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Jack Fear: The Playboy Interview

  
  

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Jack Fear
23:58 / 12.11.02
Jack Fear enters a room like a man trying to smash down an invisible wall with his forehead. He's six-foot-three, and thickly built: his stride is long and emphatic, his movements crackle with energy. A guitarist who shared a stage with him says, "Standing next to him when he plays is like running alongside a freight train."

Today he's wearing his usual workday uniform—the paint-stained jeans, the hiking boots (his feet are enormous), the blue hooded sweatshirt over a dark T-shirt—and his thinning hair is freshly buzz-cut to an even quarter-inch. He's thirty-five: as he charges in with his head cocked forward, you can see the smudges of gray at his temples.



You follow Jack Fear into the kitchen. He pours himself a coffee and settles into a white wicker chair, feet wide, leaning forward, elbows on his knees. "What I find interesting is that nobody has asked anything about me, about my life, my family, my situation," he says. He speaks softly—the voice of a loud child grown into a quiet adult. "It's mostly hypotheticals and opinions—why is that? I give my opinions all the time on Barbelith—why set up an interview for that?

"I've always been pretty transparent on the Web," he continues. "I don't talk about myself much in the sense of offering a lot of information, but if I'm asked—or if it seems relevant—then I don't hesitate to talk about myself. There's a pretty thorough biography to be gleaned from my—what is it? three years now?—of posting on Barbelith, but it's scattered. Bits and pieces." He smiles, and his eyes become slits behind his spectacles. "Just like real life, I guess."

Flux leads off the questioning. Hi, Flux!
 
 
Jack Fear
00:00 / 13.11.02
How did you come to be a published writer? How did you get your first big writing gig?

Uh... I think you may have me confused with someone else. I've published precisely four pieces in anything with any kind of circulation:
  • one comics story in Wu Wei, which writer-artist Oscar Stern self-publishes
  • one comics story in the anthology Periphery, from Arch-Type Studios, which folded after two issues and sold less than 1500 copies
  • one poem in the Going Down Swinging, an anthology co-edited by our own Adam (Matsya) Ford and funded with Australian Arts Council money
  • one essay in the anthology I Thought My Father Was God (Henry Holt)


    • Total financial restitution for this corpus of work: fifty bucks and copies.

    In all these cases, the gig pretty much fell into my lap: it's really been "Don't call us, we'll call you." Oscar and I met at a con when Wu Wei was starting up and stayed in touch; I showed him a script I was working on, and he said "I want to do this"... and he had a built-in publishing outlet. I hooked up with artist Brian Laframboise through an ad on Digital Webbing, and he already had an in with some of the Arch-Type guys. Matsya had read my poem here on the 'lith, and asked if he could put it in GDS. And the National Story Project people solicited submissions on nationwide radio: Paul Auster picked my story, somebody in PR at Henry Holt asked me if I'd do the reading.

    Honestly, any success I've had has been due to total passivity. In those periods when I have actively pursued publication, I couldn't catch a break for love nor money. Most curious.

    Could you explain what it is about Warren Ellis that you like so much? It's not his fiction writing, is it?

    I don't know that I like Warren Ellis per se: I simply don't hate him. But you're right, it's not the fiction writing: I appreciate the man more than I appreciate the work, which is often pedestrian. But then, I read his articles on comics theory before I'd ever actually read any of his comics. I followed a link one day and came across the columns he'd archived on his website, and I just devoured them.

    Leaving aside his opinions on various genres and the whole work-for-hire issue, it was immediately clear to me that here is a guy who thinks a lot about the craft—the nuts and bolts of it: panel layouts, time effects, pacing, text effects, cover design. I thought then and think now that Ellis is one of comics' foremost theorists—and find his theoretical work especially useful and valuable because it comes from the viewpoint of, and addresses the issues particular to, a writer, which I am, rather than (as in the case of Eisner and McCloud) a writer/artist, which I am not.

    So I've gotta give him props, just as I give McCloud props for Understanding Comics even as I admit that Zot! ain't my cup of tea.

    And I enjoy his colloquial voice, and am amused by the persona, which is such an obvious joke that it mazes me how many people don't get it.

    Do you amp up your grumpiness for effect, or are you normally just speaking your mind as it is?

    A little from Column A, a little from Column B. What you're getting is the real me, but turned up to 11.

    You've been on Barbelith and its earlier incarnations since the beginning. What do you think are the biggest improvements in the community?

    A greater diversity of voices and viewpoints.

    What do you wish you could have back?

    As flippant as it sounds... a new issue of The Invisibles every month.

