Jonathan Ames
Author
of Wake Up, Sir! converses with Robert Birnbaum
Author and stand-up storyteller Jonathan Ames
has published I Pass Like The Night, The Extra Man,
What's Not To Love and My Less Than Secret Life and
most recently Wake Up, Sir!, a novel. He has also contributed
to the New York Press, GQ, Slate and Public Radio's "The
Next Big Thing" and has a one-man, off-off Broadway show, Oedipussy,
which he claims he also performed in Germany and at several pleasant
American colleges. He is also the editor of the forthcoming [February
2005] Sexual Metamorphosis: An Anthology of Transsexual Memoirs.
Jonathan Ames has also recently participated in Operation Ohio,
readings organized by Stephen Elliott, whose purpose is to register
college students to vote. He lives in New York City and is possibly
working on his next book and television pilot for Showtime.
Wake Up, Sir! is Ames's tribute to the much beloved British
author P.G. Wodehouse and his Bertie Wooster stories. As Ames reveals,
"'Why Wodehouse?' It was just timing. I rediscovered
him and was loving them [the novels] and I was going through a depression
of some sort. Any year I could be going through a depression. This
particular one I happened to pickup a Wodehouse book again. And
just had so much fun. I couldn't get out of bed so if I couldn't
get out if bed I might as well be in bed laughing. And enjoying
the incredible prose and the voice of Bertie Wooster. So I think
that sparked the idea of 'I want to write a book like this.'
It's mimicry and it's responding to the books you love and trying
to write a similar book."
In our chat below, Jonathan Ames and I address a far-flung repertoire
of concerns and conceits beyond his latest tome. With Ames's nimbleness
of mind it would have been impossible to have a narrowly gauged
talk. Which, of course, suits us fine.
Robert Birnbaum: I was impressed with some of
the causal links that you establish as you develop this character,
and thus I wondered if there are any theories that you are fond
of?
Jonathan Ames: Theories?
RB: Yeah, theories that you impose on life, on reality?
JA: On life? Or on writing?
RB: We may get to writing. But as you go through your life do you
go, "I have a theory about dealing nasty people"? Or "I
have a theory about waiting for something"?
JA: I don't seem to be a big theory person because maybe I have
too much self-doubt, and so I change my mind a lot or I don't feel
very certain about things. I do know that before [encountering]
things that might be scary or intimidating, I agnostically pray.
That might be the closest I come to a theory or a modus operandi
that I take a moment and—you know, just calm down a little
somewhere inside myself. So that might be the closest I come to
a theory. I might have some literary theories.
RB: I was caught up in what an agnostic prayer might be.
JA: I ask for help. I say, "Please help me." It feels
funny because talking about God seems like talking about voting
Republican. It's not something I immediately bring up, but it is
the closest thing I come to having a theory on life. Or just something
that gets me through. Maybe some people would have a prayer bead
or a rabbit's foot or something. I just for a moment might say,
"Please help me." I feel I am agnostic, but I will say,
"God be with me." Like even before sitting down with you,
just to help me be present and not be anxious or be elsewhere.
RB: A way of flagging the moment. You have a recognition of this
being different than the moment before.
JA: Yeah, I want to be present, and I don't want
to be going off the top of my head, like when a knee is struck with
a little hammer. It might be a little bit—not ambitious, but,
well, maybe it's to do well in the moment. That could be perceived
as an ambitious "do well in the moment" or a Buddhist
"do well" which is to be present. I interviewed the football
quarterback, Donovan McNabb, for an article I ended up not writing—which
I was glad because I really can't do these kinds of pieces.
RB: [laughs]
JA: And I said, "What is with this striving
to be the best? Like, what is the point?" I was in the locker
room with him. Because all these athletes [say], "I want to
be the best. I want to be the best. I want to win a..." I don't
necessarily want to be the best writer. And what's this thing about
winning? Why is it so important?
RB: I like what Will
Self said about literary prizes, "How do you win at fiction?"
I don't
seem to be a big theory person because maybe I have too much
self-doubt, and so I change my mind a lot, or I don't feel
very certain about things. |
JA: Um hum. So Donovan McNabb says, "I try
to be best at everything all the time. I want to give you the best
interview you've ever had and give you the best answers." So
like this guy is deeply competitive. I really liked him though.
He was a dynamic, fascinating, physically heroic person.
RB: That professional sports culture is an odd one.
JA: Right. Just utter striving. He said, "My mother—like
many athletes, he's from a single mother—told me to try to
be the best at all times." So my thing is not necessarily to
be the best in quite that same way but to hope that I would be most
alive and that something will come out of me that's authentic.
RB: In a way that is ambitious [chuckles]. In this cultural moment,
that's ambitious. But you have to recognize it first.
