more for being around people
of my own background, my own conversation and past. And so sometimes
I think part of my own strange feeling isn't just that it's literary
talk but it's like talking about British literature. I just don't.
Intuitively I get a lot of what they're talking about.
RB: I think it’s hard to find honest conversation—where
you get to say things that you are thinking and some of them may
be stupid and wrong, but you don't get to understand that until
said out loud in a conversation.
DG: I do say so many stupid things. [laughs]
RB: Who doesn't? Some people can disguise their stupidity with
a good vocabulary.
DG: I sort of enjoy being around people who are not listening [laughs].
Those are the people who are usually drinking and smoking a lot
of dope [laugh].
RB: I am fond of putting things into play, to see what happens.
Sometimes you don't know what something sounds like until you hear
it resonating off of an audience.
DG: Right. I have really good students this semester and they are
taking notes and it just drives me crazy, "Please stop it.
This ridiculous. It can't be that good. Just don't. "
RB: So what do they do? Do they stop?
 DG:
No, no, I try not to pay attention to it. I can't believe people
are taking notes when I am talking. Half of what I say is total
nonsense and I don't know which half it is. [laughs]
RB: They don't know either—that's why they are taking notes.
DG: Yeah right.
RB: How far ahead do you look into the future?
DG: I wish I did. I worry that I haven't [thought about it] very
well. A week ahead is like the flat earth. I know there's dragons.
I know I have to see the world as round. And I should stop it, and
it's like you are really getting older and really should not be
making the same mistakes—they don't seem like the same mistakes,
but everybody tells me that they are the same mistakes, all the
time. I don't see it that way.
RB: How did you manage to get here, fly to Boston? You had to make
plans.
DG: [laughs] These things, I can do it. Well, they got me the ticket
two or three days before. I do some [planning] but I'm not good
at it.
RB: You have an agent?
DG: Yeah. Kim
Witherspoon. She's supposed to be great.
RB: Meaning?
DG: Her reputation is super. I have no idea. She's the only agent
I have. I have no idea if she is super or the shittiest [both laugh].
No clue.
RB: How do you get along with her?
DG: We don't communicate a whole lot. I don't need anybody.
RB: Yes, you do.
DG: Well, we are talking about my own character. A lot of people
think this is an incredible flaw I have.
RB: It is. And I've known you for a few minutes.
DG: It must be an incredible fault. I just don't speak up for myself.
She wants books and I am like doing other things. Maybe that is
why I need an agent that will sell me so that I will write them
more. It's such a strange business, and I am constantly asking people
that question. One of the things I was talking to Helene Atwan about
was "What is a good sale? And how do you know if you have a
good agent?" and “What would you do as a publisher when
you do this?" The only way I can finally understand personally
is when I understand as my agent what would I do differently than
what I am doing? Or “If I were a publisher and I got a writer
that said this and this and this, what would I do?" I think
you can figure out a lot of things. Would you hire you for instance?
RB: Sure you can figure all this stuff out, but how much time do
you have, and isn't that time better spent writing?
DG: Yeah, I have too many things. I really wish I could have some
help. The way I focus—I need to keep this job. So that takes
up this time and I need to finish this book. That’s basically
been my agenda. Every time I finish a book I look up and say, "Now
what'll happen?" Usually, I get those fun, interesting things.
Like Gritos got this nomination, completely out of the
blue, and it's kind of nice and it's an odd sort of reward. It doesn't
mean money. A lot of bells didn't go off but [there is] a little
satisfaction.
RB: It's also a reminder that the world is not under your control
and that good things come as well as bad.
DG: Absolutely, and things go to your dreams. I look at when I
turned the manuscript in, "This is kind of good." I don't
like to be immodest. but I did. But I did, I thought, "This
is kind of good." It's a unique book. And then when I went
out reading, I thought, "They should be touring me." I'm
reading, and if I have ever sold books on readings . . .
RB: Is there a paperback edition?
DG: There will be in the next month. This book is selling. People
will buy this book. I probably could sell if you really pushed.
I am not a big marketer. I am too embarrassed to—looking back,
if I was a good marketer, I should have told my agent, "I worked
high rises." This sounds immodest. "You can take pictures
of me on a high rise with my tools and I am writing fiction. This
is a story. Chicks will even like it."
RB: What did your agent say?
DG: No. I didn't do any of this. I did none of this. I look back,
I wanted it just to happen very much like I wanted Gritos
to be [noticed]—without me doing anything. I really don't
want to market things. Then I am always doubtful that you are really
getting it. At least when I got this [NBCC] nomination, I didn't
do anything. I got it not because I knew how to play the system,
but the system worked in the way I want everything to work. And
in that respect I am proud. And everything I have gotten has worked
that way. The Magic of Blood won those awards. Why did
it happen? My publisher at the time, University of New Mexico press,
they didn't submit the books. How did I know that? Because I called
one that I wanted my book entered into and they hadn't gotten it.
