Writers Respond: An Interview with Christopher Higgs

Christopher Higgs curates Bright Stupid Confetti. He is the humble author of an amazing chapbook titled Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously (Publishing Genius, 2009), and other of his belletristic prose exists in past/present/future editions of many esteemed literary organs, including, but not limited to:AGNI, Conduit, Post Road, Quarterly West, Salt Hill, No Colony, and Action Yes.  Currently, he is pursuing a doctorate in literature and critical theory at Florida State University, where his primary research involves theorizing a rhizomatic approach to understanding transnational and transhistorical avant-garde / experimental literature.  The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney (Sator Press, 2010) is his first novel. 

MOLLY GAUDRY: Tell us about The Complete Works of Marvin K. Mooney. 

CHRISTOPHER HIGGS:  I have attempted to answer this question at least eleven different ways without success.  I’ve written whole paragraphs that take a funny tone, an intellectual tone, a straightforward tone, a cryptic tone, a poetic tone, you name it.  Maybe the fact that I can’t seem to figure out the best way to answer this question is, in and of itself, the answer.  Attempts, mistakes, beginnings without endings, starts followed by stops, erasure, indecision, a collection of work by an imaginary writer who has disappeared, the product of three years of work, assemblage, collage, novelty, playfulness, messiness, theoretical, musical, cinematic, oblique, funny, shallow, frisky, backhanded, heartbreaking.  I want to claim that this book is unlike anything anyone has ever read before (i.e. extremely unfamiliar), which I believe to be accurate, but I realize that claim sounds both pompous and irritating.  Obviously it has antecedents (i.e. is familiar), in some ways, I guess.  I don't know.  I do know that I always fear I sound like an asshole in interviews.  I write experimental stuff.  This book is experimental.  I use that word (experimental) knowing full well that it tends to turn people off.  I don’t want people to dislike me or my writing because it is experimental.  I want, and this book wants, people to change their mind about literature.  I want, and this book wants, people to care less about plot, character, setting and theme.  We want to change you, to expand what you think of when you think of the novel.  We want to challenge you, tickle you, get you talking, get you thinking, and ultimately we want to move you to produce your own unique material.  We want to build a snowman and then blow it up, clear a pathway and then clutter it up, open possibilities and then scramble them, suggest new alternatives to old problems and then throw away the key.  

MG: The term "experimental" does, as you say, tend to turn some off. But in the sciences, experiments are both valid and valuable. If a neuroscientist said, "I'm experimenting with new technologies that will be able to repair a person

39;s damaged nervous system," no one would bat an eye. What's the difference, do you think? Does this difference say anything about the sciences? Humanities? Literature? About the future of any or all of these things?

CH:  I think some folks feel uncomfortable with the label "experimental" when it comes to literature because the word lacks a commonly accepted definition.  We all understand what is meant when someone says they are conducting scientific experiments.  When someone says they are writing experimental literature, on the other hand, it is not so easy to understand what is meant.  Personally, I am proud to label myself an experimental writer.  I don't want to be mistaken for a writer of verisimilitude.  I am not interested in writing "good stories" with "believable characters."  Those things bore the living shit out of me.  I know I am in the extreme minority.  But my hope is that in the future my way of thinking will become the orthodoxy, and the school of conventional realism will become the minority.  This is very unlikely to happen.  But a guy can dream.  

MG: Who is Marvin K. Mooney?

CH: That's the question I hope to raise.

MG: Were you a Seuss fan? Or is this a Nixon reference? Or am I missing the point entirely?

CH: Haha: the Nixon thing.  No, no Nixon connection.  In fact, I was completely unaware of that whole analogy until very recently.  As far as being a Seuss fan, yes I suppose I was/am but not excessively.  When I was a little boy my favorite Dr. Seuss book was Marvin K. Mooney Will You Please Go Now!, in fact it's really the only one I remember reading.  I wasn't much of a reader as a kid. 

MG: Do you know what the chanting's all about?

CH: I made those two chanting videos.  They're my students reading page 243 of the novel.

MG: What? Really! Oh my God. That's so funny. Did they like it? Details!

CH: Groupe 3c was my morning class and Groupe 1b was my mid-morning class.  One day I finished class early and told them they were free to go, but if they would like to stay and help me make a promotional video for my forthcoming book I could use their help.  In both classes I think all but one or two students participated.  I think they thought it was weird, but they were willing to go along with it because I have a pretty good rapport with my students.

