Dagoberto Gilb
Author
of The Flowers talks with Robert Birnbaum
This is the third or fourth installment
of what I hope is a lifelong ongoing conversation with Los Angeles-born
writer Dagoberto
Gilb that began around his publication of The Last Known
Residence of Mickey Acuna in the mid-1990s. Filling out Gilb's
oeuvre are The Magic of Blood, Woodcuts of Women,
Gritos (winner of a PEN/Hemingway award) and his recently
published novel The Flowers. Having for years worked as
a carpenter, Gilb came late to the writerly life—some features
of which he eschews, though he has been, for the last few years,
teaching at Southwest Texas State University (now Texas State University-San
Marcos) and a (more or less) frequent contributor to smart magazines
like The New Yorker, Harper's, The Best
American Essays and The Threepenny Review.
Meeting Raymond Carver in the late '70s, Gilb turned
down an offer to attend the University of Iowa Creative Writing
Program, oblivious to, "What [Carver] was telling me, what
I came to learn over the next decade, was the way the system works.
You go to Iowa, you turn your story into a professor, who's a famous
writer. And that famous professor-writer gets you to an editor.
Whereas I was under the misconception that you put things in the
mail, and some editor reads it and (something) happens, if it was
good. I don't know where my life would have been if I'd known
what [Carver] was talking about. On the one hand, I suffered for
not getting published. On the other hand, I wouldn't have
the material I have now."
Gilb's most recent opus, The Flowers,
is set in an LA-like metropolis at a time not unlike the '90s
when riots overwhelmed that city. Teenaged Sonny Bravo lives with
Silvia, his drop-dead beauty of a mother, and when as a kind of
survival tactic she marries an Okie named Cloyd who owns a building
named Las Flores, the potent ingredients of Gilb's creation
are ready to play out another riotous American story.
In the conversation that follows Dagoberto Gilb and
I talk about Mexico, Juan Rufo, Cormac McCarthy, the rigors of teaching,
the next phase, immigration or anti immigration, Annie Proulx and
this and that.
Robert Birnbaum: Are you in danger
of becoming some kind of establishment figure now [that you] have
a regular teaching job—are you tenured?
Dagoberto Gilb: I would hope so, at some point.
RB: Where are you?
DG: I don't know where I am—
RB: What school are you teaching at—?
DG: I'm in Fresno right now.
RB: I guess it's not safe to trust the book's dust
jacket.
DG: I'm not there either. I guess I am a full professor at
Texas State University.
RB: Professor Dagoberto Gilb.
DG: Isn't that ridiculous?
RB: Did you ever imagine that?
DG: I had wished that—but I thought I would be a Doctor of
Philosophy. [A professor] of deep thinking—
RB: As opposed to telling stories.
DG: Yeah, whatever the hell it is I am supposedly doing.
RB: Are Tim O'Brien and Tom Grimes still there?
DG: Yeah, and Denis Johnson was just there.
RB: For a semester?
DG: He spent a year there and finished his book there, too—Tree
of Smoke.
RB: Did you see the prickly review of Johnson in The Atlantic?
DG: No.
RB: Do you read reviews?
DG: I try not to. I read reviews of other people's books
if that's what you are getting at. I like reading reviews
not for the truth element but as a form of writing—I don't
even know what they mean. We have reached this juncture in the country
where nothing is what it is supposed to be. Who knows, books aren't
books anymore. I don't know what we are up to. We're
in a new phase.
RB: They aren't video games. Movies are—this piece
in The Atlantic about Denis Johnson—I couldn't
read all of it, as the first paragraph was off-putting. The writer
claimed that Johnson had become the darling of literary types, through
some kind of voodoo and he couldn't understand why—he
was very dismissive of Johnson and his body of work. Expending two
thousand words denigrating Johnson didn't seem like a productive
activity—certainly reading it wasn't.
DG: I guess so. I have no idea. Press is press. Denis has been
a cult figure for so long and so cult figures get the anti-cult
response.
RB: He won a big award for Tree of Smoke.
DG: It's funny—I haven't read it. I was in a bookstore
and I held it for the first time—
RB: I read sixty pages into it and [it] seemed inviting—I
liked where it was going.
