Keyhole Magazine

Jimmy Chen—San Francisco resident, visual artist, and frequent HTMLGIANT contributor—takes time out to answer a few questions about his flash fiction chapbook, Typewriter, which is available for purchase from Magic Helicopter Press.

Molly Gaudry: You've been writing and publishing stories for a long time, but I think I read
somewhere that you never formally studied writing or literature. If this is correct, what did you study? And what made you decide to write and publish stories?

Jimmy Chen: Yes, I never studied creative writing, though I did take a poetry class as an elective in college; we always sat on the lawn, which set off my allergies. (Try rhyming with ah-choo.) I majored in painting and did that until my quarter- or third-life crisis (depending on how long I live). During this time, I always enjoyed writing little things. I actually went to Kinko’s and made chapbooks before I knew they were even chapbooks. I never 'decided' I wanted to be a writer. Frankly, I still don't consider myself a writer, and I'm not trying to be modest. The truth is, I would pick TV or a long walk over 'working on a novel' any day, so there goes any chance I have of being a 'real' writer. Obviously, I'm aware that I write stories. For me, writing is just the least costly and most efficient way to get ideas out; like if I wanted to make a film, I would need actors, a budget, and cameras. To write, all I need is my keypad.

MG: Taken together, as a collection, what do the stories in Typewriter say about our
relationship to the technological world?

JC: This is tricky. I didn't set out to make a point about technology or the Internet. I'd been interested in Internet culture and published a few pieces online; then Mike Young asked to publish a chap, and of course I felt compelled to write more pieces broaching upon the same topic. I'm not
saying the technology motif was arbitrary, only that it was a 'formal device' which wasn't exactly the most intuitive. So the answer is 'I never thought about it.'

MG: One of this collection's strengths is its range when it comes to the narrators or protagonists of the stories. When thinking of technology, it's easy to generalize the technologically savvy into a certain age-group or demographic. What inspired some of these stories' particular points of view?

JC: A lot of the characters are teenagers with problems. I dunno, that time of life just really interests me because it's full of stupidity and profundity—a sacred time because, really, it's when we start dying, like we fully realize what this world is. There's also a lot of post-college ennui that interests me for the same, though somewhat milder, reasons.

MG: I can't be sure if you respect or are disgusted by technology. I get the feeling you're
rather ambivalent?

JC: I neither respect nor am disgusted by it. It's simply there and still fairly new, and it's inevitable that people will write about it, especially 'online writers.' Human tendency is a resilient weed, it obstinately comes out anywhere. With Twitter, Facebook, and all that stuff, I think we just want to be recognized or noticed, just like at a party.

MG: My favorite story is "Garamond." Will you tell us more about it? Anything will do—what inspired it, how long it took to conceive or compose, where or how Gladwell entered into it, when it was written in respect to the other stories in the collection.

JC: I wrote Garamond after Helvetica. I wanted to anthropomorphize fonts—extract them from the vector/virtual world into 'real life' scenarios, sort of alluding to old-fashioned typesetting back when letters were actual objects. Gladwell entered the way he enters all things: with a burst
of hair.

MG: How long did it take you to complete this collection?

JC: I wrote the new pieces in about a week. I feel like I should have spent more time and/or written more, but near the end I felt I was imitating previous pieces, or fluffing words without any actual content. I wanted to keep the collection fresh, so I just stopped.

MG: The final story, "Typewriter," plays a very important role in the collection as a whole. What would you say this role is?

JC: My aim was to leave openings and disjoint meanings, kind of abruptly end it. The conceit here is how a laptop is, in a way, a typewriter, and vice versa. Both, during their respective releases, promised to articulate our enterprises. They are very hopeful objects. The piece acts as a kind of absurd set of instructions for a 'personal laptop typewriter' which implicates the malleability of technology in relation to the body. The marketing jargon pokes at how something so new can become so old, like how the contemporary laptop will be perceived eighty years from now. Apple's technology is years ahead of their marketing to ensure they can always release something new. I think people fetishize technology out of existential dread, like the future quickly becomes the present and the present quickly sucks so we always look towards the future.

MG: What's next for you? Or, what are you working on now?

JC: I want to write longer, more flushed-out pieces, but I can't seem to stay interested in one idea for too long. The more I work on a piece, the worse it gets. This is probably my undoing as a writer. That's why I like internet flash fiction—I can go from one idea to the next. So, the answer to the question is 'nothing new.'

These stories span from anonymous sex games in the after-hours clubs of Paris, to Kennedy wannabe politicians trying to avoid scandal, to hostage negotiation in war-torn Kabul, but these characters seem connected. Connected the way you pull up a barstool in an out of the way bar about a million miles from the small town you grew up in, only to start up a conversation with the next guy over and discover that you were practically next door neighbors. Jay McInerney prefaces the collection by saying that he studied the art of the short story with Raymond Carver and Tobias Wolff: he knows his pedigree. These stories are familiar, but not because you’ve heard them before. They’re full of cigarettes and cocktails: urges and addiction, danger and relief. They’re full of sad realities: a widow with Alzheimer’s at the Belle Meade country club, a clam bake for restaurant waiters who want desperately to be writers or artists, but will never make it. McInerney will change the way you think about the short story: he might also change the way you think about loneliness, and love.

