13 Questions for Derek Maine
Derek Maine, friend and previous guest on the podcast, is an author of fiction. His novel Characters (ExPat Press, 2022) is a fantastic work of visceral vignettes.
Derek, self-portrait
What are you reading currently and why?
Currently I am reading Gerald Murnane’s entire catalog (that I can get my hands on). Thus far I have finished Inland, A History of Books, Border Districts, and Last Letter to a Reader. I am currently reading A Million Windows. I am reading Murnane, a writer with essentially one book cut up into many across an entire lifetime and obsessively interested in 3-4 themes throughout, along with many, many mental images and ideas about fiction and literature because we share, like Enrique Vila-Matas or Annie Dillard, the sickness of literary obsession. I like to comb the minds of these sorts of writers. The kind of reader/writers who spend their days at their desk, surrounded by literature, thinking seriously about literature, and working deep into the candle burning hours at creating their own private literature for public consumption. I am interested in “why literature,” at this particular point in history, and compiling the many answers and non-answers to this inane yet critical question.
I am listening to my Grandfathers and Grandmothers who have walked these trails before to get a clue, a sense, a hint at something true, a message, some critical piece of insight that has passed me by in the neutered, algorithmic modern drudgery of my simple, suburban life.
I read Murnane, like I read Bolaño or David Markson, Renata Adler, Joan Didion, the aforementioned Annie Dillard or even, in some ways, Cormac McCarthy, in search of some secret or hidden piece to the puzzle, some trick of language or meaning, some idea I’ve been struggling to name. I look at Murnane, and these other writers, Henry Miller I should certainly include as well as Nabakov, insufferable as he may be, Evan Dara, of course, and William Gass when I can stomach him, the same way I would sit on the front porch of my Grandfather’s small cabin at his cattle farm at the foot of Pilot Mountain (some years it measures a hill) in Surry County, North Carolina and listen to stories of entering German warehouses at the tail end of World War II or his swindling of his fellow teenage enlistees on the boat rides over in Gin Rummy or Checkers - I am listening to my Grandfathers and Grandmothers who have walked these trails before to get a clue, a sense, a hint at something true, a message, some critical piece of insight that has passed me by in the neutered, algorithmic modern drudgery of my simple, suburban life.
I am also reading, because I tend to read two things at once, more Don DeLillo. I finished Point Omega, which takes nothing more than an afternoon at best, and am now onto Mao II. I read him, and have worked these past 18 months to read all of him, for slightly different reasons. My current work is focused on war and this century, and DeLillo stamped a literary end to the last century with Underworld. It is also good to read the very best writers, both to steal from and to remind yourself just how difficult this business is - and how far you have to take it.
What book(s) most altered your taste in literature?
I think this sort of question is probably best answered linearly. When I was alone in my room hiding from the world and my parents, in grade school, I could confidently say The Boxcar Children. When I was in middle school, angry, horny, lonely, and confused, I found Catcher in the Rye. Neither of these answers are very inspirational, are they? Well, literature has a way of creeping up on you and taking you down strange turns. In high school I read Vonnegut, trying to understand something about humanity. At punk houses, hungover and chain smoking, not going to class and spending my evenings writing and destroying horrible poetry I read Bukowski, Faulkner, Hemingway obviously, Fitzgerald of which I am not ashamed and will return every four years. Infinite Jest, because I am a 42 year-old man obsessed with literature and writers and writing, fell into my lap at the appropriate moment and I’ve ridden every part of its wave through culture. But nothing altered my taste quite like Bolaño. He spoke in secrets and of secrets, the literary kind, and I swallowed him whole. Evan Dara, later, gripped me and showed me something of a key. I have mentioned David Markson, but this answer would not be complete without doing so again. John Fante, Bret Easton Ellis, Raymond Chandler, Jim Thompson, David Goodis, and Charles Willeford all kept me tremendous company and I consider them all close friends. Georges Perec, though I might deny it in mixed company. Nelson Algren, specifically The Man with The Golden Arm. Suicide by Édouard Levé, it pains me to say. All of the others I’ve mentioned and a dozen or so more. I think the definitive answer, insomuch as there ever can be one for a lonely middle-aged man suffering from literature sickness, is The Boxcar Children. When the house was filled with screams (or, worse yet, silence), or waiting for the car to come down the driveway or a call that never came, hanging out on the houseboat with these little ruffians saved me. I mean to say it like this, and I mean it exactly: it saved my life.
