Q. How did this story come about?
Although each woman in this story is very different, they all have two things in common: 1)They live between worlds, seeking the solace of the unreal when their lives become unbearable, and 2)they all feel the same pressure to conform to societal standards, to live a normal life, whatever that is. They are all outcasts, in some way, desperately trying not to be and yet also seeking another person or place to love, a space to feel safe in, to belong to. I actually got the brainspark for this, and took the title from, one of my favorite passages from Richard Wright’s American Hunger, where he talks about why Marxism appealed to him not as an ideology, but as a place to belong, with people of all colors and backgrounds, in a different kind of way. He writes, “Out of the magazines I read came a passionate call for the experiences of the disinherited, and there were none of the same lispings of the missionary in it. It did not say: “Be like us and we will like you, maybe.” It said: “If you possess enough courage to speak out what you are, you will find that you are not alone.” I think just about every story I write is about that in some way: the experiences of the disinherited, either speaking out what they are or trying and failing to conform.
Q. What makes fiction necessary for you?
Fiction is necessary because the world is truly screwed up and humans have to make sense of it all with narratives, with stories—with fiction. We tell stories about the world as it is, or as we think it is, or as we think it should be, or as it never ever should be. And through these stories we get what a crazy-amazing accident people are, and civilization is. We get what it means to be here among all the other people. And also, sometimes we just want to be entertained and totally escape from the world and any meanings at all. And that’s necessary, too.
Q. What song would you pair with this story?
David Bowies’s If I’m Dreaming My Life
Q. Why did you invite Matthew Kirkpatrick to participate in this project?
Matt Kirkpatrick is a writer I really admire, and one I enjoy blatantly evangelizing on behalf of. Why? Because he’s always doing something new with words. He’s not content to settle into one thing, one form or style, although he easily could and he’d still write superb stories. But he takes a more adventurous approach. Matt makes his words work, too. He never just lets his words sit there and be words on a page; his words do jumping jacks and front handsprings and fall down wells and dig around in the brain’s attic and turn into animals and sometimes slink away when you weren’t looking, or even get all up in your face and are all like, SERIOUSLY, DUDE. PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT I’M DOING OVER HERE.
And yet—and yet!—Matt’s stories always have heart. They have soul , maybe clouded-up but they need our clarification, after all. They have meanings and so we care and care and care, and keep on thinking and caring and clarifying in our heads long after we leave the pieces behind.
I love the piece Matt wrote for Necessary Fiction. (ed. Check back on June 28.) I think you’ll love it, too. It’s fiction, it’s extraordinarily necessary, and it will grab you and squeeze your ventricles in the way only the most original, inventive, yet somehow universal stories can.