DG: I have no idea yet. There are a few books like that, that I
want to read.
RB: Like?
DG: I was thinking about this. I hate all that. I don't even
want to go there—who I want to read, who I have read, all
that.
RB: Why?
DG: I don't know. Because it seems like a game of promoting
your friends, who you know. And, I read weird shit.
RB: I am fascinated by how people come to the things that they
read. I am saturated with current books and collateral information
about them—and most newspapers are reviewing the same two
dozen books.
DG: Right, it seems like it—if they are reviewing any.
RB: So how does one find out what's off the path?
DG: Right. Like I said, we are in this strange phase. I don't
want to name names, but—I am in a bookstore looking at what
they are promoting—and it's like, [I pick up a book] I don't
know who it is—I've heard the name. And I don't
understand it and I read a graf. I see a whole page of virtually
Dostoyevskian dialogue.
 RB:
[laughs]
DG: And I'm like, "Could that be good?" It is
unique. [laughs]
RB: Wislawa Szymborska (the poet) has a small book out called Non-Required
Reading. It is a collection of short pieces on books. She explains
that she noticed the books her fellow reviewers liked were not the
ones that sold in the bookstores—it was the oddball titles
that book buyers seemed to find useful. So she started to look at
these books and writing about them, finding interesting things to
say about them.
DG: That sounds fun to me. I was asked by The National Book Critics
Circle, did I have an opinion on the books of the last four months—and
I am like, "I'm just coming out of the '30s, what
are you talking about?" The newest? I am not a book reviewer:
You get these piles. How many a week do you get? And I am not in
that position so I am just catching up with my own reading.
RB: I'm happy to hear about anything that anyone is reading.
Current or not. I just stumbled across a book that came out three
years ago—Dominion by Calvin Baker.
DG: I know that guy.
RB: Great book.
DG: I haven't read that book, but he lives in Mexico City.
I just came from Mexico City. Lately I have been in this strange
place where I am reading nonfiction—like reading magazines
in Mexico and just not wanting to read the normal—but I am
not always reading. Sometimes it's about my walking. About
my note taking. I do find—just recently, I'm sure many
people have said this much better, but I was thinking about this
because I knew it would come up, like, "What have I read?"
When I have taught, students talk about their history as if it's
the history of the books they've read—that is completely
not my story. I am described as a physical writer—it's about
my physical experiences, whether they be tactile or something like
that. They are not out of my imagination or not out of my intellect,
necessarily. It's about what things have slapped me around. It's
about what things have struck me—and I mean physically struck
me in movement and in motion. I kind of have been enjoying that
in the last year. Just my physical life—and that could just
be walking and encountering strange...I have been reading Neruda's
poetry. I was in this poet's office, his departemento
in Mexico City, and I'd never read Neruda. So I decided to
read him in Spanish. And I'd read like two poems a day and
just ponder that and move along.
RB: Besides the log rolling for your friends, are you resisting
the competition that seems implicit? "You read this?"
"Well I read that."
DG: Right.
RB: There is also a way of speaking about reading that makes it
exalted and separate from our lives.
DG: You go through phases. Like I said, I feel graced that I get
published at all. Part of it is that I am like a literary reporter—I
don't report the same kind of journalism that comes out as
fiction or non-fiction. But I am just on this, whatever my little
version of an adventure is, as much as I can afford. [laughs]
And just logging it.
RB: Why are you doing all this traveling?
DG: Hmm.
RB: Restless?
DG: Maybe that's what it would be called. Yeah, new stage,
new phase. Trying to move off the teaching circuit, which is a tar
pit.
RB: [laughs] I've never heard it called that, that's
good.
DG: And I am finally getting free of that to move my brain to some
new place. I'm not sure yet where. I want to start writing
again. So I am forcing myself physically to get out of it—not
be trapped by health insurance, not be trapped, my son graduated
from Stanford, so the money—
RB: Wait a minute—the last time we talked he just started
there—
DG: Maybe. That sounds right. That was like a big, "Okay."
And so that kind of thing is happening, so what am I going to do
now?
RB: Well, what are you going to do now?
DG: I am just going to try to—
RB: Where are you going to do it?