JA: I perform a lot, and I think I do it so that
maybe I'll give something.
RB: Under what circumstance would an editor want you to write a
feature on a professional football player?
JA: A couple times a year, magazines approach
me because they want my voice for a piece. The voice that they used
to read in the NY Press. A lot of these editors are reaching a certain
age in New York, late 30s or so, and they read me five years ago
when they were assistants or just starting out: "Aw, I love
this guy. He's so outrageous." So now they are higher up and
like, "Let's get him to..." There was supposed to be a
piece on Terrell Owens [late of the San Francisco 49ers, now of
the Philadelphia Eagles] "Let's get him to do a profile. It'll
make it more interesting." Now a lot of times what happens
is that I then try to write these pieces and they don't want the
voice. Or you end up getting neutered. I was worried that this would
happen. As it turned out, I wasn't able to write the piece due to
a family crisis—my father had a heart attack, and I didn't
write the piece. I'm a huge sports fan, and this particular editor
happens to live in my neighborhood and somehow found out I was a
sports fan. I once wrote a piece on the Tyson–Lewis fight.
But again I always like to do it more where I am involved in the
moment. Rather than having to do a lot of the—
RB: —research?
JA: The research and like laying out the boring facts of the case.
But I liked being in a professional football locker room and watching
the practices. That was cool. It's a glimpse into a world I'll never
see again.
RB: Wouldn't a good editor present the idea and ask you how you
want to approach it?
JA: Maybe I don't have enough of a track record
where it's like, "Ames, go write about pro football and we'll
print it." It's more like, "How can we make a Terrell
Owens story interesting? Oh, what about Jonathan Ames?" So
I think it's a matter of where I'm at. Actually I am going to say
no to these kinds of pieces because they always end up—I can't
do them, or I fail, or they don't get run, and so I think I just
want to stick to fiction or just writing essays about life or something.
I don't know, maybe I'll change.
RB: That's too bad. Maybe a bestseller will sway editorial assignments
and allow you greater freedom.
JA: Perhaps. Also part of it me—and the research—I
think I am going through a period where I can't seem to do journalism.
And in the past I went to a place, would describe it, again, usually
with myself in the center of it, not in a egotistical way but just
to give an eye to it, or maybe it is egotistical.
RB: Of course it is.
JA: [laughs] Of course it's egotistical.
RB: Nothing wrong with that.
JA: Recently someone was doing a profile on me, and I saw how I
came out in the profile. It was a bit of a caricature of myself,
and I was really glad in a way that couldn't write that Terrell
Owens piece. He would feel the same way. Like, "The guy barely
captured my soul at all." I had this huge failing, while we
are on the topic of journalism—while I was finishing this
book, I was about two or three weeks away from finishing it. Harper's
asked me to go on a boat in Alaska, a Greenpeace boat. And I am
not sure what they wanted. Maybe they wanted a jaundiced view of
Greenpeace, which might have been a misreading of my writing. Because
I never make fun of others. I might make fun of myself, but I don't
make fun of others. And I am secretly a brokenhearted environmentalist,
you know.
RB: Your secret is out.
JA: And I always put it in my books, little things
about the environment, little traces of it. So I went on the assignment,
which probably I shouldn't have. Because I was finishing the book.
It was very much coitus interruptus or novel interruptus.
And I so loved these Greenpeace people and was so overwhelmed by
the experience of being on this boat with them. Yet the issue is
so complex. It's the Tsongas National Forest, and I've never been
good at math or science or philosophy, and somehow I was going to
have to digest all this bureaucratic information, having to do with
logging and the native land and Bush and timber and road less rules
and Congress and felt like I was with the French Resistance—that
they were this little boat up against the world, and yet they had
hope. And it was so inspiring. But then I came back, and I thought
I could write it in five days. I used to write my NY Press
pieces like that [snaps his fingers] And I couldn't write it because
I was still in the voice of the novel. I had to go back to finishing
the novel; it ended up being another six weeks. Then I had to do
this TV thing that suddenly there was a deadline, and then I tried
to write the Greenpeace piece—and it was almost too important
for me. And there was all this kind of homework stuff I had to get
out there, too, to try to explain the issue. I ended up not being
able to write the piece, and I let the Greenpeace people down. I,
of course, wanted to get the message out there. I missed the chance
to be in Harper's. I'll probably never be given another
chance. I offered to pay them back for the airplane ticket. They
didn't take it. They just called it a wash. I did produce ten thousand
words. I wrote about the boots I had bought. They were so beautiful
and waterproofed and I felt heroic in them. And then I got on the
boat in the piece, but I don't know—so I'm very low on myself
in terms of journalistic pieces. And I am going to stay away from
them for a while.