In a sick and wonderful way, Lowboy notices the details in everything: temperature, sound, light, weight. In just 24 hours, 16-year-old, schizophrenic William Heller (Lowboy) escapes from his asylum, has a near-sexual encounter with a street-woman, sneaks his ex-girlfriend out of school, eludes detectives and tramps all over Manhattan, mostly underground. Lowboy is obsessed with global-warming and convinced that the world will end because of it, in a matter of hours. He constantly wrestles with the voices in his mind, Skull and Bone. He writes letters—in code—to his mother, whom he calls Violet. She came from Austria and raised William to be a peer because she was lonely. Detective Lateef’s conversations with Violet and their pursuit to find her son are offset by the very real experience of Lowboy, who finds comfort in the A and C-sharp tones of the subway bell. When Lowboy meets Heather Covington on a bench, you can see her and smell her: like butter, clove cigarettes and beer. Wray’s writing is packed with spot-on metaphors: “the bikers all look the same: like old avocados.” His story is weird and horribly sad, but balanced and completely believable. Lowboy will leave a gnawing pain in your stomach, like hunger or fear or the feeling that he’s got it all right.

You are Billy Poe. You’re also Isaac English, Virgil, Grace, Lee and
Bud Harris. Buell, Pennsylvania is a dying steel town full of people
who either want to escape or spend their time thinking about when they
could have escaped, but no longer can. When Billy and Isaac
accidentally kill a giant homeless Swedish man, they realize how
desperate they are to get out. This weird crime leads to the unpacking
of several fragmented relationships. The town is dotted with shut-down
machine shops and dilapidated mobile homes. Amid the wreckage, Meyer’s
organization is comforting: he switches point-of-view constantly, but
it doesn’t get old. This book reads like a thriller, not because the
action is non-stop or riveting, but because you care about each
character; you care about who survives their conflict. These characters
are poor and smart: Poe ends up in prison while English hops trains to
California. By the end, you love these guys and you hate the system.
You hate a system that puts good, honest boys behind bars and lets
towns like Buell slip right off the map.

Tobias Wolff’s characters are creepy, cold and genuine. Only ten of
these thirty stories are brand new, but Wolff prefaces the collection
by saying that he edited some of the older stories, read: they’re all
new, read them again. At the end of each story you’ll wish—for a
moment—that it was longer. Each story is like a wrinkled old man at the
bus stop who leaks one brilliant line of wisdom, but you know he could
talk all night. Wolff’s characters do the things you want to do, like
point a gun at a son-of-a-bitch, or drive the truck just a little
faster, or rant the truth to a lecture full of unsuspecting students.
And then he sits you down with a stack of pancakes, or shows you a boy
who refuses to open his eyes because he just doesn’t want to see.
“Powder” and “The Night in Question” remain at the top of my list, but
the very short stories, like “Next Door,” force you to picture simple
people and wonder about them. “Rich Brother” reads like a fable:
timeless and with a slightly off-kilter lesson. Though most of the
stories are located in northern California, “Desert Breakdown, 1968,”
takes on more of a dream-world-feel. Be careful with these stories,
they’ll stick with you, even when you wish they’d let you go.

Do what you can to stretch Lush Life out. Twenty or thirty
pages a day. Black coffee. Maybe a fried egg. Let it sink in. Hear the
voices: Detective Clark, Yolanda, Little Dap, Eric Cash, Tristen.
Everyone who has watched The Wire knows that Price knows dialogue. I tend to think crime-novels fall flat after “the big crime,” because they usually do. Lush Life
is less as a crime-novel and more a peek into the Lower-East-Side of
Manhattan; an interaction between cultures that happens to be caused by
a crime. Or more, that can only be caused by a crime. The murder of Ike
Marcus stings the way a first tattoo takes you a little off guard, even
when you know it’s coming. The bulk of the story takes place in the
aftermath, the clean-up. Price proves that we go about our lives, not
acknowledging anyone because we’re too worried about our own little
self. Work is work for everyone. Just like the rest of us, Price’s
characters need to make a buck in order to do what they really want to
be. Price’s greatest achievement here is proving we don’t communicate
with each other well enough: we just shoot.

The Tourist is somewhere between 007 and The Pink Panther. Milo Weaver
is a bad-ass spy: a tourist. But he's also sick of espionage. He's in
it for one more game, in a Bret Favre kind of way. When kick-ass spies
start to age a bit, their secret tool: duct tape. Weaver must balance
his career and his family; who doesn’t? Ultimately, Olen Steinhauer
presents a book that could be a film, or should be a film. The would-be
villain (picture Daniel Day-Lewis) commits a wonderful suicide just
when you start to like the guy. Suicide is the new hip drug. Everyone's
thinking about it, fantasizing about it, and attempting it. Steinhauer
packs corrupt governments, a character named X, double-agents, female
special-agents, torture, terrorism and Disney World. Even when
good-guys and bad-guys seem to converge, don’t resist rooting for
Weaver. Don’t resist taking a look down your street and wondering which
over-the-hill schmuck is a little more than he seems.