I just couldn't believe I was told they did it. So I entered all
the books, and every one I entered, the book placed. I think that
proves it's about the work, and sometimes you really want it to
be about that and not how you played the other game. Some people
are really good at playing those other marketing games. I wish I
did know how to strategize. It almost makes me feel as if I am going
to mess up.
RB: It takes a lot of energy.
DG: That's true. Thanks. I need all the excuses I can get. [laughs]
RB: I wonder if the agent/artist relationship isn't almost familial?
Why would someone work hard on something that wasn't obviously commercial?
DG: In some sense, what I should do in terms of agents is talk
to people and ask them what their agent does for them and what they
don't do. I don’t really know. I've had this agent. She's
sold my books. I don't understand why Woodcuts of Women
isn’t in airports. It seems like a really good airport read
to me. Actually, I mean that. Why wouldn't it be something that
people would want to read on an airplane? It seems like an easy—
RB: Because they read Tom Clancy.
DG: Mine is not harder to read. It’s just a matter of promotion.
Just put it there and if it sells one in fifty—
RB: You told your publisher?
DG: I probably did.
RB: Let's see, you have a novel stuffed away in a drawer and —
DG: Well I want to go back to that one when I am finished [with]
the one that I'm on. And I am going to salvage it, probably. I just
want start to writing books now. I want to get into that routine.
I came out of many years of having jobs and raising my family. And
then I got through that [and] I was messed up for several years
with such personal chaos in my life. I got stuff done, but I should
have done more. I should have written two novels in that period
instead of what I did do. And now I am just trying real hard to
not let that condition hold me down. The teaching stuff is hard
for me. It’s not in my nature. But it’s a job that I
have now. So I try to do that.
RB: Do you see a way of making things better for yourself?
DG: In teaching? Just [teach] one semester. There's things I like
about it. I don’t mind it so much. My dream job is still two
days in a factory, 10 hours a day.
RB: 20 hours?
…a lot of
my friends that care for me jokingly say, "They are not
going to like you until you are dead. It's just not going
to happen." |
DG: A 20-hours-a-week job. Where I got paid really
well. Even an auto parts job—regular old people. Just working
physically. I miss physical work.
RB: Do you work out?
DG: Oh yeah. It's not the same. Carpenters—we'd crack up
about people having to work out. "Let's go pick up the weights,"
or "Do the running machine." I'll show you a running machine.
It’s called Willie Mayo screaming at you. When he screams,
you run [laughs].
RB: Do you envision an end game?
DG: An end game of what? Life? God, recently because I've been
pondering an uncertain demise. I don't mean in a maudlin way. Maybe
I am being given a gift that I don't have to go through the—
RB: Interesting, today, to be reminded of Hemingway.
DG: I don't have to go to the Hemingway point, where you are so
clouded and miserable. I don’t want that. I worry about that.
I'd rather—I don't want to go through the ravages. I was being
offered a clean exit that would keep me intact.
RB: A clean exit?
DG: Heroically, almost.
RB: [laughs]
DG: Where I still look good. I still can wink and they sort of
smile. And it's like, "Yeah, they are winking at me and I am
winking at them. Now I can leave." I can't really say I haven't
gotten everything. I'm way past my dreams. Living a life I never
knew existed. And I am being put up in hotels and being flown to
Boston. Things are cool. So wouldn’t it be nice to leave a
legacy and a financial inheritance? So nature wants me to go soon.
So go sooner. Does everything have to drop off you like some old
jalopy? And they have to find the parts. And everybody is going,
"I don't want to work on that."
RB: Okay, so you are past this health crisis.
DG: The hope is that I am going to write these books. I think it
will be a big one. How it plays out will inform me of the future.
If it doesn’t sell—a lot of my friends that care for
me jokingly say, "They are not going to like you until you
are dead. It's just not going to happen."
RB: Hmm.
DG: And I'm like, "It may not happen." In terms of my
cultural world where, as Mexican-Americans go, I am the only guy
of my generation--[the only] male figure. We are still 50 years
off from reading me. So the younger guys, people in their '30s just
coming up, are reading me, and so it may not happen. So this particular
book, if it doesn't do—
RB: The chicanas seem to do well.
DG: There is Sandra
[Cisneros] and Denise [Chavez] and no guys. Jimmy Baca, who
is not really a fiction writer.
RB: Rudolfo Anaya.
DG: Rudy, in an odd way, has passed the torch.
|
Posted:
May 28, 2004