RB: You said that you didn't know what Harper's
wanted. Isn't incumbent in them to make that clear to you? Perhaps
we are belaboring the issue, but my own view is that there are not
many interesting pieces being published in magazines. Certainly
assigning Barbara
Ehrenreich to write about working at minimum-wage jobs [became
the book Nickel And Dimed] or Hitchens
on Kissinger is a rarity [The Trial of Henry Kissinger]. Or Michael
Lewis's New York Times Magazine cover
story on his high school baseball coach. Other than that, it's
about celebrity, eating and shopping.
JA: Yeah, well, the other thing about me is that I am not a magazine
reader. I don't really read magazines. I glance at the New Yorker
and get half way through articles in there and, you know, read the
front political section to feel less alone in the world. But I am
not a big magazine reader. I really only like to read novels. I
don't fault—Harper's like [said], "Go
be a fly on the wall and come back and tell a story about the time
with the people." And I just couldn't do it, so felt so brokenhearted
that I had failed myself, failed Greenpeace, failed Harper's
and then GQ presented this football story. I thought, "Oh
God, I'll be able to write a profile on a football player and I
couldn't write about the destruction of beautiful forests."
But I ended up writing neither piece, so—tabula rasa. Also,
I was deep in to writing this book, and then I didn't really
finish the final edits until late January of this year.
RB: That would be hard to do—to break up the flow of completing
a novel.
 JA:
Yeah, I wrote most of it from July to November of 2003 and then
December and January copyedited the manuscript, final changes here
and there—sometimes big changes. It may have also been that
I burned out. I also wrote a TV script during that time I haven't
really been writing anything for several months. So —
RB: What have you been doing?
JA: What have I been doing? The most writing I
have done are these little Q&A things. I do these email Q&As
and put some effort in to those. Not effort—I have fun with
those. I have probably written 40 pages of Q&As.
RB: For your website?
JA: No, other people's websites. They will interview me. I haven't
done a lot. I was very involved with my family for about six weeks.
Being in hospitals. My usual thing of giving readings and performing.
And trying to set up this little book tour.
RB: Tell me about going from the solitude of sitting and writing
and then performing?
JA: Well, okay, I thought the question would be
like, "What's the interface between when you are actually writing
and then spending the rest of the time hustling so that your writing
can get out in the world?"
RB: As an aside, it's a sad thing that invariably
these conversations turn to the question do the book business. It's
quite crushing and urgent. Sometimes I feel like being relieved
of it. I know it's staring you in the face. That you have spent
all this time working on something and now you have to fight to
get noticed.
JA: Yeah, it hasn't been too much of a fight. I don't
feel compelled to talk about that at all. I guess I was more feeling
embarrassed when you said [adopts a stentorian announcer's voice],
"What have you been doing?"
RB: [laughs]
JA: So some how setting up these things, "Do you want to read
in Seattle on June 22nd? Can you find a place to stay there?"
Somehow that's distracting and all these mail and phone calls. So
that's kind of also what I have been doing, is being distracted.
But writing and performing, well it's—the long answer is that
after my first book which came out in 1989, I struggled for several
years to write. Suddenly I had consciousness, "Oh, you put
a book out in the world." And I literally had difficulty writing
a sentence—without feeling the weight of that "people
will read this."
RB: Like the character Allen Blair?
JA: Yeah, again he is the funhouse mirror of my
own autobiography. So at some point I found that, not in this moment
because I am being a little bit dull and something, but that when
I talked in front of an audience people laughed. And so I began
to do these monologue shows. Mostly starting in '92 and then really
began heavily in '93 and until now. For years doing monologues and
then also when I read from my books I try to do it in a very performative
and entertaining way. It's been like two separate paths—almost
night and day, literally. During the day, I write or I teach or
however I try to make money or I distract myself. And at night,
once or twice a week or two or three times a month, I would perform
somewhere as part of something, either my own shows or lumped in
with comedians or lumped in storytelling groups. So it's been like
these two currents of my life.
RB: Is it possible that you have an overview that it's really all
out of the same pool, the novel, the performance, television and
maybe the occasional journalism—that it's all really storytelling,
which is more fundamental than whatever the genre or form is?
JA: I guess I don't have an overview. But I used to call myself
a stand-up storyteller. And I didn't call myself a comedian.
Other people called me a monologist. I think, yeah, essentially
it's storytelling. The oral is a little bit more physical, a little
bit more athletic, involves people, it's very ephemeral. I
would do all these shows, and I always improv them. It's not memorized.