DG: I'm not sure. I am not positive. There are options. It
might be Austin. It might not be. I want to be in Mexico a lot more.
Mexico City, the country, I'm moving my brain. I want to shift
my whole territory. If McCain wins, which seems plausible, we'll
go from the Germans to the Nazis. We are the Germans now and it's
going to be shameful—
RB: If Obama—if the Democrats win?
DG: It'll be better. Sure, it would be better.
RB: We may have health insurance, after all. You have a nice, well-regarded
body of work, and after all this time, you still feel lucky to be
published?
DG: More lucky than ever. Well, the more I see how this business
operates, the more fortunate I feel. I worry that my publisher will
say, "This dude is not selling." I mean, this business
is tough. People like me from the West, we have particularly difficult
time. I don't know many writers especially well. It's
a difficult business. I do know a lot of successful writers. I always
feel like the janitor [around them], I'm still sweeping up.
[both laugh]
DG: "I gotta go wax the floor, I'll be right back."
RB: You have a new book—it took how long to write?
DG: It depends on when you say you begin something.
RB: From the first germ of the idea? When you first thought about
Sonny Bravo—
DG: I've had some ideas about him for a decade but first
pen to paper was about five years ago and then I really got at it
recently. Within the last two to three years. I actually finished
a version two years ago. I didn't know if I was really done.
And then I went back. I took more time with it—not necessarily
with the writing, but I'd let it sit for a while. Not knowing
what to do—if I got it right. I wanted to make sure I had
what I wanted.
RB: So when you let it sit for a while and went back to it, what
happened?
DG: I'd usually pick at it [laughs] like a scab.
No—add this, take away that, trying to figure out what I was
wanting. Not my usual approach to writing a book. At least my idea.
And I have a couple that are in a drawer, but I went a little further
with this one and I realized I'd finished months before—that
"Oh, the ending was over here." Things that I don't
normally think about when I am writing.
RB: And then you turned it in to your publisher. Who talks to you
about it there?
DG: Morgan [Entrekin]. Who knows what a different editor would
say—I tend to be such a—I compress. I know I write stories
that are unique to me and I can tell you a story, everything, and
you won't write it. It's not like a screenplay, not about
the gadgets and the gimmicks that you can pull off. The plot structure
is mine alone—it's none of [the gimmicks] for me. This book
came out in 250 pages. A better me would have made it 400—it'd
still have to be a clone of me, a little more expansive—
RB: You're the guy who told me a few years ago you would
try to figure out a way of making Tolstoy's War and Peace
shorter—
DG: Yeah. That's exactly me. That's me. That's
what I do. I don't know if people like that. I'm not
sure they get it.
RB: I don't know that length speaks to the size or power
of a story.
DG: Not for me—I truly don't think that. My favorite
books from The Stranger to The Family of Pascual Duarte—all
my favorite books happen to be shorter. Dostoyevsky is always the
exception—I started reading him again, thinking, "God,
I'd cut this. I'd cut that." [laughs]
RB: Do you take him to class and do that with your students?
DG: Never. They have me as a teacher, but I don't
know how in the hell to teach. I don't know how to teach anything.
I'm not a literature teacher. I never studied literature, and I
wouldn't feel confident that I am even right about any of the things
I like or do. It's much more on the street—well, that's a
little too strong. More going into a bookstore and randomly pulling
books down. My history of learning was sneaking books, studying
philosophy and religion classes and going over to the different
varying language departments—what they were teaching—and
I'd find books there I'd want to read—"That looks like an
interesting book and someone is teaching it." I did use that as
a criteria that it was considered important enough to be taught.
I'd learn that way. Like Stendhal—how would you learn about
Stendhal? Classics like that. Stuff they were into that we are not
into anymore. Class and Race. Like Mexican movies—they are
so much about class and race. We don't have that in literature anymore,
The publishers have lost a sense of class and race. They presume
it doesn't exist and they are so ridiculously wrong.
RB: Earlier today Cuba [RB's son] and I talked to Howard Zinn—
DG: I love him. He's a brilliant guy.
RB: A very decent man. Anyway, it occurred to me that if you addressed
certain progressive issues you were accused of political correctness.
And taken off the board, not to be talked about.