    It's difficult to overstate how important the book was to the early days of the board: it really provided a single organizing principle around which the board grew, a framework that shaped its discourse. All subjects were viewed through the filter of capital-R Revolution, of capital-I "Invisibility" (whatever that means): the progress of the book gave us a sort of measure of our progress.

    We outgrew it, of course, before the book even finished—like a vine in the garden, assisted in the early stages of its growth by a stake. Take the stake away and the vine still flourishes... but its growth, once steadily directed upwards, now turns horizontal: its ascension is slowed by its tendency to spread.

    Yet still we grow, still we ascend, with or without a benchmark. It's difficult to quantify our growth, these days—and so I yearn, in good nostalgic fashion, for the days when such things were simpler.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:02 / 13.11.02
    Ah, there's Grant. He's a journalist... he'll know how to conduct an interview...

    Are you my mother?

    No, but I did fuck your father.
    (I answered this one before, didn't I?)

    What's the sexiest comic book scene - story, tableau, or single panel - you've ever seen?

    it's funny—I had to think long and hard about this question, because while I can summon many examples of sexual scenes, there seems a shortage of those that are actually sexy. To explain the distinction, think of the film Picnic at Hanging Rock: every frame is saturated in sexual hysteria, yet it's not a sexy film as such. So often in comics sex is presented as a threat rather than a promise; sexual frankness is a signifier for a character who's a loose cannon if not outright evil (those Claremont babes always don fetish gear for their inevitable fall to the dark side).

    That said, there's a scene in Ghost World where Becky goes over to Josh's place with one thing on her mind, and it's both sexy and heartbreaking. Finder has a lot of delicate, moody moments, scenes that respect the enormous complexity of sexuality—I always think of teen-aged Rachel, sitting atop the washing machine, in the throes of her crush on her mother's boyfriend, both miserable and blissful with it. But it's not just stories of adolescence that find these notes of truth—there's a brief scene in the middle of John Byrne's otherwise-dreadful OMAC miniseries wherein the displaced-in-time Buddy Blank awakens from a nightmare and is soothed by his loving wife. It's sweet and vulnerable and it made me randy readin' it.

    Is it embarrassing to you to be able to answer that question?

    No more so than talking about sexiest film, novel, or song. It's just another art-form.

    What would your parish priest think of Barbelith? The lead singers in the choir?

    Well, let me preface this by saying that I resigned my position in the choir just before Sam's birth in May, so I am once again a civilian in these matters.

    I cannot presume to say what the good Monsignor would think. He's a very sharp guy, a genuine polymath, with depths I can never think to know—he doesn't give a lot of himself away. If I may digress, though: the popular perception of clergymen as being naive and unworldly and unquestioning both amuses and pisses me off. These guys wrestle with issues of faith, desire and service every fucking day of their lives, and they've heard and seen things that would make your head spin. So a bunch of thoughtful types exploring popular culture, weird science, and various methodologies for making a finer world—nah, that's not going to shock your average priest.

    As for the choristers: eh. If Barbelith is meant to be some sort of reflection on me, then it'd probably be about what they'd expect. I was a horrible choir director: I probably said "fuck" about thirty times per rehearsal. Besides, one of my choristers raises alpacas, about which she never shuts up, so who is she to pass judgment on what gets me off?

    You wanna maybe get together some time?

    Oh yes. Bring yr guitar.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:12 / 13.11.02
    Young Rizla... step up. Don't be shy...

    What constitutes good rock n' roll?

    People listening to each other. The Single Promethean Vision thing is bullshit: the best rock n' roll is made by bands—at least two people, who either love each, hate each other or (as is often the case) both. The intensity of the music comes out of the comradeship, the sense of common purpose. This applies whether a band is credited as such or not—the power of the entity we call "Nick Cave," for instance, is as much Mick Harvey and Blixa Bargeld as it is Cave himself.

    Also, the balancing of opposites. A heart of fire and a clear, calculating mind. Infinite possibility married to a manageable structure. Masculine swagger and feminine tenderness. The blend of precision and sloppiness. And an understanding that what we as musicians do is, in a very real sense, sacred. (Profane, too, of course, but nobody seems to need reminding of that.)

    Psychoanalysis - accepted science, useful tool, dubious at best or complete arse?

    A useful tool—and underused, as far as I'm concerned. Too much emphasis is being placed on the quick (i.e., pharmaceutical) fix.

    What's your nomination for the finest sit-com of the television era?

    I fell out of the habitual TV-watching years ago, so I don't pursue or follow anything—anything I watch these days, I stumble across more-or-less at random. If I run across M*A*S*H by chance, I won't turn it off. That's the only sitcom for which I can say that, and I guess that's a mark of quality.