MG: Who's the girl reading in this video? 

CH: That's my wife!  Caitlin Newcomer.  Who is, besides being my favorite person on earth, an amazing writer herself.  Check out her crazy prose piece about Bluebeard.  

MG: So, how'd you meet? (And as today is Valentine's Day, what are your plans?)

CH: We met in the MFA program at Ohio State.  For Valentine's Day, we're going to prepare a meal we've never attempted, drink wine, listen to records, and work on our photo album/scrapbook -- this is something we've been doing since we first started dating: collecting pictures, drawings, ticket stubs, whatever important little memorabilia, and then assembling them in these albums for keepsakes.  It's pretty cool. 

MG: All right, so tell me more about the "advertising campaign" behind Marvin. Why adopt the persona and go around claiming to be a mysterious person named Marvin K. Mooney? Or was that Ken?

CH: The death of the author in the digital age.  The unknown.  Like everything else about this book, our marketing plan was/is an experiment -- we're hardly finished.  How will people react to anonymity?  What is the difference between real persona and virtual persona?  Which is stronger: curiosity or cynicism?  Which is easier: dismissal or consideration?  The results have been extremely interesting so far.  I intend to write an essay about it. 

MG: How did you get hooked up with Ken Baumann?

CH: Blake Butler knew I'd finished a novel, knew I was sending it out to places, looking for a publisher, and so he asked if he could read the manuscript.  I obliged.  Unbeknownst to me, Ken had been hatching a plan to start publishing.  I think Blake told him about my book.  Ken asked me if he could read the manuscript, to consider it for his new press, so I sent it to him.  Very shortly thereafter he asked me if he could publish it as the first Sator Press title.  I was flattered but had to think about it, given that I'd just sent the manuscript to a half dozen well established places.  After asking a few trusted confidants for advice, and after discussing with Ken his vision for Sator, I was convinced it was the right move.  I could not be happier about my decision.  I had/am having such a great time working with Ken to bring this thing to life. *Note: I have just rewritten this sentence a dozen times trying to include all of the great things I'd say about Ken, but since I can't get it right I have decided to go with this sentence in which I tell you (and the readers) that I was trying to write a sentence that could contain my admiration for Ken but failed because the words and my thoughts are too vast and overflowing.  Here's the condensed version: Dude is dynamite.

MG: Tell us more about the hesitation to give it to a new press after having submitted it to more established places. I think that's something a lot of readers would be interested in. 

CH: Well, there are many dimensions to this question.  First, I have to think about certain things other people might not have to think about because I live in this strange world called academia.  In academia, it is extremely difficult to get a tenure track job teaching creative writing without having a book published by a well respected publishing house.  Luckily, I'm not particularly interested in teaching creative writing for a living.  But saying that or thinking that is one thing; actually pulling my manuscript from consideration at various publishing houses that would've qualified me for one of those jobs is a whole other thing.  Second, going with a new press means you don't have the kind of built in audience or built in name recognition that more well established places have earned.  Third, going with a new press means that it's very likely that the operator is learning the ins and outs as they go along.  For me it was especially important to make the right decision because, as I mentioned, this book represents three years worth of work.  I didn't simply bust this thing out over one Adderall-fueled week in July -- had that been the case, then hell I wouldn't have thought twice about it.  So I had to be absolutely sure it was in my best interest, and in the book's best interest, to go with a new press.     

MG: What's something else we should know about Sator Press and Marvin?

CH: Well one thing might be the different formats we've created for the novel: besides the traditional book object, we're also offereing it as an e-book for your nook or kindle or whatever, and also an audio book, which I think is the first of its kind -- not aware of any other indie publisher who has put out a full audio book, and also, more interestingly and importantly, the form of the audio book is one of a kind in that it's not simply a recording of me reading the text, it's a wild sound collage incorporating all kinds of location recordings, sound effects, robotic interfacing, found sounds, landscape background ambient layerings -- it's pretty neat, I'm pretty proud of it.      

MG: How long have you been writing and publishing? How did you get started, and why?

CH: I started writing creatively in high school because I had a teacher named Diane Panozzo who encouraged me.  So, I guess I've been writing for 17 years.  After high school I went to film school, so prose writing was something I did on the side.  To make a very long story very short, I began to take creative writing seriously and started publishing prose work about six years ago, or so.    MG: Do you teach creative writing? What do you think inspires that moment -- the moment when dabblers decide "to take creative writing seriously"?