{"id":252,"date":"2015-11-07T19:38:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-07T19:38:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/?p=252"},"modified":"2015-11-10T19:11:54","modified_gmt":"2015-11-10T19:11:54","slug":"the-longitudinal-process-of-craft-an-interview-with-chris-bachelder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/2015\/11\/07\/the-longitudinal-process-of-craft-an-interview-with-chris-bachelder\/","title":{"rendered":"The Longitudinal Process of Craft: An Interview with Chris Bachelder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Interview conducted by Justin Chandler<\/em><\/p>\n

Chris Bachelder is the author of four novels: Bear vs. Shark, U.S.!, Abbott Awaits, <\/em>and The Throwback Special<\/em>, which was serialized in The Paris Review<\/em> and will be published in the Spring of 2016 through W.W. Norton. He currently lives in Cincinnati, and teaches at the University of Cincinnati. In early October, Bachelder led an intensive, four-day Sprint course, titled \u201cA Slow Sprint: A Study of Patience and Pacing,\u201d for students in the graduate fiction workshop here at Miami.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve lived in Ohio for 5 years, and this is your third time visiting Miami for a Sprint Week. Other than the outrageous amount of money, what keeps you coming back?<\/strong><\/p>\n

The students are always eager, gracious, and talented, a real pleasure to work with. I like the combination of brevity and intensity, and I find especially appealing the rigorous focus on reading and craft. As a bonus, I get to spend time with Professor Luongo, an old friend, and Professor Bates, a new one.<\/p>\n

How much of an effect does place, the place of a writer in an actual, physical environment (Ohio as opposed to Florida as opposed to Massachusetts), have on a writer and a writer\u2019s interests? We think of age, life events, the passage of time, as having an effect, but what about physical space\u2014does it have an effect?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most certainly it does, both in ways we can articulate and ways we cannot. I take it as a given that our worldviews and predilections and habits of mind are substantially shaped by the landscape we grew up in. I\u2019m not talking politics or culture. I\u2019m talking about how our minds work, and what we think and expect of the world\u2014it must be unique for the person who grows up in the shadow of a 14-000-foot mountain, or at the edge of an ocean, or on the plains, or nestled in some valley.<\/p>\n

Having said that, however, I haven\u2019t to this point in my career been very interested in, or focused on, setting. It\u2019s not what brings me to writing, and I\u2019ve not written carefully about a certain place I\u2019ve lived. The truth is, I\u2019ve moved all over the place, and I suppose I don\u2019t feel a real attachment to any one place. In my first two novels, the setting might be described as \u201cAmerica\u201d\u2014a satirical and cartoonish version of America. And lately I\u2019ve been most interested in occupying the mind and the domestic space. My forthcoming book is set in a chain hotel.<\/p>\n

Your \u201cstyle,\u201d if that word means something, has certainly shifted over the course of your career. Without trying to load a question, I wonder if you might speak to that: what do you see as a development or movement in your own writing, novel to novel?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s convenient, and I suppose fairly accurate, to split my career thus far in half and say that my first two books differ significantly from my last two. My early books used ostentatious formal experimentation and a kind of manic elaboration of an absurd satirical premise. In their movement the books were restless and antic, and in their premises they were conceptual or idea-driven. The canvas was large. My recent books are quieter and much more interior. The concerns are not overtly political or cultural but rather domestic. I\u2019ve become interested in the radical expansion of small moments. The forms and premises are not conventional, but there are fewer structural and formal experiments, fewer flourishes and gags. I think the more recent work is more immersive, thoughtful, and character-driven, less jittery. The canvas has gotten small, and concepts have receded. The split occurred essentially when I had children, and you can make of that what you will. There are certain constants, though, chief among them a fundamentally comic sensibility.<\/p>\n

Implicit in changing style is a sense of, maybe, a newer appreciation for what the novel can or ought to do, and a recognition of what it may be incapable of accomplishing. In hindsight, do you see your earlier work as failing to achieve something, or misguided, or is it just<\/em> different?<\/strong><\/p>\n

For many years I was afflicted with my sense of what the novel ought<\/em> to do. I thought it should\u2014it must\u2014take on the big world, respond to injustice or stupidity, be politically and culturally engaged. My first two novels grew out of this sense of obligation. I\u2019m proud of the books\u2014I don\u2019t see them as failures or follies. I certainly admire their energy, but I guess I think they are somewhat limited in their effects. They strain for gravity beneath the disjunctive structure. Part of that is just being a young writer who is figuring out a lot on the fly. And part of it is the strain of wanting the novel to be and do a certain thing. For whatever reason, I don\u2019t have the same sense of obligation anymore. My political beliefs have not changed significantly, but I haven\u2019t felt the need to prove it on the page. If anything, my current mode is to find significance where someone would least expect to find it. I hesitate to call this progress or improvement or development. It\u2019s just the way I\u2019ve changed. The work is certainly less edgy and engaged and righteous, but I also think it\u2019s more dense, attentive, psychologically astute, and tonally complicated. You could frame that as a loss or a gain.<\/p>\n

Is this mode, for you, still political? That could be either generally\u2014in the sense that everything is always, inevitably political, or in a specific sense of this mode offering unique rewards for the writer and the reader.<\/strong><\/p>\n