    What's your favourite colour?

    Ourange.

    Is world stability deteriorating? If so, will we see the collapse of the current world order within our lifetimes?

    If anything, I think the world is being brought to crisis by attempts to make it more orderly, more controllable: the drive towards homogeneity and the removal of X-factors as expressed in ethnic cleansing, the policing of personal behavior inherent in religious fundamentalism, the attempt to impose a monoculture implicit in globalization and the responses to it.

    I think instability is a good sign. Growth is change is life is motion: too much stability = entropy. A stable culture is a culture in decline: roll on the Universe, says.

    I think our best hope for continued survival and growth as a species is to let go of the need for stability, to stop trying to understand everything, to have a little faith and just sort of surfthe waves as they come now and then.

    Clever people being knowingly dumb for comic effect—clever or dumb?

    Depends on how it's done. Only answerable on a case-by-case basis.

    As a system of belief, is science truly as rational and universal as it claims to be?

    As a system of belief? No. And a scientist would be the first to agree with me on that: scientific questions are not—should not be—questions of belief, but of understanding.

    As a system of understanding, science is adequate. It'll do until something better comes along.

    What were the last three things you paid money for?

    Two dollars' worth of penny candy, an Ethernet expansion card, and a cord of firewood, split and delivered.

    If you find these questions silly and/or refuse to answer them, could you explain why?

    I can't, cos I don't.

    More to come...
    		 
     
    Eloi Tsabaoth
    10:30 / 13.11.02
    So Jack, Turn Ons, Turn Offs?
    		 
     
    The Natural Way
    12:49 / 13.11.02
    I'm not entirely clear on this...why do you sound as though yr english? All that "bollocks" and stuff. Would you describe yrself as an anglophile?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    13:30 / 13.11.02
    Turn ons? Turn offs?

    Impossible to answer in any way that's going to make sense to anyone else. My relationship to my sexuality is fairly unique, I think, in that I've been in a single monogamous relationship for my entire adult life: my identity as a sexual being is utterly defined by that context—it's all inextricably twined in the experience of living with D. If a foot rubbing against mine under the bedclothes is arousing to me, that's because it's her foot, and because I know what that motion means in the context of our marriage, and what it will lead to. Someone else's foot, in a different bed—I can't say what that might mean. No action, no visual or sonic olfactory cue, can be considered out of that context. Pass.

    Why do you sound like you're English? Would you consider yourself an Anglophile?

    As far as I'm aware, I really only use three Briticisms on a regular basis on these boards, they being bollocks, arse / arsehole, and to take the piss. This is not an affectation strictly for the boards: I also use these in meatspace, along with shite and bugger as mild expletives. On the board I will sometimes use terms like tosser or pants, but only ironically. (Wanker is, by this point, transatlantic.)

    As to why—I don't know if it's an infatuation with England (or the idea of England) specifically: I think it's more in the great American tradition of stealing whatever works. I hear something, I like it, I adopt it: there's no reason not to—am I supposed to keep saying "bullshit" instead of "bollocks" out of some kind of nationalist loyalty?

    There are terms in UK English that have no immediate equivalent in US English, and I've adopted them just as English worldwide has adopted (for example) Yiddish words like chutzpah or verklempt. There's no more economic way of expressing smart-alecky-affectation-with-intent-to-mock than to say "taking the piss." It's just the right tool for the job.

    That said: there is one word that I adore and which is extremely useful, but which I cannot being myself to say because it makes me sound like a total poseur—and that is chuffed.
    		 
     
    grant
    13:39 / 13.11.02
    What are your family roots? Are you a native New Englander? Were your parents?


    Ever consider a career in the priesthood? In the military?


    What's the strangest place you've been?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    14:19 / 13.11.02
    What are your family roots? Are you a native New Englander? Were your parents?

    Paternal grandparents born Dunmore, Co. Galway, late 1890s: emigrated before the Revolution, settled in Manhattan, where my grandfather settled in Hell's Kitchen, joined the fire department, drank with his cronies and terrorized his wife and kids. Maternal grandparents were Keeleys and Daleys, coming from Irish and Scottish stock by way of the Canadian maritimes: mother born & raised in Tonawanda, New York, not far from Buffalo.