DG: That was people not liking anything progressive and the way
to dismiss it was to call it "political correctness"
and then you couldn't have the discussion anymore.
RB: What does it mean?
DG: It aggravates me. I had an argument with Stanley Crouch about
that a few years ago—specifically about that. The first time
I met him I knew nothing about his political positions. He is a
curious guy—very smart. We had a good time. I didn't
know he was such a right-winger. But he is still smart and interesting
and just because he is wrong—
RB: He is something of an iconoclast, with far-ranging interests.
He did reportedly slap Dale Peck—
DG: I didn't know that. I don't know if Dale Peck should
be slapped, but I do think of some writers, it would be good for
them to realize they could be slapped—somebody could get mad
and it would turn into like, "Shut the fuck up!" And
finally it isn't all just words. That's what I mean—physical
behavior is part of the deal.
RB: That reminds me of a writer who was at a book gathering and
walked up to another writer who had criticized his book and spit
in his face.
DG: That, I think, sucks.
RB: Right. There was much outrage expressed, and I thought, "Wait
a minute, it is outrageous and overboard, but consider that the
reaction was to his life's work being trashed"—
DG: The spitting is what I disapprove of and would, of course,
depend on how well he did it. But like Michiko Kakatani—she's
amazing, she attacks with such eloquence and she hates with such
eloquence, it's almost interesting when she hates—which
she does—some books.
RB: I remember Robert Stone saying he never learned anything from
any of her reviews. I don't read her or most critics. I find
more useful to read other writers, Jim Harrison on Karl Shapiro
or Thomas McGuane on Per Petterson.
DG: Those would be fascinating. One of my pleasures was to write
on Cormac McCarthy once. Stuff like that is valuable, and I am fan
of Cormac's style, but his literary politics I don't
like, and I don't particularly care for his vision. But I
still admire his work. It's a vision I don't share—it's
clichéd western. As in the Wild West. It's very clichéd.
But it's elegant.
RB: Blood Meridian is a towering book.
DG: It's Homeric. It's incredibly well written. I don't
understand the vision of that one. It's so dark.
RB: I thought that the first chapter was hilarious. But anyway,
it seems there is something out of whack in the critical establishment.
DG: I don't think anything anymore about it—I can't
figure out what people like. They are good people, but what they
like is so skewed I don't know what to make of it. I'm
having some kind of ailment. I really just don't understand.
And I try, and there is such a mass movement for what I consider
atrocious books, that are obviously full of banners and placards...
RB: I wonder about the complaint that there is so much crap published—I
find there are too many good books to read.
DG: I can't keep up. How do the people pick the finalists
or the National Book Award winner? I have been on panels and there
is a ten per cent factor, that all the judges will pick this ten
per cent with one or two exceptions. And there is the cream-rising
thing. Then it becomes who is one and who is fifty. And when [the
winner] does get picked, you are trusting the basic good taste of
people who are smart and have read—in general, even in the
particular case. Generally, they are important books even if they
are not valuable—not the best...
 RB:
Has there been a book in the last few years that has knocked you
out—changed your vision or turned you around?
DG: Yeah there is, but I can't think of it right now—
RB: Do you go to movies?
DG: I'm scared to talk about movies anymore because it seems
like we are all going that way—books are different, they are
not movies and movies are not books.
RB: They are all just stories.
DG: A different approach. There Will be Blood,
for instance. I thought what it did up to three-fifths [of the way
in] is what movies can do that no fiction text writer can ever do.
The death scenes in an oil rig, things like that—you cannot
do very well with writing. You can't show an oil geyser like that—you
can't show it in text whereas visually, the sound and the visceral
reaction—the last two-thirds was terribly melodramatic and
maudlin. And skewed in many ways. I didn't like the last two-fifths,
one-third, whatever it was. The ending I thought was completely
so obvious a metaphor—did you see it?
RB: No, I wait for the DVD, theaters are little boxes. I grew up
going to see movies in the palatial auditorium. I can't go
to these multiplexes.
DG: But anyway the big book I still always talk about is Juan Rulfo—I
can read a story of his and be completely happy.
RB: Who?