It might be true that everything is political, as some say, but then it would also be true that the category ceases to be very interesting. I couldn\u2019t really make a case for this mode being explicitly political or engaged, but I\u2019ve just come to find such delight and value in small-canvas work that is genuinely attentive to the world. Lydia Davis has a little chapbook called \u201cThe Cows.\u201d It\u2019s 37 pages of careful observation and speculation about three cows in a field. Is that political work? I don\u2019t know. It\u2019s work that assigns value to the act of watching, and to creatures you could easily drive right past without a thought.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve spent all week talking about taking time, letting the story breathe. What about patience as an approach to writing do you find so valuable?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, I think patient writing tends to be convincing writing.\u00a0 It convinces readers that the world is real.\u00a0 And I think when writers move patiently through a story, they see more, they are more attentive.\u00a0 They surprise themselves, and thus surprise readers.\u00a0 Patient writing invests objects with power and meaning\u2014a kind of glow or hum.\u00a0 The tired old stuff of the world is redeemed when it is carefully observed.\u00a0 I find that everyday objects, even what we would think of as trash, can be tender or moving when writers pay close attention.\u00a0 An old boot, a stained popsicle stick, a chewed pencil.\u00a0 Also, we talk often about mood or atmosphere in fiction, but it\u2019s not always evident how those abstract qualities are achieved.\u00a0 I would speculate that mood and atmosphere are created and developed largely through pacing.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve read and been talking about graduate fiction all week with us in conferences. The editors of OxMag<\/em> have recently started posting, on the blog, statements on what they look for when they read, a sort of template for writers considering submitting to OxMag<\/em>. I\u2019ve found them pretty enlightening. I was wondering if you could take some time to answer that same question\u2014what do you look for when you\u2019re reading fiction? What\u2019s a piece have to have, or be doing, for you to say Yes<\/em>?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a good question. What I tend to fall for are qualities of syntax and style.\u00a0 I value precision, rhythm, control, agility, as well as indirection and restraint.\u00a0 Wit.\u00a0 Vividness.\u00a0 A peculiar angle of vision.\u00a0 I vastly prefer the genuinely peculiar to the merely zany.\u00a0 I don\u2019t necessarily want a big voice, but I want a distinctive and authoritative voice.\u00a0 I want to enjoy what\u2019s happening on the page, and I care less about what might happen next. \u00a0As I said the other night in the Q&A, I read primarily to be arrested, not propelled.<\/p>\n

The culture in which we write offers unique difficulties. In some ways, American culture today seems averse to the kind of time and attention it requires to devote to long facebook posts, let alone novels. To what extent does this influence you as a writer? And if it doesn\u2019t, how do you cultivate the ability to disregard those sorts of outside concerns?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I struggle to give and sustain my attention. I feel it drifting off and splintering. Compared to ten or fifteen years ago, I feel far less capable of reading a long book or reading for hours at a time. It certainly affects my reading and writing, and yet I believe that reading and writing are the best antidotes. Because our minds tend to flit all over the place, I\u2019ve found literary value in going against the current, in bearing down on small moments.<\/p>\n

If you could interview one author, who would it be, and if you only had the chance to ask one question, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I would ask Paula Fox about a mouse that runs across the kitchen floor in the middle of the night while her characters sleep in the novel Desperate Characters<\/em>.\u00a0 It\u2019s page 143.\u00a0 I\u2019ve always loved that mouse, that moment.\u00a0 It\u2019s an astonishing moment of narration and point of view and observation.\u00a0 The novel was published 45 years ago.\u00a0 I would be curious to know if she remembered that mouse, if it meant anything to her at all.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s an awesomely specific answer. Care to elaborate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Just thinking about point of view, it\u2019s incredible that a writer would keep the camera rolling, so to speak, after her characters fall asleep. It\u2019s fierce evidence of the reality of this world. When our characters are unconscious, the universe doesn\u2019t just fall away or cease to exist. That\u2019s especially true and important in this particular novel, in which the outside world is ominous and threatening. I just love that Fox narrates a quiet house at night. It seems both menacing and tender, and it makes her characters seem so vulnerable.<\/p>\n

Was there ever a moment when you weren\u2019t sure whether you would continue writing? If so, what was it, and how did you move past it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Between projects I always have my doubts about whether I\u2019ll be able to enter something deeply again, or whether I can find a way to bring something alive. But it\u2019s not as if I\u2019ve ever thought it isn\u2019t a worthwhile thing to do, and it\u2019s not as if I\u2019ve ever considered quitting. I go periods of time without writing, and I have plenty of worries about it, but up to now I haven\u2019t felt the urge to give it up.<\/p>\n

I think a lot of readers wonder about how writers wake up and put word after word on the page day after day. What motivates you?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I just like making things. If I weren\u2019t a writer, I would want to be a carpenter or a woodworker. I like putting things together to make something solid. The process of making\u2014the demands of precision and accuracy and wit and rhythm\u2014is as important to me as any subject I might choose. I\u2019m not someone who just has so many stories I need to tell. I just want to build things that have a certain heft and elegance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Interview conducted by Justin Chandler Chris Bachelder is the author of four novels: Bear vs. Shark, U.S.!, Abbott Awaits, and The Throwback Special, which was serialized in The Paris Review and will be published in the Spring of 2016 through W.W. Norton. He currently lives in Cincinnati, and teaches at the University of Cincinnati. In … <\/p>\n

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