A short fiction by Michael Martone appears in the first issue of The Collagist, but it is not listed in the table of contents. That said, if you're familiar with his work then you probably already know where to look for it, and if you don't, you'll perhaps find the clues below.
Michael Martone teaches creative writing at the University of Alabama, and his most recent book is
Racing in Place: Collages, Fragments, Postcards, Ruins, from the University of Georgia Press.Here, he speaks to
The Collagist’s Lauren Walbridge about both the exhaustion of forms and the problems that come along with being a fiction writer who is not a storyteller.
1. Can you talk about the inspiration for your inventive series of contributor's notes, one of which appears in this issue of The Collagist? Where did the idea come from? How many of these have you written now?I was working on another book,
The Blue Guide to Indiana. It was a fake travel guide about a state, Indiana, no one, not even people who live there, tour. At the time, I was thinking a lot about context the context, the frame of fiction. I had been teaching for years then, and it always seemed strange that context or framing did not come up in a workshop. In what way does the writer create the fiction but also the frame in which the fiction is read? The workshop, to me, seemed too focused on the thing on the table. And by ignoring the frame and focusing only on the thing on the table, I thought, it rendered the work safe, predictable. So when I wrote the pieces for the travel book, I published them first not in lit mags but in newspapers in Indiana, asking the editors to publish them as if they were actual things to do. I wanted them to “pass” to be read as fact. Collecting all those pieces into the book, I was asked by the publisher for an author’s note, and I guess then it just struck me that here was another kind of writing unexamined in itself and also unconscious of its context. I also had always wanted to use the strange coincidence that a fictional character, Frank Burns in M.A.S.H., was from my hometown, and that the timeline of that story made it possible that he could have been the doctor in attendance at my birth. So, at the birth of this book and at the birth of this idea, I employed Frank Burns into the author’s note. I believe I am closing on 100 of such notes, and since the book, as I publish other things and am always asked for a contributor’s note, I do try to write one up if the editor is game. Of course, for me it is important that the note appear in the Contributors’ Notes section. And what is most interesting is the negotiation with the editor over that placement and over just what is meant by a “Contributor’s Note.”
2. Fifty of these contributor's notes were collected into the book Michael Martone (published by FC2, in 2005), but that hasn't stopped you from writing new ones, or (I assume) from being asked for one every time you publish a new fiction. Do you expect to keep producing them to accompany each new work, or are you planning on ending the project?Well, I guess I just answered this question in the answer above. Like the travel pieces, the contributor’s notes for me seem to be exhausted as a form. I won’t now do a travel book for Alabama or another book of contributor’s notes. My first book of stories featured many monologues delivered by actual people, and after that book came out, readers would suggest other people to use in fiction. I do occasionally do that kind of fiction, but for me that seems more occasional now too.
The Blue Guide and
Michael Martone were finally thought of as books that do, well, exhaust the experiment I was thinking about at the time, and so I think I will think mostly about the next project. You know, that is the problem when one is not a storyteller, when one is more interested in forms or concepts or theory than in narrative. There is no beginning, middle, or end. One is always afraid that the reader will say when reading the 22nd iteration, “OK, I get the joke,” when there are two dozen more iterations to go.
3. Recently, you've been working on a series of dramatic monologues called "Whinesburg, Indiana." Can you tell us more about the project? Is it a finished book, or something you're still in the midst of? Can you tell us where we can expect to see some of these monologues appear?The project was started for and continues to be running, so far, at the new on-line magazine
Booth. The editors there asked me to do a satire on the current state of the confessional memoir, and it felt a little like what Cervantes must have felt when he began to parody the popular romances of his time only to fall in love with his exaggerated satire. So, instead of one over the top memoir, I seem to have evolved to a whole series of them. And once I thought of that, I thought of
Winesburg, Ohio and the early use of the new insights of interior states and the short story form. The other aspect of this project is that I imagine it as my own book but also another anthology I am editing. I will write half the monologues. The other half will be written by other writers who I have invited to visit and perhaps settle in Whinesburg. It is early in the project, and so far I have only thought about
Booth as the place to publish these pieces. Back to the notion of examining forms and frames, with Whinesburg, I imagine that I am thinking about the form of the serial again and various ideas of collaboration in a culture that is so focused on the individual.
4. Are there any other writing projects are you currently working on?There are several. I am working on a book of Indiana science fiction called, for now,
Amish in Space. I am beginning make imaginary print ads in the hope of placing them in magazines, and will do a series of postcard fiction. I am putting together a book of interviews called
You Can Say That Again that I hope will contain this interview. And I have just finished a book called
Four for a Quarter, a book of short fictions based on the number four—four chambers of the heart, four seasons, four winds, 4H Club, four-in-the-hand tie, four eyes, the Fantastic Four, etc.
5. What great books have you read recently? Also, are there any upcoming releases you're excited about?I just re-read
Siddhartha and liked it very much. And today read
We Take Me Apart by Molly Gaudry. There is Deb Unferth’s new book. Kate Bernheimer’s forthcoming stories. Joyelle McSweeney’s books. M.T. Anderson. Paul Maliszewski’s
Prayers. Steve Fellner’s
All Screwed Up. C. Bard Cole’s work. Erin Pringle. Cheryl Dumesnil’s new book of poems,
In Praise of Falling. And I am looking forward to having everyone read the new book I edited called
Not Normal, Illinois, Peculiar Fictions from the Flyover, thirty-three strange fictions written by or about the Midwest.