I would know the basic stories—so I'd say things that I would
never say again. And sometimes that saddened me because I would
think, "Oh that was good," but the exact timing of it
or responding to someone in the audience who twitched and that somehow
entered in. So it was never going to be the same so there was something—so
I liked that the writing was more grounded. That the books would
be out there for a while, and so ultimately it felt more satisfying
and that my core was as a writer. But maybe not be being able to
socialize well, performing was my way to be out there in the world.
And then the two worked hand in hand. Then the stories I told on
stage for years while I learned how to write again—eventually
when I had this column in the NY Press I would take those stories
and turn them into columns. And I had to change them and make them
work in prose, but the structure was usually the same.
RB: When you wrote this book, which I wrote to someone recently
that my serious complaint about it was that it was hard to read
when one was laughing hysterically—
JA: That's a good complaint. I was going, "Oh
no, am I going to get a kick in the shins?"
RB: Given what you just said, I wonder if you are consciously trying
to be funny? You are not trying to write jokes, trying to write
funny things are you? Tell me how you do it?
JA: Well, I guess sometimes I would amuse myself—I set up
the scene and then Alan would say these very funny things, like
a thing I am going to read tonight. Now I did not think of this
before hand but [adopts a different voice], "You know, Jeeves,
you know what's good is if you have drunk driving accident what's
hopeful is if you look up AA or Triple A —I'm botching my
own line—you kill two birds at once." Now when I wrote
that I went, "God that is pretty funny. AA and Triple A and
you are all set." I must have set up the scene to talk about
the drinking to keep the plot moving, to address the fact, when
is he going to quit drinking. But then that very funny line pops
out. I mean, I do want to entertain. I have always had the thing
as a writer of a tremendous fear of boring the reader. When I was
younger, with my first book, my method was to shock. Whether it
be through sex or language—because I had read Last Exit
To Brooklyn and so didn't want to bore the reader—just
through like what seemed like searing honesty or something graphic.
And then later it's not wanting to bore the reader through the prose
moving quickly and there being humor. I do want to amuse and I do
want to be funny, but I am not premeditated in the funny. Like when
I get on stage, I didn't know that at first that I was going
to be funny. It just started to work out that way. I mean, I was
lead to the stage by the fact that when I told stories at these
dinners at an artist colony in 1990, people laughed. And they just
kept laughing, and it was not just me being on. There is something
going on in my delivery and also to, to be honest, I won't
go into specific details, but I was actually, for my own drinking
(I was 22 or something) and I would go to these support groups and
I would talk about my problems [chuckles]. People would laugh, and
I thought I was talking about my problems and people would laugh.
And I had performed off and on in college, but I hadn't made
the connection until I was in these meetings and people would be
in hysterics about my tragedies.
RB: Wake Up, Sir! is very funny, but when you step back
it's about a non-productive alcoholic writer.
I never make fun
of others. I might make fun of myself, but I don't make fun
of others. |
JA: And he has a lot of sadness. He is always
talking about being alone, being confused.
RB: He says somewhere in the story that the saddest word in the
English language is "I" and the title of his book is—
JA: I Pity I. Which was the title of
my first book which I changed to I Pass Like Night. Yeah,
he is pretty sad and lonely, and he isn't sure he can handle life
and he feels there is a lot of loss, and then he quickly presses
on. But in there is a passage I read which was drawn from life—a
friend of mine was dying of a brain tumor. I kind of took it directly.
One day—he had about six months to live—he said as we
were finishing up the conversation, he said, "Okay, I'll talk
to you later." And then he said, "I love you." And
then we hung up, and I was just like [pauses], so he touches on
moments like that aren't just AA and Triple A or having crabs or
something like that. There is other stuff in there. There is heartbreak
in there.
RB: Yes.
JA: The agony and the ecstasy. Someone once told me to say whenever
asked what your book is about, you just say, "The agony and
the ecstasy." I used to say that for years.
RB: And the response was, "Oh yeah."
JA: That was enough that sort of stopped them in their tracks.
RB: Are you asked what you are? What does it say at the top of
your C.V.? You are a…? A stand up storyteller?
JA: Writer, first of all. And then—I don't like the term
"performance artist." A lot of time people want to label
me as a performance artist but for lack of a better word I say performer.
Writer and performer.
JA: Declaimer?
JA: Uh, declaimer? Exclaimer. I think just writer—storyteller
sounds like Children's Hour. Performance artist sounds like, something
non- narrative and abstract. That's not me either. Monologist does
sound a little self-absorbed—
RB: I sometimes play with the word "dialogist" to describe
what I do. But it doesn't trip off the tongue.
JA: That's pretty good though. So I guess, writer and performer
if there has to be two things.
RB: I had a pang of something that the stature and weight of storytelling
is somehow not of great value and to me it is the ultimate human
activity. What could be more essential and fundamental?