    Dad spent a stint in the seminary, studying with the Christian Brothers, but his education was interrupted by the War: he spent his early twenties on USS Alabama, checking the radar for incoming Japs. After his discharge, my father attended Cornell University in Ithaca, NY on the GI Bill, went to Hollywood for a while to try to make it as a writer, gave up, and hitchhiked back to New York. Met my Mom in 1948 at a gin mill, under circumstances that have never been adequately explained to me. Marriage followed. They bounced around New York State for a while before settling in Massachusetts in 1950 or so—although "settled" is perhaps the wrong word, since for many years my father traveled for a textile concern and was gone six weeks out of every eight, while Mom stayed home and raised six kids.

    So I'm a native New Englander, but my folks were both New Yorkers. In an odd case of what-goes-around-comes-around, I'm seriously considering a move to Rochester...

    Ever consider a career in the priesthood?

    Yes. It was the first thing I ever wanted to be, when I was a kid, years before I knew my father had ever been a seminarian: when other boys wanted to be firemen or astronauts, I wanted to be a priest. They wore cool uniforms, had special headquarters, spoke a secret language, had arcane knowledge and miraculous powers, reported to a mysterious authority, had a mission of grave import, moved in clouds of music and incense... these guys were friggin' superheroes, man. Sign me up.

    Still might do it, if circumstances force the issue.

    In the military?

    Never. It was simply never considered an option: the fact that my father never talked about his wartime experiences (and in fact seemed vaguely embarrassed by his Navy stint) may have factored into it, but mostly my disinterest centered on the fact that I was and remain both (a) a pacifist and (b) constitutionally unsuited to follow orders.

    What's the strangest place you've been?

    Is there such a thing as a "strange place"? Most places are just places, until circumstance makes them strange... unless we're talking about some geographic/geologic anomaly, or an architectural wonder or somesuch.

    I mean, I live in an old wreck of a house where the walls are uneven and the floor dips alarmingly in places; the living-room ceiling leaks whenever it rains, and there's a collapsing barn out back, stuffed to the rafters with junk, its foundation inhabited by inbred generations of feral cats. To most people it would be a Lovecraftian nightmare: to us, it's just home.
    		 
     
    Matthew Fluxington
    16:22 / 13.11.02
    Why Rochester?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    16:34 / 13.11.02
    More like "Why not Rochester?" I could be just as happy in Bozeman or Roanoke or Dubuque. I can work anywhere, D can work anywhere. Rochester is close but not too close, far but not too far, the cost of housing and cost of living are decent, the countryside is gorgeous. And D has family there.
    		 
     
    grant
    17:15 / 13.11.02
    Have you ever eaten grits? Collard greens? Alligator? Any game animals?

    Have you ever visited a mobile home park or trailer court?

    Have you ever fired a gun?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    17:29 / 13.11.02
    Have you ever eaten grits? Collard greens? Alligator? Any game animals?

    Haven't had grits in years. Collard greens, turnip greens, black-eyed peas, mm-hm. Went through a "soul food" phase a few years back when we were eating a more strictly vegetarian diet and were working our way through variations on the beans & rice songbook like a couple of drunken jazzmen giving Cole Porter what-for. I learned to make a mean Hoppin' John, myself.

    Never eaten alligator. Had venison once, almost twenty years ago, when I was staying a few nights with a farm family in Quebec.

    Have you ever visited a mobile home park or trailer court?

    Been to a fair number of campgrounds that cater to a mixed car-camping tenter and RV summer home clientele, yeah. Good folks, most of them—lots of retirees. And I've stayed with freinds and the occasional family member in trailer homes, though never in a trailer court—always on a parcel of private land.

    Have you ever fired a gun?

    No. Not interested.
    		 
     
    Persephone
    17:34 / 13.11.02
    I learned to make a mean Hoppin' John, myself.

    Really? Can you post the recipe? I want to make Hoppin' John for Winterval.
    		 
     
    Ganesh
    18:37 / 13.11.02
    What first attracted you to your partner? Has that attraction evolved or changed over time? How?

    Having contributed fairly heavily to (and been triply exluded from) ChristianBBS of late, I'm interested in your faith. How would you describe your religious beliefs, specifically?

    IMHO, Barbelith is thematically more consistent with single, introspective mid-to-late twentysomethings than with older 'couply' types. Do you agree? How has your relationship with Barbelith varied over time?

    What are your favourite plants and flowers?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    20:44 / 13.11.02
    What first attracted you to your partner? Has that attraction evolved or changed over time? How?

    It's funny how using that word "partner" becomes reflexive, ennit? I mean, yeah, she's my partner, but, y'know... she's my wife. That's still okay to say, right? Wife.

    Frankly, I was first attracted to D because she was attracted to me, which was an enormous ego-boost. And because we shared musical tastes, and it was joy and heaven to have someone with whom I could have passionate discussion about the popular choons of the day.