Describe the last time a work of literature affected you physically?
The last piece of literature that affected me physically was probably The Tunnel by William Gass. A disgusting piece of, I suppose, necessary literature (a kind of autopsy on a cadaver I had no interest in smelling), expertly over-written and over-wrought. A Fan’s Notes by Exley had a nauseating, arousing, tempting, dirty effect on me many, many years ago. Once I realized I wanted to be his character in the book, the alcoholic, dying, brilliant louse of a writer I was more easily able to quit drinking for good and stop wanting to be a story someone tells at parties and started wanting to write my literature instead.
Please share a passage from the book nearest at hand.
From the book closest to me at the moment:
“We will secure, at our own expense, a set of practical morals:
never leave yourself isolated;
fortify your positions;
do not try to save lost stones.”
from A Short Treatise Inviting the Reader to Discover the Subtle Art of Go by Pierre Lusson, Georges Perec, and Jacques Roubaud.
How do you treat the books you read?
I keep a store of these legal flags I procure from my day job and flag sections, quotes, and whatnot as I read. I keep the flags in them after I have finished reading and enjoy picking up any book from my shelves and looking back at the passages which forced my hand into scouring several junk drawers looking for my forever-disappearing stash of post-it flags.
90% of any particular literary movement or style is absolute shit
What quality do you most appreciate in a novel?
A willingness to be boring, to lose itself in its own logic, to drown itself in details which do nothing to further the plot.
Who is an author you feel should be more widely read?
Evan Dara, no question.
What book are you avoiding reading?
Miss MacoIntosh, My Darling (sheer size and time commitment)
What book, author, or writing style do you find overrated/overvalued?
I could do without Sebald’s walking meditations. Funny I say that while Dasa Drindic is one of my favorite writers, but I’m not sure how much we choose these things or how consistent they must be to be true. Three or four of Cesar Aira’s, and most particularly one (The Literary Conference) are amongst my favorite books but his writing style and production overall I find grating. I get none of the supposed emotional resonance I am supposed to extract from Jon Fosse. In fact, any sort of work that is primarily extolled for its long sentences and deep meditative qualities I am most likely severely irked with, setting aside, of course, Krasznahorkai, who is writing beyond the apocalypse (Murnane, proud of his complex long sentence structure and somewhat disdainful of some other writers he feels are applauded in this area who grammar he either does not respect or outright rejects, wrote, in Last Letter to a Reader, I believe, though I can not locate the passage at the moment, disparagingly of Krasznahorkai’s sentences in English translation, as well as Thomas Pynchon, for being nothing more than clauses stitched together). 90% of any particular literary movement or style is absolute shit. I try to live in the 10% and disparage no particular style. Certain writers piss me off for reasons private and serious. I cannot recall any of them now, banished as they are from my shelves, but I suspect they were either idealogues, or addicted to being on television or British. The most overrated book is most certainly an excellent one as well, probably a masterpiece. I contend it’s The Sound and The Fury, and say so with great admiration. Absalom, Absalom!, As I Lay Dying, and Light in August are simply better. I can respect Blood Meridian while also finding it to be terribly overrated.
What book would you like to be the last one you read before you shuffle off this mortal coil?
I hope it surprises me. In fact, I hope it’s a new read and not a re-read and that I die at some critical juncture in the text.
As events and cosmos and people change, what stays true? Can anything? Does anything? You read literature because you, like me, unfortunately, one day, will die. And before then you will live. Literature helps you do both well, I think.
If you were to design a literature course around a singular word what word would that be and what three books might appear on the reading list?
Boredom. We could fill a syllabus with the following:
Infinite Jest, DFW
Waiting for Godot, Beckett
Malicroix, Henri Bosco, translated by Joyce Zonana
Big Sur and The Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, Henry Miller
Wittgenstein’s Mistress by David Markson
The Illogic of Kassel by Enrique Vila-Matas
The novels of Daša Drndić
In what character in literature do you most recognize yourself?
Speaker/narrator in Enrique Vila-Matas’ Never Any End to Paris (for worse)
Why read literature?
Literature is a perfect technology that connects human beings across time and space. Someone has picked up this pebble before, rubbed it, and noted its characteristics. As events and cosmos and people change, what stays true? Can anything? Does anything? You read literature because you, like me, unfortunately, one day, will die. And before then you will live. Literature helps you do both well, I think.