JA: Well, I would agree but somehow the term "storyteller"
is almost like "folksinger." The actual label sounds local
library [adopts a voice], "And the smoke went up in to the
sky and look how yellow it is, he said." I don't know,
so "Writer and Storyteller" seems queer somehow. I'm happy
with just "writer." If the word gets out that I perform
also and do monologues then that's fine, too.
RB: Is it possible given the marginal weight of literary fiction
that more people will know you as some kind of performer?
JA: The balance could tip that way. Certainly not a lot of people
know me as a writer. People in the lit world. And then probably
a smaller group of people, knows me as a performer, very much New
York only because I primarily perform there. But I have written
this TV show, and I am going to act in it. So these two things might
come together. I don't know yet if it's the ideal medium for me
because maybe the ideal medium for me is at least performing with
having a live audience and improving, so I hope to be able to work
that in to shooting this pilot.
RB: Who is the show for?
JA: For Showtime. And that came about because some guy heard me
read in L.A. and I did my usual trying to be exuberant while reading,
and then he read the book What's Not to Love, which is
my first collection of essays, which I shaped as memoir, and he
started emailing me, "You know I think there could be a TV
show in this." And I kind of kept going along, not thinking
anything would happen, not necessarily thinking I ever wanted to
do TV. But I kind of see it as an interesting adventure, if it happens,
and of course the lure of money, but also it could be fun creatively
and it wouldn't last forever if it happens. Maybe a season or two.
RB: Amongst the interesting shows on the cable networks and especially
HBO is the Ali G show. Do you know the show?
JA: I haven't seen it, no.
RB: Hysterical. Doing something wonderful—using three characters—
have you read about him?
JA: Yeah, one thing I don't understand is that when Pat Buchanan
goes on that show, don't his people explain to him—
RB: Apparently they are sold on the show with Ali G's hipness and
appeal to the youth, and a younger audience.
JA: Well then after they tape it they must learn that they have
been duped, or he certainly won't be able to dupe anyone anymore
because now the story is out that this is just a young Jewish comedian.
RB: It would seem.
 JA:
So that's what I don't get.
RB: It's now his second season.
JA: It can't go on anymore
RB: One of the show's participants was outraged and said this was
perfect case of why TV and the media should be more closely regulated.
JA: But even if the word gets out that there is a real person behind
Ali G I guess it could still work because they will still say that
Ali G is still reaching to the young people and it's a character,
he's in character and guess he won't be able to ambush people the
way he has.
RB: I am not sure he was counting on ambushing people. Which is
why it continues to work. But I mentioned it because it appears
to be groundbreaking TV and outrageous in a vital sense. Or Deadwood,
which is a startling but more accurate revision of the American
West's mythology. That's encouraging and suggests why your voice
and point of view might work on TV, someone who is not entrenched
in the business.
JA: I had lunch with someone from Showtime and who said that very
thing. "We are looking for someone unusual like you, and we
are going to take a risk and see if it translates."
RB: It looks like the TV audience is now very diverse and fractured,
no longer these demographic monoliths.
JA: And he said we know you do well with the hundred people that
show up at your readings, but let's see if you do well if we expand
it. And for me it's kind of fun or it's a challenge
because I have given hundreds of readings and it's, "Okay,
now what can I do?"
RB: What do you want to do?
JA: Um, what do I want to do? Well, I want to write another novel.
So I want to get back into writing and—
RB: Because it gives you the best feeling?
JA: I think so. And create something and there are stories I want
to tell and or something I need to express about something I learned
a few years ago and so I want to get that in a book. I'd like to
do this show and have it be good and make people laugh. And pull
it off because it's so improbable. It's like could I
really pull it off? Have a show on TV? That'd be absurd. So I guess
I want both. I want to keep trying to write novels and make books—the
pleasure of making something and having that. And then because I
have gone this far with this TV thing just try to have fun with
that.
RB: Anything else that you think about that you
feel like you should try?
JA: Right now I am in a good phase because I am not getting in
my own way as much as I used to in life. So, getting this chance
to—to write another book is what I'd like to do. Do this TV
show if that opened up other doors in that whole medium of movies
and somehow I could make good projects, I think that would be fun.
RB: I'm relieved that you didn't say that you wanted to be
in or have a band.
JA: Oh no I never—and even like right now I think, "Do
I want to be married?" I am not even thinking about that. I
have friend in Brazil and I have always wanted to visit him and
he is an anthropologist and he is in touch with a few of the indigenous
tribes left, and I would like to go down the Amazon with him. And
just disappear and maybe take huasca and [chuckles].
RB: Really disappear. Do you know Peter Mathiessen's novel, At
Play in the Fields of the Lord?