    Both of these things still hold, seventeen (!) years later: but it's grown deeper and stronger. When first I met D, I did not know I would be attracted by her strength, because we had not yet been through a crisis that would give it an opportunity to reveal itself. Likewise her patience (though she'll never give me enough rope to hang myself), her drive and her fire, her ferocious smarts and above all her humor: she makes me laugh, loud and often, and I'm smitten all over again.

    ...I'm interested in your faith. How would you describe your religious beliefs, specifically?

    Got a few hours...?

    Okay, okay. My beliefs in a nutshell:

    The Truth is a diamond, huge and many-angled, with a multitude of facets. No one can see the whole Truth all at once—the most anybody sees is a triangle of light, a single gleaming face of the diamond. The facets all partake of the diamond, and each facet serves to give light: so it's well and good to work in the light of the facet that's facing you, as long as you never forget that your facet is just a part of the whole—that this brilliant triangle is not the whole diamond.

    The facet I'm working is the Roman Catholic Church. There are a myriad of ways to approach the Truth, and this is the one I choose. It's as good as any other. The fact that the Church is so fucked-up as an institution makes me sure I've made the right choice: part of the Truth that I can see is that we should go where we're needed, and right now this confused and broken Church needs me. I'm a Catholic in the same way that I'm a US citizen—the Pope doesn't speak for me any more than the President does; my loyalty is not to the people or to the policies, but to the larger idea (in one of her characteristically neat turns of phrase, D [who is a convert, BTW] describes us as "Ronin Catholics").

    Christianity, as I understand it and try to live it, is not a crutch: it's a challenge. It's not about comfort, not about having all the answers—it's about being given an example of service and sacrifice and perfect faith and perfect compassion, and being told, "Go thou and do likewise."

    It's about surrendering to something bigger than oneself—only that makes it sound passive, which it emphatically isn't: the Ego is a big bad drug, man, a million times hookier than smack. Giving that shit up is a brutal struggle, day in, day out.

    IMHO, Barbelith is thematically more consistent with single, introspective mid-to-late twentysomethings than with older 'couply' types. Do you agree? How has your relationship with Barbelith varied over time?

    You're certainly right about the demographic, and it leaves me feeling defeated and out-of-it sometimes—not just because I'm old but because I'm so incredibly normal—straight white heteronormative American male with kids and a corporate job, a churchgoer fa chrissakes—I'm supposed to be the Enemy, aren't I? Am I not everything Barbelith is supposed to be fighting?

    On the reverse, I find the "introspection" a bit wearying sometimes, when it crosses the line into self-absorption. I want to shout, "Just get on with it!"—not so much because I'm irritated at having to listen to your sad sad tale, but because most of the misery you are experiencing is coming from you—your own action/inaction/attitude/karma/whatever—and it kills me to see you in such pain, to see you beating up on yourselves so badly, when the truth is that it doesn't have to be this way.—you don't have to let it be this way.

    And it gets me down, saying this over and over. And being misunderstood, and pegged as judgmental. Which I suppose is a fair assessment, in that I'm making a judgment about your situation in order to determine how I might be of use, if at all.

    I'm more easily exasperated, these days, and my wrath is much more on display. But I yell because I care.

    What are your favourite plants and flowers?

    Things that are simple and humble and hardy and useful. I like trees—apple trees, for fruit and climbing and dowsing-wands, maples for sugar and guitars and the prettiest leaves of autumn. Herbs in kitchen gardens, or growing wild in unexpected places—a patch of mint or a bed of thyme in a corner of a suburban lawn. Grass—so ubiquitous as to be eminently ignorable, but you miss it when there's none around. And really, what a miracle is grass, when you think about it.

    Most flowers I find sickly-sweet. I like and admire the scrubby little ones that grow wild, or as ground cover—geraniums, phlox, pinks, violets. Peonies are grand and must be pampered, but violets will just give themselves away, blooming for no reason and splashing a roadside with color, putting forth their beauty without expecting love in return.
    		 
     
    The Natural Way
    12:48 / 14.11.02
    Best, worst and strangest things about being a Dad....
    		 
     
    Sax
    12:58 / 14.11.02
    How cool was it having Paul Auster choose your story for his anthology?

    Did you get to meet him?

    Have you ever been paid for creative writing?

    How many unpublished novels are there in your bottom drawer?

    What is Jack Fear a'feared of?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    18:51 / 14.11.02
    Getting through these slowly, slowly: time needed to craft adequate responses.

    Here's a fun one for Persephone: my recipe for Hoppin' John.