DG: Juan Rulfo, the Mexican writer. He is so amazing. I read him
in Mexico in Spanish— I thought, "I'm in Mexico
City, I'll read him in Spanish." It blew me away. Every
time I read him I just can't believe somebody could be so
brilliant in such simple—coarse but simple—language.
If I talk about myself and abbreviating—he's done it
so much better. I try to put a little humor in mine [my writing].
His is pretty humorless. He is just so strong.
RB: Are you gravitating to Spanish language and literature more
than before?
DG: Well, maybe just recently. Just because I'm in Mexico
City—a lot of it is just that. That is how I got into the
writing business. Yeah, I fell in love with books, but my writing
comes from liking to hear and encounter people, liking to hear stories.
And so hanging around Mexico city, listening to people talk and
tell stories—everyone listens to taxi drivers in Mexico. They're
fun everywhere.
RB: They are not Pakistanis in Mexico? Who is the scapegoat minority
in Mexico—the Mayans (Indians)?
DG: I don't know—
RB: Doesn't every culture have a whipping boy?
DG: I guess so. Americans are who they talk about the most—that's
the one that I hear the most about—no, actually that's
pretty much it. Now that we are talking about it, that would be
the one that is most reviled. It's almost like a parental
figure where you hate and love at the same time.
RB: What's the saying, "So far from God, so near the
United States"?
DG: Porfirio Diaz said that—the president of Mexico. It is
fun to start working with—like reading poetry in another language—I
grew up with some Spanish, like every Chicano—[a] sort of
slobby, sloppy Spanish. Not sophisticated. Years ago the NEA asked
me to be on a translation committee and I knew people who had done
this. I thought, "That is so ridiculous." That's
like asking a kid who speaks and reads, like most high school kids,
in English—if you gave them a serious text and said, can you
read these five?—Or even if we could read them how would you
be sure that person reading Shakespeare—it's just you
don't know Shakespeare. Like this way too difficult for the
guy—he is reading some journalist's saga of a girlfriend.
It was easier to read and held his interest and he dismisses Shakespeare
because of the language. Well, my sophistication of language is
what, sixth or seventh grade? [laughs] And so I have to spend a
lot of time—
RB: Did you learn Spanish in the way we learn English here in the
US?
DG: No, I didn't for sure and nobody offered that to anybody.
I grew up in LA—my mom would have Spanish around, she would
speak Spanish and I would work with people that spoke Spanish. Never
reading it.
RB: No diagramming sentences? Learning parts of speech.
DG: There were kids that grew up with their parents reading Spanish—my
mother didn't read it either. But even then, in El Paso, if
you were caught speaking Spanish, you got swatted—you were
not supposed to speak Spanish. That era, fortunately, is over.
RB: Does it strike you the immigration—we can't call
it a conversation—
DG: The anti-immigration crusade?
RB: Is it formidable or a few cranks?
DG: No, no, it's totally code for anti-Mexican.
RB: I skimmed a book called The Immigration Solution,
writings by Victor Davis Hanson and Heather MacDonald [and Steven
Malanga]—it seemed to blame Mexicans for any imaginable ill—
DG: There's two trends, here that's one of them. There
are two things very American, uniquely American. First, the slavery
era is over. Now Mexicans are discussed like slaves in that era
[were], so there is the completely racist calling-Mexican-niggers-Southerners-
Arizoners, Mexican is a dirty word and they want them out. Then
there are the abolitionists who are sort of sympathetic—they
have maid, they have a nanny and they sort of understand but are
complicit with "let's go a little slower." That
conversation is the soft abolitionist who realizes that is really
a problem but "I have a nice nanny and the gardener is really
good." That's one conversation, and then there is the
virulent Minutemen type. The other is the very modern one, post-NAFTA,
maybe even pre-, but that we have been outsourcing all our working
class, but the curious thing with Mexicans is that we have outsourced-brought
them here. So that the new working class is in our country, but
we can treat them as though they are from Pakistan or Africa and
treat them just like the old working-class model "We can always
get more. Get rid of them, we can get more." And the whole
issue is very much pre-1930s and you have them right in our neighborhoods,
cooking in New York. They are in every city, doing all the labor,
waxing the floors, picking up the trash. One of the things we did
at AWP—we were going to do an immigration thing, the guy I
was with, Ruben Martinez, wanted to do a manifesto. And he wanted
to do it and pass it out. And I thought to myself, "Well that
would be cool, we just throw it out like snowflakes over AWP."