JA: I know of it, and I know the movie, but I
haven't read it. I'd like to do that in my life go down to Brazil.
I'd like to help out. I would have liked to help out with the Greenpeace.
To use my writing to help, especially in this election year, but—
RB: It was interesting to see a Bruce
Springsteen Op-Ed published in the New York Times today.
JA: Yeah I saw that. I was wondering about the impact, but I was
glad to see that they will l be doing all these concerts.
RB: I'm wondering about the impact also. I keep thinking that various
things are the tipping point such as when gasoline went over $2
a gallon, I thought, Americans aren't going to stand for this. On
the other hand there is the power of the incumbency and the power
of the war chest.
JA: And the power of the way they can manipulate things and the
power of the skullduggery. Skull daggery? What happened the last
election? Gore won by 500,000 votes but he lost. So that scares
me with these electronic voting machines. What I am sort of hoping
with these polls, I don't know if they are getting 18-year-old kids
on the phone? A lot of these 18-year-old kids, maybe they are going
to vote this time around and they are the ones that the Bruce Springsteens
of the world might reach.
RB: The polls are based on so-called likely voters, which this
year may be an unpredictable variable. You may be right in that
Springsteen and Pearl Jam and others are appealing to people heretofore
not politically involved. Or involved enough to actually vote.
JA: Certainly Clinton when he ran in '96 didn't face—the
anti-Bush sentiment is so huge but then again was I unaware of Christian
groups sending out millions of emails like MoveOn.org does, and
I wouldn't be on that list. So I don't know how rallied they were.
But it does seem like every Democratic-leaning liberal person is
just totally up in arms and if somehow we are not heard this election
there will be a huge collective depression. I don't know what's
going to happen. People will try to rally again four years from
now, but just in the environmental issues alone it's so scary
to think of what four more years of Bush will do.
RB: There is a genuine disillusionment and fear that seems strong
enough to move people to actually vote. The most telling thing to
me is how little people cherish their vote. Less than 50 percent
exercise?
Suddenly I had consciousness,
"Oh, you put a book out in the world." And I literally
had difficulty writing a sentence—without feeling the
weight of that "people will read this." |
JA: After the last election people would be thinking,
"Does my vote even count?"
RB: We probably should talk about your book, at least a little.
Why Jeeves? Is there a rising tide of interest in P.G. Wodehouse
that explains why Overlook is reissuing his novels and why Robert
McCrum has a new biography, of which you are the leading edge. Or
is there a constant ongoing interest?
JA: And Anthony Lane wrote that big piece in the New Yorker.
I am not an expert on these things or a huge cultural maven in that
sense, but I think he is one of those writers that has enduring
popularity, like Bukowski, in a way. Word of mouth about certain
writers does not end. Word of mouth about certain writers does end
like—writers that may have been super popular in the '50s
and '60s or maybe even—Steinbeck, has his word of mouth petered
out? I don't know. Some people like Raymond Chandler or PG Wodehouse
or Bukowski, who only died a few years ago. These are the people
that, in my library that I think the word of mouth keeps going for
decades. It might be a little spike, one of those cultural zeitgeist
moments that Anthony Lane comes out with an article. When I saw
it I went, "Oh my God, my book's about to come out. It's
a whole Wodehouse craziness." And this biography and so for
some reason there is a blip upward for moment and then it will go
back to him selling a 100,000 copies a year or whatever he sells.
But for me, "Why Wodehouse?" It was just timing. I rediscovered
him and was loving them, and I was going through a depression of
some sort. Any year I could be going through a depression. This
particular one I happened to pickup a Wodehouse book again. And
just had so much fun. I couldn't get out of bed so if I couldn't
get out if bed I might as well be in bed laughing. And enjoying
the incredible prose and the voice of Bertie Wooster. So I think
that sparked the idea of, "I want to write a book like this."
It's mimicry, and it's responding to the books you love and trying
to write a similar book. And then with whole Jeeves thing literally
having my own Jeeves, maybe because I was reading so much of it,
l was writing dialogue with a Jeeves. I had the idea of "What
if you were talking to Jeeves about sex? Or nutty things?"
And then I had this thing which I mentioned that late at night I
have been prone to outrageous behavior. Inside myself I would say,
"Home Jeeves." as if there was a Jeeves inside me who
would take me home. This was the original title for the piece—Home
Jeeves—this call for help inside yourself. So somehow
that coalesced into a book for me.
RB: I know there have been a number of reviews which I haven't
read and may [or may not] read. Was it an issue for reviewers whether
Jeeves is real? Does it matter for you?
JA: It was something that I was playing with all along. I don't
want to wreck the book for anyone. I guess in my mind he is imaginary.