    What you need to know about my cooking style:
    —I never use a recipe
    —I never make anything the same way twice
    —I'm not shy about using canned ingredients
    —Whenever possible I will combine all courses of a meal into one dish

    Hoppin' John is a simple dish of rice and black-eyed peas. In the traditional style you use dried peas and soak them overnight, then combine the peas with raw rice and cook it all together, with ham hocks, salt pork, or bacon for flavor. I use canned black-eyed peas, and cook the rice separately.

    Now, this is going to be two recipes in one: because this is a meatless variation, and you need something to substitute for the smoky kick of the ham hocks, I usually start with a batch of my famous...

    Bloody Mary Rice
    Cook brown or basmati rice in:
    —tomato juice thinned slightly with water OR one can tomato soup to two cans water
    —generous dash of Tabasco
    —generous dash of Worcestershire sauce
    —generous dash vodka of your choice (optional: it's there for the mojo, not for the flavor).

    Use a slightly higher liquid-to-rice ratio than you usually would for the rice in question. Combine in a saucepan, heat to a boil, the lower the heat and cook slooooowly, over a low flame, stirring occasionally—it has a tendency to scorch—and adding liquid as necessary until the rice is orange-red, soft and clumpy. Good as an accompaniment for a great many things.

    Now, for the Hoppin' John itself:
    —1 large onion, diced
    —2 cloves garlic, minced
    —3-4 ribs of celery, diced
    —about two cups of chopped bell pepper (red, green, orange, yellow, or all four)
    —1 carrot, diced (optional)
    —14 oz. black-eyed peas, cooked ( canned or home-cooked, it's your call)
    —plenty of black pepper

    To a large pan (I use a cast-iron Dutch oven), add enough olive oil to coat. Heat until sizzling: sautée the garlic and onions until translucent. Add the celery, then the bell pepper (onion, celery, and bell pepper are known in Cajun cooking as "The Holy Trinity": didja know?), then the carrots, sautéeing each for a minute or two (we're going for tender/crisp, here), then add the black-eyed peas: if they're canned, don't drain them—and if they're home-cooked, add a little of the cooking liquid to the pot. Cook on medium heat til the liquid reduces: if you feel like it, you could add a box of frozen chopped spinach, or a can of chopped collard greens—it's your hop. Spoon the whole mess over heaping bowlfuls of Bloody Mary Rice, and add salt and plenty of black pepper to taste.

    There you have it. Purists will sniff—they always do—and the tomatoes in the Bloody Mary Rice probably push this more towards Jambalaya territory, but the line between Hoppin' John and Jambalaya is nebulous anyway. In any case, it's damn good eatin'.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    19:37 / 14.11.02
    How cool was it having Paul Auster choose your story for his anthology?

    I was staggered. Really. I'd almost forgotten I'd sent it, frankly. But then it sent me into paroxysms of guilt and worry: I had submitted the story without consulting the woman whose story it is, and I was concerned that her anonymity not be compromised. I thought long and hard before I agreed to let the story be included.

    Did you get to meet him?

    Meet him? The guy bought me dinner, for cryin' out loud.

    Last year, the publishers of I Thought My Father Was God contacted me to do a reading: contributors to the book from different parts of the country were asked to perform their pieces at a series of publicity events for the book . there were, I think, five readings in all. Paul Auster was there for each one, introducing the participants and barnstorming the local media outlets. Jacki Lyden from NPR was touring with the book, also, since it was her program that kind of midwifed the thing. The events were all audiotaped with an eye towards producing a one-hour NPR special down the road, but I don't think anything ever came of that.

    Anyway, the prospect of the event sent me into fresh throes of guilt and panic, but after an embarrassed confession to, and subsequent blessing from, the woman who is the subject of my story, I agreed to do the reading—under the name Jack Fear, with my hometown never mentioned.

    The book tour was pushed back after 9/11, but eventually it kicked off, in early October, in a basement auditorium in Cambridge, where I read with five or six other contributors: then Paul treated us all to dinner at John Harvard's. He was a regular guy: we all walked from the auditorium to the restaurant, six blocks in the twilight. He was smoking brown cigarillos. I sat next to him at the pub, and we talked about the state of his neighborhood in Brooklyn. We talked about privacy and trust and why it was important for me to obscure, however slightly, my specifics. He asked me what I did for a living, and he listened politely, then admitted that all this World Wide Web stuff was like voodoo for him; he doesn't even own a computer, and writes on a typewriter.

    A smart man, rather intense and earnest, a little guarded—although part of that was, I'm sure, the circumstances: like many New Yorkers, he was in a walking state of shock for about three months.

