20 Questions with Mourning Goats
INTERVIEW SIXTY
Morris Collins
I was introduced to this guy through a much earlier Mourning Goats interviewee, Pat Walsh, and I'm so happy I was! One of my favorite sections of this interview has to be question 7, as we've been lucky enough to interview "the hot professor!" It was a pleasure reading about and learning from Morris. I hope you all enjoy!
1. What comes to mind when you hear, "Mourning Goats?"
There was a coffee shop right on the Charles River I used to go to
as a kid called Dancing Goats and right now, because it’s 5 AM and the coffee
is still brewing, I could use some of that.
2. For those not familiar with your work, what would you consider your
style?
Horse Latitudes is dark in
subject and sort of hyper-lyrical in style.
I was trying to use my prose to recreate the saturation of the tropics
with some mix of beauty and sensory claustrophobia. I imagine it, at times, as almost sickly,
like something sweet gone bad. The style
changes as the book progresses, growing steadily more surreal and febrile—as
the situation does. I wanted the
lyricism to be almost a lure, like a phantom light, and I hope it encourages
the reader down a pretty dark path so that by the novel’s end—in a volcanic
city on the brink of revolution—they’re not quite sure how they got there, but
realize that’s where they were going all along.
Beyond this, though, the secret truth is I’m not sure that I have
one defining writing style and I distrust the notion of each writer having only
one authentic voice. We all have our own
obsessions and idiosyncrasies, and if those, as expressed by syntax, are what
constitute a writer’s voice, I’d like to imagine that my voice has many
registers. For instance, the novel I’m
working on now, Sleepwalkers of the North
Atlantic, is very different from Horse
Latitudes—it’s comedic, bizarre, and loquacious. I know the general narrative of a writer’s
development always involves them finding their ‘voice’, and it’s true, for me
writing is almost wholly determined by voice and what sort of sentences it
allows or requires, since I think this facilitates or determines what kind of
thing can happen in your story. But those sets of opportunities and constraints
change fairly radically for each piece.
Sometimes this worries me, because when we talk about great stylists we
often refer to writers with one distinct voice, like Barry Hannah and Cormac
McCarthy, or to lesser degrees Lorrie Moore and James Salter. Though I suppose I’m conflating style and
voice a little here. How about this: no
matter its particulars, I assume my style is generally ostentatious and
maximalist. I’m a slow writer so the
language has to be fun for me while I’m writing. Anyway, I recently heard Matt Bell say that
he didn’t want to write every book in the voice of a Russian sea captain. And who would?
3. Your first novel, Horse Latitudes, came out in September. What can
you tell us about it?
I like to call it a tropical gothic, though I’m not sure what that
means, really, beyond that it’s a dark novel drawing on the American gothic
tradition—but it’s set in the tropics.
It’s about guilt and trauma-- as those things might be rendered in a
weird, increasingly surreal adventure novel.
It’s also strongly influenced by medieval post-plague literature and a
sort of perverse notion of the quest narrative where the quest has been
deformed into a gothic circle. Or how
about plot? Basically, a guy whose life
has exploded after an act of violence in the US heads south into Mexico and
becomes caught up in a quest to save a young girl from slave traffickers. As expected, I guess, things are not what
they seem and he’s drawn increasingly deeper into a dangerous landscape of
impossible choices and moral ambiguity.
To be clear, though: it’s hopefully a fun novel to read, like some
mash-up of Malcolm Lowry and one of Graham Greene’s entertainments with Angela Carter thrown in. That is to say: things
get weird, fast. There’s a journey
through a walled city of prostitutes, a town of private detectives, roadblocks,
bullfights, pirate ports, and a trip down a jungle river haunted by a goddess
as well as demented intelligence officers and slave traffickers. And it all
converges, or circles up, as any novel should, in a city on the brink of
revolution and storm and volcanic eruption.
So it’s a quiet book, obviously.
4. And, the reviews have been fantastic, "knockout debut
novel," "an adventurous moral thriller," how are you taking all
the praise?
I could do with
plenty more. I’m sort of imagining that
now that my first book is published, my life is going to be an undeviating
sequence of success and approbation.
I’ve cleared out my bank account so as to make room for the spoils and
I’m finding new abdominal muscles every day!
No, seriously—early readers, blurbers, and booksellers have just been so
generous with their time and attention.
My real feeling is a pretty intense and sheepish gratitude.
5. What was your book release party in Massachusetts on August
13th?