But at the same time, though, he would feel very real. When I would
write the scenes, I would see Jeeves standing there. The way that
Alan sees him. And I would see him helping with his coat.
RB: You choose such odd verbs to transition him.
JA: This is where the Times reviewer was very smart—because
you don't remember why you do something. Why did I decide to have
an imaginary Jeeves? And the Times reviewer pointed this
out, that lovers of Jeeves and Wooster stories love the descriptions
of the way Jeeves moves. It's one of those things that you love.
You read 15 of the books and you wait for that description of "Jeeves
moves like a healing Zephr," "Jeeves metamorphosed,"
"Jeeves astrally projected," and you come to love and
how's he going to do it this time? What crazy assemblage of verb
and adjective is he going to use to describe, and the Times
reviewer said, "It's no wonder that a Wodehouse fan might
wonder if Jeeves is really imaginary or supernatural in a way?"
And it was wanting to write those kind of descriptions, and I had
to be careful legally not to use similar descriptions or I was tending
to use water descriptions—congealing and moisture. Or flickering
like beams of light. So it was just wanting to have fun. Some people
might have read Hemingway and wanted to write action hunting scenes.
I read Wodehouse, and I wanted to write these ludicrous small descriptions
of the way a valet might move.
RB: You broke format once (that I noticed) and wrote something
like "Twinkle issued into the room." I had thought you
had reserved those oblique kinds of verbs only for Jeeves.
JA: Huh. That might have been about liking the word 'issue' and
trying to get that in somewhere. But in terms of whether Jeeves
exists, I debated whether to reveal that he doesn't exist,
and I have an idea for the movie ending, if this became a movie.
Where because cinema is a little bit different that you play with
the fact that. I'll describe the ending in a moment. But do I, at
some point, do I have somebody say, "Look, there is no Jeeves?"
Like the Ava character, "What are you talking about?"
I decided I never wanted to say it, one way or another with the
reader. Let Jeeves exist the way he does throughout the book, and
never indicate whether he is real or not. I have a friend who has
a Ph.D. in Chinese history. He was shocked when I asked him if he
thought Jeeves was real. He assumed he was real. He never questioned
for a moment. But then if you look through the book, Jeeves is conveniently
in the car when Alan comes out of the office, when he first comes
to the Rose colony. He stays in the car when Alan goes to find the
rooms. You never actually see him—
RB: Interact with anyone else.
JA: When he mentions Jeeves to the aunt and uncle all the uncle
says is, "Jeeves! What are you nuts, bringing up this Jeeves
again?" Or when he says, "I want a valet," to the
aunt and uncle, all you hear is the uncle say is, "You're insane."
There are many clues along the way. But at the same time he is also
felt real to me. When I would picture him in the car with Alan,
he was in the car. It was almost like I would have the same delusion
as Alan had. And then also for me it was like, and I am not a huge
literary game player—I'm not very smart or clever the way
for some of these guys, fiction is like physics, but I was like,
"What character in fiction is real? Why is this guy any less
real than anybody else in this book?" I mean they are all
totally make-believe. And just because he said she said or Jeeves
said, or Jeeves walked across the room.
RB: That was my reaction. I got a sense that it might be an issue—
but it was not for me.
JA: So that was my little—I don't think of myself as post
modern. I don't even think this is postmodern but this was my one
little, "This is an interesting literary question. What makes
this character less real?" Especially since it is never said
whether this is a delusion. And he is given all the attributes of
a real fictional character. He speaks [laughs] But the cinematic
ending—again stealing and mimicking, I loved the ending of
A Confederacy of Dunces. When finally Myran Minkoff has
arrived and Ignatius is huddled in the back of her car and there
are ambulances and police around, maybe only one ambulance, and
his mother is called to have him taken off to the loony bin. And
he escapes out of danger and he bites her braid. And I just loved
that ending because it was like, "No, no don't end. I gotta
go off with the two of you." Then of course coupled with the
fact that John Kennedy O'Toole committed suicide. And I was
never going to get to continue with the two of them. But I love—there
is a great quote from the Paris Review Book of Quotes from Interviews
and I think Sam Shepard talks about endings as fugues. Sort of fleeing.
A non-ending ending. And that's how I ended my second novel, The
Extra Man. So I wanted to mimic or write the same kind of pleasure
I got out of the ending of A Confederacy of Dunces. So
I thought I might have Ava saving Alan at the end of Wake Up,
Sir! and that she is the one person who gets in his world enough
to confront him about Jeeves. And so I had in my mind this ending
where, to insure that she helps him escape, he's like, "Yes,
there is no Jeeves. Go, put your foot on the gas," because
maybe he set the mansion on fire so you have fire trucks and police
cars, an ambulance, you have the uncle—this way I could have
brought the uncle back.