    Which probably explains why, when recording the audiobook version of ITMFWG, he forgot all about anonymity and introduced my story by listing both my full name and my hometown. Oops.

    Have you ever been paid for creative writing?

    See the second post in this thread.

    How many unpublished novels are there in your bottom drawer?

    None. Because they're all unfinished, is the problem. What I have in my bottom drawer, in scores of notebooks and floppy disks, are notes and sketches and outlines to any number of works, small- and large-scale, and mostly uncompleted. No novels-as-such among them, though—my medium of choice is comics, and I've got heaps of scripts and jottings; off the top of my head I could name you, oh, thirty or forty projects I keep meaning to finish: Body Electric, The Five Thumbs, The Foreign Correspondent, Old Rottenhand, the two books of Reynard, Secret Sannyasi, Freefall, New Machine, Guilty as Sin, Speak, Organic Mystery Funnies, Red Angel Dragnet, Souldier, Tales from the Ten-Spot, Amnesia, Blood Kiss, Rumours of Glory, The Blurred Crusade, Speed-the-Plough, Bum Dharma, FreeBreeder, Marlene on the Wall, Gravity Knife, Horse Latitudes, Full Fathom Five, The Buffalo Skinners, Honi Soit, The Lark in the Raven’s Nest, The Cat Who Walks On Elephant’s Bones, John Barleycorn’s Revenge, Two For Joy...

    What is Jack Fear a'feared of?

    Oh, you know—the usual: Poverty. Loss. The alienation of affection. Failure. Success. Being found out and exposed as a phony. Being punished for what I am.

    It never goes away, really.
    		 
     
    grant
    20:52 / 14.11.02
    That recipe looks like it rocks!

    What's your favorite thing to eat that you can't make at home?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    21:11 / 14.11.02
    Well, we haven't got a deep-fryer, and I loves me some deep-fried food now and then: crab rangoons, spring rolls, even (God help me) KFC.

    My favorite, though, would hve to be fish'n'chips. There's a seafood-and-ice-cream shack just up the road from us that does a platter of cod, clam strips, shrimp, scallops, chips and onion rings. It's to die for: in fact, it's so greasy that it may be to die from. The Rosewood, it's called. They open in April and close in October, and all through the dark winter months we dream of hot seafood on paper plates. Mmm yeah.
    		 
     
    William Sack
    10:58 / 15.11.02
    You are to be imprisoned for one year. You will be placed in solitary confinement with no access to anyone or to the outside world. You are given the option of having any one newspaper of your choice delivered every day, or one novel of your choice delivered every week. Which do you choose and why?
    		 
     
    Regrettable Juvenilia
    11:04 / 15.11.02
    Have discussions on Barbelith ever prompted you to change your mind about anything, and if so, what? I'm thinking about specific previously held opinions that you were forced to reconsider... Give up to three examples.
    		 
     
    Ethan Hawke
    11:05 / 15.11.02
    Who are your favorite writers? Are you a "genre" or "literary" kind of guy (n what you read and what you write)?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:33 / 18.11.02
    Best, worst and strangest things about being a Dad....

    Best: Secondhand first-timeness. Being constantly reminded of what it is like to discover things: when a child experiences something for the first time, it's like it was invented just for them—when a child learns language, for instance, it's as she's the first in the world to imagine its possibilities. Everything is so new, so fresh—there's nothing taken for granted, it's all so entirely in the moment. When a child feels she FEELS! IN CAPITAL! LETTERS! One hundred per-fucking-cent. Watching that is like picking up a contact high, and is instructive: if I'm able to emulate that even ten percent, I'm halfway to Zen bliss.

    Worst: You can't rest on you laurels for a minute—you've constantly got to be reformulating your strategies for being the best parent you can be. The heartbreaking moment when you realize that, despite your best efforts, your kid is mouthing off to you, packing away junk food, and would rather watch TV than do just about anything else. The horrible instant when you look at them and see yourself as you were at that age—just as unlovely, just as obnoxious, already imprinted with all the character traits that had such disastrous consequences when they blossomed in you, the fallout of which you're still dealing with well into adulthood—and you realize that their odds of having a much easier time of it than you are pretty much shot.

    Strangest: the occasional glimpse of how their minds work. When a four-year old sits in her car-seat, passing the time on a long trip by singing, with tragic face and mournful tones, an epic and heartbreaking ballad, which she's making up on the spot, melody and lyrics, concerning the sad fate of her poor dead brother (when of course she's never had a brother): it's astonishing in its immediacy, and terribly, terribly moving—you will have forgotten how it goes minutes later, for some reason, it's like a song in a dream, but for the moment you're completely absorbed, wanting to cry and laugh at the same time, wishing you had a tape recorder, knowing no recording to could do this moment justice—beautiful and sad and joyous and deeply, deeply weird.