The release was
great. We held it at Brookline Booksmith, which is one of the great Indie
bookstores in a great books town. Brookline Booksmith has such an eclectic and
well-curated stock, which is no surprise considering how smart and cool and
keyed-in to the literary community the staff are. It’s an amazing place with a real tie to the
community and a pretty damn good example of why and how indie bookstores remain
essential. So yeah, the launch was a lot of fun. At least for me. It was a
literary event, so obviously there was a plethora of wine and cheese. And
people saying plethora. None of which,
actually, you can find in Horse Latitudes.
6. How did you get involved with MP publishing?
Almost by
accident, really. I wrote Horse
Latitudes a while ago—back in 2007-2008 and not being a savvy or speedy
networker just sort of sat on it while I continued to write other stuff. Anyway, back in October 2011 I read a post
Stephen Graham Jones had written on his blog about his then forthcoming novel, Growing Up Dead in Texas. The book sounded cool—as all of his books
do—and he went on in his post to rave about the experience he was having with
his publisher, MP Publishing USA. I
checked them out and realized pretty quickly that the folks running MP in the
US were many of the same people who had been doing MacAdam/Cage—which had
always been sort of a touchstone press for me.
A press whose list I knew I’d love every season. Actually, when writing Horse Latitudes, I had kind of imagined it as a book for them, but
by the time I was finished they weren’t really taking submissions anymore. But MP was up and running and putting out
some really cool books—and they were reading full manuscript submissions, which
is pretty rare. So I sent it to them in
fall 2011 and kind of forgot about it until June 2012 when the then
editor-in-chief, Guy Intoci, reached out really enthusiastically. By this point the book was being considered
at a couple other places, but Guy’s enthusiasm and support and the way I’d seen
him launch their previous list, made it a pretty easy and exciting
decision. Actually, just the day before
Guy’s call, I had picked up a copy of Steve Abee’s Johnny Future where he had given Guy a shout-out in the
acknowledgments—so it all felt kind of like fate. Guy’s not at MP anymore, but the folks I’ve
worked with—Pat Walsh, Marthine Satris, Briah Skelley, Michelle Dotter, Nick Sinatra—have
all been really enthusiastic, smart, and passionate. I feel pretty lucky.
7. Found your ratings on RateMyProfessor.com and I've gotta ask, how
does it feel to be the "hot professor?"
It’s like this: perched on my desk before them, the young, I slowly
remove my pipe from its idle crook in my Alexandrine jaw and ash it into the
Etruscan cinerary urn I’ve brought with me for this express purpose. Come class time, I slip from my corduroy
blazer so now only my fine slacks, Italian loafers, and thin cashmere turtleneck
protect my almost bare body from the eyes of the American youth. But from their hearts and minds, from the
empty scaffolding of their nascent souls—what barriers remain are mine to fell.
“Corruption,” I say them,
“derives from the Latin corruptus, to
destroy or spoil. And yet, as you must
recall, when accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, Socrates says, ‘I have
never been anyone’s teacher.’”
Do they see me wink beneath my monocle?
Do they see me as I slide from the table and using my stylus as pointer,
stand before them in my supple riding boots, my cape, my terracotta ascot? Do
their eyes even once slip to the hooded falcon perched on my gloved arm? Hardly. I strum my lute. I stretch. I eat grapes.
I swear, Goat, I eat at least a pound of grapes in every class and let
the sound of seeds expelled, one by one, into my Turkish brass spittoon play
plangent choir to my every bon mot.
“Syphilitic wonder,” I say to them, “did not stop Nietzsche from
crying, ‘too much is not enough.’”
I weep, I sweat, my clothes are too tight. I eat with my hands from my tureen of curried
lamb.
“Such is beauty,” I wail, “that the nymphs tore Orpheus limb from
limb!”
Oh, but see them: the nimble sweep and flutter of fingers over
phones, the dulcet languor of their yawns. Like any teacher, I long to show
them what they might give, but my love is like a buccaneer with his faithful
manatee. My love is my gangrenous hand, my rotting teeth, my falcon stuffed and
dead these many years. At the threshold of every desire there lurks a hag in a
bonnet, and the roster must lie—they
can’t all be named Chris and Megan. God, look, there are ants in my goulash!
Did you know Aeschylus was killed by a falling tortoise? Imagine: a tortoise
fell from the sky and for an instant Aeschylus must have felt sure it was his
final epiphany, a sign from the gods, which it was, but when his head opened,
the revelation, kids, was that even the slowest things move too fast for this
life.
8. Did you write any novels before Horse Latitudes? Do you think any of
them will see the light of day?
Horse Latitudes was the first novel I completed. Previous to it, I had gotten pretty deep into
two other novels, both of which I really liked, but both of which I abandoned
because they contained several flaws at the level of conception. So I doubt they will ever find their way into
print. Anyway, I wrote Horse Latitudes
when I was 24-25, so I’m not sure I want to dip much deeper into my youth than
that.