RB: Didn't Ava have to get back to New York to deliver the
sculpture?
JA: Yeah, so it would have been much more this bells and whistles
chaotic ending. And off with the girl and then revealing at the
end, him saying, "There is no Jeeves." But love the idea.
So if it became a movie and I got to write the screenplay…
RB: There are a few ifs.
JA: He looks out the back window and just told
her there is no Jeeves and is ducking down the way Ignatuius is,
again, it's all about wanting to recreate those moments you
love but somehow different. At least that's what I do or want to
do. And so he looks out the back window and sees Jeeves amidst all
the tumult waving good-bye. So Jeeves is still real for him. Or
he would say, "No, Jeeves went off to the woods. I dropped
my wallet in the woods, there really is a Jeeves." Or "C'mon
there is no Jeeves." Just to get her to put her foot on the
gas pedal, knowing that Jeeves could fare for himself. Or in his
mind he thinks all this—that Jeeves went for the dropped wallet.
RB: In the movie version, he is at least a body if not a real person?
JA: He is a body. Yes you would see a body. Not to reference cinema
but like A Beautiful Mind or Fight Club. I just
love this ending with Jeeves as some beautiful older actor standing
there amidst all this tumult and then sees him and still loves.
And he knows that Jeeves can go. And he leaves with the girl but
he really still has Jeeves. So that was the alternative ending where
I was going to play with—but this way no one confronts him
about whether Jeeves is real or not. And it's not an issue, so it
maintains its consistency.
RB: Can there be more to this story?
 JA:
I don't think I could do a sequel, because, again not being a game
player, it was enough to use this great character from someone else's
work, even though he is supposedly a different Jeeves. That to do
it again would be weird. Then it would be too much. It was enough
to do this one deluded book—a character who read too much
Wodehouse the way Don Quixote read too many books of chivalry. Somebody
wrote to me and this was implied in various reviews: "We hope
he keeps writing about these two." Or maybe just writing these
kinds of books, with this level of humor. Even though I want to
write some of that dialogue between Jeeves and Alan. I think there
was a line I didn't get to put in where Alan says something
like, "You know, Jeeves, I always used to say, 'Good
night, cruel world.' Because I used to say that to myself.
But it's a lot nicer to say that to you." And I didn't
put that line in there, and I'm like "Oh still, l like that
whole absurd dialogue where someone who is quite lonely takes solace
in this person they can talk to and loves him."
RB: So it seems plausible that you glean from your readings the
interest in writing a book that was like another book that you read
and admired? So what have you been reading lately?
JA: When I teach creative writing—it's certainly nothing
new—it wasn't so much the Hemingway thing, "Write what
you know," but write the kind of stories you enjoy reading.
That's been my m.o. Sort of like a chef: "I ate something really
good at a restaurant, let me try to recreate that." So again
it's trying to recreate that feeling at the end of A Confederacy
of Dunces in my own setting. I briefly saw that Ken Burns documentary
on jazz a couple of years ago. I watched quite a lot of it, it seemed.
I think I was teaching at Indiana University. I was going through
a marijuana smoking phase and I'd hang out with this young grad
student and watch this thing and every night of that jazz thing
whoever was being interviewed, they were talking about some guy
they had heard, "Aw, I heard Charlie Parker." "Aw
I heard Miles Davis and it made me want to do this." Or, "I
wanted to make that sound." It was all because they heard somebody.
It was like this continual DNA passing along. So it is the same
thing with me and books. My first book was a mixture of Hemingway,
Jerzy Kozinski, Raymond Carver and little bit of Kerouac. The people
I was reading at age 22. The Extra Man was like Don Quixote,
The Magic Mountain all different things that I loved at
the time. Right now I am stuck. I am in a dry spell.
RB: No books that really move you?
JA: Yeah. I am not reading anything at the moment. I picked up
a Phillip Roth, My Life as Man. I read some Philip K. Dick.
I read some Charles Portis. But I am needing a writer to sink my
teeth into. I am kind of at a loss at the moment. I usually like
people in the past who have ten to twenty books so I can really—
RB: Richard Condon. Do you know his work?
JA: I don't.
RB: Famous for The Manchurian Candidate. He's hilarious.
I talked
to a writer who referred to him as the American Balzac. Are
you a New York person? A lifer?
JA: I don't know about lifer. It feels like I have been there my
whole life. I was born there and raised 40 miles outside the city.
We could see the city and the news channels were NY and the newspapers
were NY. And now I live there. But sometimes I think I'd like to
change my life. Be near the ocean and nature. Who knows?
|
Posted:
September 22, 2004