    And things like this happen day in, day out.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:34 / 18.11.02
    You are to be imprisoned for one year. You will be placed in solitary confinement with no access to anyone or to the outside world. You are given the option of having any one newspaper of your choice delivered every day, or one novel of your choice delivered every week. Which do you choose and why?

    Novels, no hesitation. It'd turn a negative into a positive, that would—in fact, the idea of a year off with nothing to do but sit on my ass and read fiction sounds like heaven. It's fairly easy to catch up on the State of the World after a time away, but very difficult indeed to find time to read all the novels I'd like.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:35 / 18.11.02
    Have discussions on Barbelith ever prompted you to change your mind about anything, and if so, what? I'm thinking about specific previously held opinions that you were forced to reconsider... Give up to three examples.

    Sorry to disappoint, but... no huge "A-ha!" epiphany moments that I can think of, no.

    Which may mean that I'm closed-minded... or alternatively may mean that I (try to) hold my opinions as lightly as possible, and consider provisional at best—so any new perspectives gained here have still not forced me to decide one way or t'other: I began as undecided and ended the same way, but knowing more than I did.

    Cop-out? Maybe. Follow-ups welcome.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:36 / 18.11.02
    Who are your favorite writers? Are you a "genre" or "literary" kind of guy (in what you read and what you write)?

    First off, I've got to say that I think the distinction between "literary" and "genre" fiction is arbitrary, artificial, and driven more by marketing than by serious considerations of merit: it depresses me that so many critics buy into the false distinction, though.

    That said, many of the authors I like are considered "genre" writers, but even the Lit'ry Establishment tends to agree that they "transcend" the genre (i.e., refuse to recognize its alleged boundaries)—e.g., Harlan Ellison, Gene Wolfe, Ray Bradbury, Neil Gaiman. Doris Lessing. Paul Bowles. C.S. Lewis. Annie Dillard. James Joyce. Flannery O'Connor. Joseph Conrad. Isak Dinesen. Robertson Davies. A.S. Byatt. Walter Mosley. Shirley Jackson. T.S. Eliot. Yeats. Dylan Thomas.

    As that list indicates, I don't read much new fiction. I devour nonfiction, though—I love books of anecdotes and factoids, be they literary, linguistic, popular science, religious, philosophical...

    In my writing as well, I tend away from stories that fit strictly into one well-defined genre, and towards mash-ups—military SF with a pacifist theme, f'rinstance, or an existential mobster yarn. Neither fish nor flesh nor good red herring.
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    00:38 / 18.11.02
    Oh, and Flyboy...

    What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of discussing work-in-progress on the Internet? How do you think this practice affects comics as we know 'them', if at all?

    I'm not really sure I understand the question. Care to unpack? Did you have anything or anyone specific in mind? Is this primarily about announcing/promising/soliciting work and then being unable to deliver? or about the ubiquity of spoilers, and the workarounds for that? or something else entirely? And why is "them" in scare quotes?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    15:31 / 21.11.02
    Bump.

    Any more questions or follow-ups? Cos I'd like to wrap this up for once and all, by the weekend if it's at all possible.
    		 
     
    Saveloy
    08:17 / 22.11.02
    Time for one more quickie before you do the outro, Jack?

    Q: Who do you feel more affinity with - puritans or hedonists?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    13:44 / 22.11.02
    I'm caught damnably betwixt and between. I've a natural affinity with Hedonists, I suppose, not because I enjoy excess (I don't) but because I am a creature of sloth and distraction when left to myself. I find it exceedingly difficult to get anything done. But I don't take any pleasure in idleness, really.

    I aspire to be a Puritan, simply because I envy their discipline, their focus and drive: and working hard, really applying yourself to work you love, is, I think, the greatest pleasure of all. So there's a pleasure principle at work in Puritanism, too—perhaps moreso than in Hedonism.

    Hmm.
    		 
     
    Sax
    14:10 / 22.11.02
    Jack, any advice on impending fatherhood?
    		 
     
    Jack Fear
    14:21 / 22.11.02
    Sleep as much as you can now, because it's gonna be a while before you get to do it again.

    Don't buy any new clothes that need to be carefully kept.

    Know that your children will one day break your heart. Love them unstintingly anyway.

    Always be honest. Always tell the truth. Answer every question directly and precisely: do not volunteer more than your child is looking for--if they want more, they'll ask a follow-up.

    And congratulations.
    		 
      

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