9. What's your writing schedule like? Do you write every day?
I try to write
every day, early in the morning. I wish
I was one of those writers who could just write through the night. It’s a more romantic image: pounding coffee
in some Hopperesque diner—all chrome and neon and silence—until the sun comes
up and the newsies wander in and the trains start to whistle again. But I’m not. Yeah, I usually see the sun come
up, but it’s because I got up to start working at 4:30 or 5:00. This involves me dressing as best I can in
the dark and then staring very hard at the coffee machine until I can untangle
the three-step sequence in which I grind coffee, put that coffee inside the
coffee machine, and then add the right amount of water to a different part of
the machine. It’s amazing how much can
go wrong between any of those steps, and like any narrative, when you reverse
the normal order of events you have a story on your hands.
10. How much social media involvement do you have pushing for your
novel? Do you think it's necessary in this age?
It certainly seems
necessary. Some books appear to take on
a public energy and life of their own, but for the most part it seems that
these days a book requires the writer and the publisher both to really pound
the pavement. I’ll be honest, though,
it’s not something I’m very good at and I think the best way to do it is to
engage as actively as one can with the general literary world. Obviously, I’ve got to publicize my events
and publications and reviews, all the stuff that pertains to me and my
book. I’ve got an obligation to my
publisher, to bookstores, to the people kind enough to interview me, and to my
own future in the literary marketplace (whatever that means) to do that, even
if I am self-conscious about it, or am sure that everyone on my Facebook feed
is saying what I often say: “I already bought your freaking book! Why can’t you
post a good cat video?” But I’ve always
been a fairly active book reviewer and, ideally, what I’d like to do is simply
enter the book world as a literary citizen commenting on and promoting the work
of others. When I read a writer
reviewing or discussing a book he or she loves with passion and erudition, I’m
usually drawn to the book being reviewed and the person doing the reviewing. This is actually how I’ve discovered many
writers I love and one of the pleasures, I hope, in finally getting a novel
published is that I’ll be able to join the conversation even more actively.
11. Which do you find harder to write, long-form, short-form, or
non-fiction?
Well long form is
probably the hardest, since it requires the longest commitment and there are so
many opportunities to screw up.
Generally, though, I think, it’s also the form I’m best wired for, or
drawn to. I appreciate the possibilities
for fugue and play and inversion. I like
having the space to mess around and let things build and change as we go. Horse
Latitudes is a literary thriller or an adventure novel or whatever you want
to call it, so it’s plot heavy, or anyway there’s a lot going on, but still I’m
not a natural storyteller, which is to say I don’t think I really see stories
as these perfect intersections of character and causality. I like the room for episode and event. I figure if I can ratchet up the intensity
(whether situational or syntactical) in an extreme situation we’ll see the way
the characters’ vulnerabilities forces them into compelling action. While my best—and still unpublished—short
story is fairly traditional, most of my most successful short stories are more
tricks of language. A fun voice and
interesting situation exploded toward conclusion in a few pages, which is not,
I feel, how the great short story writers do things.
12. How did you enjoy your MFA from Penn State? Do you think it was
worth it?
Absolutely! Penn State’s
program was a fully-funded three-year program where we were paid a good stipend
to teach one course per semester—three of which were, in my case, creative
writing. So, yeah, it was pretty
ideal. It was small and intimate and
because everyone was well-funded and not competing, say, for the one or two
available fellowships, the environment was supportive and friendly—and not
surprisingly a lot of people did good work there. I was lucky to study with great writers who
were diligent and thoughtful teachers and with classmates who were smart and
talented and generous. Unfortunately
it’s gone now, a casualty, I guess, of the financial crisis. Though I have hopes, considering the work its
alums are doing and the popularity of creative writing on campus, that one day
it will be back. Currently, they’ve got
a one-of-a-kind five-year BA/MA for Penn State undergrads, which will, I think
be a good way to bolster the undergrad program which is already filled with
really strong writers. I say this with
some pride, too, because two of my former students have made it into the
program and they’re really impressive, talented, and smart writers and it’s
exciting to see them doing such good work.
But back to your question: my experience at Penn State was rigorous
in theory, art, and criticism. And I was lucky to be surrounded by dedicated
and talented people—writers who every week awed and inspired me with their work
and their discipline in a town of mountains and rolling fields and all the
bucolic pleasures of the good life. A
town where a pitcher of beer was 3 dollars.
It’s hard to ask for much more than that.