And then I thought, "We'd get a lot of janitors sweeping,
and lot of gardeners with their sticks and nails and pipes and they
come in sweeping up afterwards." [laughs] We'd
be helping our people.
RB: Martinez
wrote a moving book, Crossing Over.
DG: He's a good journalist.
RB: Jim Harrison wrote a great piece in Men's Journal
a few years ago about the Arizona-Mexico border which he was moved
to write by the discovery of the body a pregnant nineteen-year-old
woman in the desert. It's hard to make out the self-righteousness
attached to land that America stole under the heady slogan "Manifest
Destiny."
DG: I was just in Worcester, and there aren't factories—it
seems like a working-class town. I just did a piece for The
Paris Review on the cornfields in Iowa. The story is about
the Mexicanization of Iowa. I'm trying to find a magazine
for it. The New Yorker had it for six months and didn't
want it, sadly. There are a certain segment of people there that's
not even interesting [to them]. We have gone to such a conservative
base in literature. There was a widening for a while—anyway,
the piece is about Mexicans picking the indigenous product of 5000
years ago and the idealogues are freaking out. But if you go there,
the people hiring them love them. And, of course, as there was this
manifest destiny, here was this other version, south-to-north manifest
destiny, where the gods of corn have sent Mexicanos to
pick the corn of Iowa in their field of dreams.
RB: I have heard the claim that it is false that Americans won't
do the work illegal immigrants are doing—
DG: If that were true all the immigration wouldn't be happening.
Whatever "illegal" means?
RB: And "alien"?
DG: Yeah, all that—once you set the word up, of course, they
are guilty. It's a human dynamic to feed your family. I'm
in a class and the movie Roger and Me is about a plant
closing in Flint, Michigan—the students and I talked about
this and the mostly Anglo working-class students say, "Well,
when you lose your job you have to get up and leave and go find
work." That's a perfectly good American idea. It's exactly
what Mexicans do and somehow that's a crime. That's
considered not a good impulse. But it's human to do that. Anyway,
my piece is how all this business even in the corn industry is growing
in such a way that it is shrinking the corn industry in Mexico.
And so as they lose their fields of work they go to the cities and
then they have to migrate.
RB: Why is it shrinking in Mexico?
DG: It's becoming corporate there, too. The lands are shrinking.
RB: I remember reading articles where people who worked in [toxic]
chemical plants and knew the long-range dangers, continued to work,
fearing they would not find other work.
DG: That's another human impulse. I did versions of that
myself, going into a hole, breathing cement dust, knowing—you
blow your nose and it is black. And there is not much of a mystery,
you can't tell yourself it's good for you. You just
pretend it's not bad for you, that you'll get through it anyway.
It's not eternity. It's just momentary and your immune system will
be stronger. [laughs]
RB: You have this new book [which we haven't talked about].
Are you restless when you have to sit here—
DG: It hasn't really happened yet. I am just starting to
read. I have read six times in the last two weeks, that's
sort of funny. But you get in that book tour routine and get used
to it.
 RB:
Are you onto something else?
DG: Yeah, I am already into another thing and I want to turn in
something quicker because I have something that's been sitting
there and I can turn it in and then I can write something bigger.
I want a big period of time without chaos, to take off—not
teaching—
RB: Something typically called "peace and quiet"?
DG: Yeah, I guess it's called that. Also, not chaos, no financial
worry—not something wrong that I have to deal with. I guess
some people that take these teacher's jobs, they seem to like it.
It is completely not good for me—it takes me a day before
to get ready, the day of it, twenty-four hours to recover. I have
to turn on the TV and get really close and watch basketball games
for 24 hours before I am ready to join the world again.
RB: What about readings?
DG: Readings is another thing—it's a bit
of a drunk. People staring at you. I never really got off on it,
but I see some people really like the attention and I don't know—I
like it in the sense that I hope it makes the book sell so I can
have [it] a little more easy. Also, I am a worker and I feel like
I am employed by my publisher and I want it to do well because they
have invested in me and I want to do my business right. That's just
how I look at it. I want them to be happy that I am doing it. That
they are happy to have employed me. If I go to remodel a house,
I want the person to be happy with my work and [...] recommend me
for another job. The readings are a little bit if a binge—they
take a little time to get over.