13. What's the most stressful and
most rewarding part about publishing a novel so far and why? (aka, is it
writing it, promoting it, getting a publisher, etc.?)
Well the book is just now coming out, so it’s possible that my
answers on both counts might change, but as far as I can tell, publication—and
all its variables—is the most stressful part of the whole thing. The issue, primarily, is that I’m a control
freak and when it comes to the actual publication process there’s so much that
I have basically no control over—from big obvious things like cover and flap
copy, to pub dates and typesetting, print-run and review/blurb garnering. It’s kind of like being a sports fan—total
investment with zero control. Except it
feels like some subtle and fairly obvious aspects of my sanity, not to mention
professional livelihood, are riding on these things, which I won’t feel about
sports for another few weeks until the Red Sox are in the World Series.
As for the most rewarding part? That’s got to be doing the
writing. Any other answer is probably
insane. The pleasures of being deep at
work, say only fifty pages out from the conclusion of the first draft…That’s
probably the most fun.
14. Do you read while you're working on a new project or do you try and
separate the two?
Yeah, absolutely I read. I
can’t imagine not. Usually the more I’m
reading, the more I’m writing. But it’s
a sort of tricky calculus to decide what to read. Usually, at first, I want to read something
similar in tone or style or intent to what I’m working on, and then as I get
deeper in and my piece has established its own rules, I try to switch my
reading up and read things that are entirely different from what I’m working
on. Often, nonfiction or poetry. Or another way to look at it: at first I want
to stimulate whatever gets the prose flowing, and then I want to leave that
alone and just sort of feed my intellect and let that carry over (or not).
Also, when I’m struggling, I use reading as a crutch. I think Martin Amis mentioned that when he
was stuck, he’d say to himself, “okay, how would Dickens, do this? Or Bellow?
Or Nabokov?” And you know, even
if you can definitely see those influences on his prose, certainly the answer
he usually comes to—he claims—is, how should Martin Amis approach this? And I’ll do something similar, but often with
a slightly less specific method. When
I’m struggling I’ll read writers whose prose I love, whose work really speaks
to me on some sonic level and I’ll just let those sentences—their cadences and
variations—wash over me until they’ve inspired the right amount of pleasure and
then I can get back to work. Obviously,
if I wrote at night I could just have a few beers, I guess, but a dawn routine
demands a little more purity.
15. What's your goal when you sit down to write? Is there one?
I write for
pleasure, and my goal when I sit down is to break through my levels of anxiety
and doubt and sort of connect with what Jerome Charyn has called the “lyric
joy” that is the undercurrent of all art.
Someone like Jerome Charyn, actually, is a good example of this. His books—especially the early ones—are
insane. They’re these completely absurd
fugues where the primary organizing principle behind them is his clear joy in
their composition. Like, you’re sure that this vision for him is so real and
beautiful and necessary that it becomes those things, if briefly, for you. God, I know that sounds pretentious. But it’s true, and I can’t imagine why else
anyone would write. Why else would you
bother but to shape your dread and awe, your moments of fear and beauty, all
those freaky, anxious psychic abstractions into some form? Basically, it’s a lot of fun and I think
that’s all I’ll say about that since there’s nothing more uncomfortable than
someone trying to communicate their hidden pleasure in general terms. I’m just glad that the form mine takes is
more or less socially acceptable. A
squirrel collection might be just as necessary for some.
16. What does your writing area look like? Do you write from home?
Coffee shop? Office?
I wrote most of Horse Latitudes in the back crannies of
Webster’s Café, a little used bookstore in State College, PA. Nowadays, though, since my powers of
concentration seem to diminish by the day I write mostly from my home
office. It’s a nice room and pretty
standard: bookshelves, lamps, a pull-out futon (it’s also the guest bedroom, I
guess). Above my desk I’ve got a few corkboards tacked with postcards of
paintings and lists of words I like or notes to myself, many of which are
totally contradictory. Also there’s a
fortune cookie fortune “To win at anything, a race, your life—you have to go a
little berserk”—which I think is pretty good writing advice. My desk itself is
the usual blur of notes, quotations, drafts,
and other totemic objects: a riding flask from the nineteenth century, a
blue bear totem, a glass blue bird, ivory elephant and—until my place was robbed
a few weeks back—a bunch of knives including the coolest bowie knife in the
world. It’s now—with my back-up hard
drive—bopping around a pawn shop somewhere.
So if you’re passing through Boston and you see someone just sort of
swaggering down the road with a knife too cool to be found east of the Rockies,
give me a call, because I’d like to get it back.
17. Who are some of your biggest influence in writing?
This is kind of
the impossible question, since there are so many and the list is constantly
changing. For Horse Latitudes it would include writers who are literary and
inventive within certain gothic, adventure, or mystery genres like James Lee
Burke, James Sallis, Faulkner, Margaret Atwood, William Gay and as much as
anyone else, Chaucer. For my work now, that list would be entirely different,
people like Leonard Michaels, Jerome Charyn, Thomas Bernhard, Aimee Bender,
Saul Bellow, Anne Michaels, Hawthorne.
In general, though, always, whenever I’m struggling in writing, or in
life, I turn to Jim Harrison. All of his
early stuff is great, but I think Farmer is
pretty underappreciated and Warlock
is a really strong comic novel. Even
more, it’s his early poetry I’m especially drawn to. I think I’ve read Letter to Yesenin twenty times. And his Ghazals are probably just
behind that. But yeah, Letters to Yesenin, it’s just so
desperate and beautiful. A howl that
turns into a fierce cry of joy.
Otherwise, Jeanette Winterson’s Gut
Symmetries is a pretty amazing postmodern novel. Cynthia Ozick’s Puttermesser Papers has the most gut-wrenching and perfect ending I can imagine—whatever
art is supposed to do, it does it. And Possession by A.S. Byatt is formally as
impressive a novel as I’ve read. It’s
not really an influence, I don’t think.
But a touchstone, still.
18. How did you get involved in the WI8, in February, and what was
involved once you got there?
Well, MP was
generous enough to send me as their guest author and for that I’m immensely
grateful because it was a great experience. Four days in Kansas City, meeting
booksellers from all across the country, hanging out with other writers—all of
whom were more experienced at this than I was—and trying to keep up with my
editor Pat Walsh, who as many of your readers probably know, is sort of an
indefatigable font of energy. The man
is always going. To put this in some context: the conference was bookended by
blizzards, so getting into Kansas City was not very easy, and once there,
getting out was even more difficult. So, yeah, that first day I left my house
in Baltimore at 3:30 AM and didn’t get into Kansas City until 1 AM. But when I arrived, hours, obviously, after I
was supposed to there was Pat, chatting, pounding the (icy) pavement, talking
books—a real old school man of letters.
Beyond trying and failing to keep up with Pat, meeting people, talking
up Horse Latitudes, buying people
drinks, and eating a lot of barbecue, I did a book signing where I shared a
table with Jill McCorkle who was really very nice. Sherman Alexie, Dave Eggers, Phillip Kerr,
were all just a few feet away, so when some of their lines got too long people
would wander over to me and sort of stare at me while I rambled with speed and
gusto. Then I’d write strange messages
in their books.
19. You had a bit of a rough spot lately, everything looking up?
Yeah, our apartment was broken into and all the computers were
stolen, plus my back-up hard drive and some of my knives. Most major work was backed-up on email. But
yeah I lost some stories and a poem I’d been working on a lot recently. Also taken: lots of syllabi and assignment
sheets (which means this just added hours to my class prep this fall, but who
knows, maybe I’ll write them clearer and better than I ever had before). Overall, though, I was pretty lucky. They were junkies looking for fast cash and
didn’t seem to realize, say, what a first edition of Horse Latitudes might one day be worth. They also left the deeply trippy first paperback
printing I have of Paul Bowles’s Up Above
the World, which has probably the most insane cover I’ve ever seen.
20. What's next for Morris
Collins?
Finishing up a new novel, soon, I hope. Sleepwalkers
of the North Atlantic. I’m kind of
superstitious about talking about these things, but very generally it’s a dark
comic novel set in Boston and Northern Maine about a caddy at a Boston country
club who is hired to find a member’s daughter and becomes caught up in a plot
to steal Native American land in Maine.
It sort of riffs on Hawthorne and takes on issues of New England’s
history and American identity and is, so far, pretty insane and wild and a lot
of fun to write. Plus I’ve got a few stories and poems bouncing around and an
essay in the works on Jewish magic realism in the work of Isaac Babel, Jerome
Charyn, and Cynthia Ozick. Also, of
course there’s the perpetual search for steady employment. So I gotta get my ass in the chair. There’s going to be a lot of early mornings
for the next few months, I hope.
Thank you!
Goat
While you're here, why not "like" the Mourning Goats Facebook page? We're going to have some new interviews coming up that will knock you on your ass! www.mourninggoats.com
And as always, pick up Chewing the Page: The Mourning Goats Interviews, here!
While you're here, why not "like" the Mourning Goats Facebook page? We're going to have some new interviews coming up that will knock you on your ass! www.mourninggoats.com
And as always, pick up Chewing the Page: The Mourning Goats Interviews, here!