RB: In last ten years, it seems like the book/reading tour is required.
DG: Yeah, it seems like it.
RB: I think about how many writers are in the skies of America
on any given day—
[both laugh]
DG: I wonder if the reading circuit has shrunk.
DG: Publishers are saying they don't want authors to go to
bookstores—people aren't attending bookstore readings.
RB: They are taken for granted. So your plan after this book tour
is to go back to Mexico?
DG: That's my plan—to work out of Mexico. Either Mexico
City—I adore Mexico City—I'm not sure...
RB: Further south?
DG: Oaxaca, Mitchelaclan.
RB: Further into Central America?
DG: I've thought of it, but I want to get through with Mexico.
I am not finished there in my brain—my brain isn't satisfied.
We're still making out and I like that. [chuckles]
RB: The courtship.
DG: Yeah.
RB: You are still doing journalism?
DG: It's more like literary journalism. I just finished this
piece I told you about—it's for a book called State by
State—they asked me to do it. I love doing that, I wished
I could do more. In that case, I had been wanting to write that
piece, and I got that call, and I couldn't believe that someone
was sending me to Iowa. I did a piece on de Archivo de Indias in
Seville, Spain. I turned it in two years ago for Harper's,
they commissioned me to do [it]. And they loved the piece, but they
still haven't printed it.
RB: How large are the archives?
DG: It's a huge building but it's had every document, invoice,
receipt, everything, written by every conquistador from Columbus,
Cortez, Magellan—I touched Magellan's papers. They have
it all there. It's only known to historians and that's
the piece. I'm proud of it. It's my piece. A smarter person
would have written a smarter piece. Mine is always goofier—it's
about me being there and not knowing nine-tenths of what could possibly
be there. I'm more common.
RB: You really think smarter is better?
DG: I don't know—I'm not smart enough to know.
It's different. I reach more people like me—there's
more of me than them. There are smart people that are smart enough
to get across to me and I'm impressed. I have a son who is
particularly brilliant. And he is also able to explain his brilliance.
Annie Proulx, a person who is utterly brilliant. It must be hard
for herself to be so brilliant. She is easy to talk to, but you
are overwhelmed by her brilliance—it just shines and it's
scary she's so brilliant.
RB: Where did you meet her?
DG: Years ago she picked me for the PEN/Hemingway. There were other
judges. Joanna Scott, a great writer. Various Antidotes
is one of the greatest story collections. I always teach that as
an example of a kind of writing I could never do but I completely
admire. Completely original—where a whole world is in a teardrop.
Anyway, I actually met Annie Proulx in DC because I was a PEN/ Faulkner
finalist. She gave a speech and we met—of course, I was awe
struck to meet her and we hung out and she has become a very good
friend. Someone I can always count on—I mean, I'm embarrassed
about my own crummy career compared to her. [She] always has something
positive to say. She reads everything. She seems to have read every
new book. I don't know how she does it.
RB: Is there a singular project or dream that you are aiming at?
DG: One book?
RB: If it's a book.
DG: I haven't really fulfilled my little what-I-hoped-to–do-on-Earth-as-a-writer.
I don't know how many books that is—if it's one or five
or what, I'm still on it. I feel young. I know I'm not
supposed to be feeling young, but I feel young. I don't know
if it's because I started later or it's just me, my outlook. I am
trying to shift so I can think differently so I approach my work
differently and not get caught up with other young parallel things
that will distract me from the real important thing I should be
doing. I know I have at least two other things I want to write that
I am excited about writing and [that] I am looking forward to doing
and sitting with, and I am not going to talk about. I have only
focused four or five months once [on it] where I had uninterrupted
time.
RB: What did it feel like?
DG: It's been so long I don't remember. I'm curious
how this book will be received. There doesn't seem to be a
market for me, necessarily.
RB: Originals make their own markets. I hope we talk the next time
around.
DG: I hope it's sooner.
RB: Thanks.
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